Minister and Beer Gardens

79 views
Skip to first unread message

Jibrin Ibrahim

unread,
Jul 8, 2022, 5:50:26 AM7/8/22
to 'chidi opara reports' via USA Africa Dialogue Series

The FCT Minister’s Battle against Roasted Fish, Beer and Women

Jibrin Ibrahim, Deepening Democracy Column, Daily Trust, 8th July 2022

The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Bello Mohammed, is engaged in a battle to stop the sale of roasted fish and alcoholic drinks in parks and gardens in Abuja. Some persons might think there is no greater battle to fight in Abuja at this time in spite of the rapid degradation of infrastructure and rising insecurity in the city. That for me is misguided.

Tuesday was an important date. The advance convoy of the President was attacked enroute to Daura. That night, gunmen who later identified themselves as terrorists organised a commando attack on Kuje Correctional Facility with significant fire power and explosives where they broke in and released prisoners including detained terrorists. A total of 879 inmates “liberated” from the facility during the attack and just over half of them were recaptured by the next day. According to the defense minister, Bashir Magashi, were among those who escaped and were still at large. The attack took place with 38 military personnel on ground in addition to personnel of the Nigeria Police Force, Civil Defence, DSS and the armed squad of the correctional facility. What then was the strength of the attackers in personnel and fire power? With such serious challenges in the FCT as kidnappers start taking over the suburbs, one would think focusing the Minister’s attention on who is drinking beer in gardens and why they must be stopped should be his least worry.

It was Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, who, as minister of the FCT, brought to the consciousness of Nigerians the distortion of the original master-plan of the federal capital city. He had said that green areas were allocated to people to build houses, while sewage lines were blocked with buildings. To correct this anomaly, El-Rufai had set out to pull down structures erected where they should not. In his 'operation restore Abuja master-plan,' churches were destroyed as well as private buildings. Also, hotels and other sundry buildings were pulled down. With that, some green areas were restored, sewage lines were freed and Abuja started having a breath of fresh air. Those to who gardens were leased were required to landscape it, plant trees and flowers and make it beautiful to behold. That was the context in which Abuja’s fish garden culture developed and residents and visitors frequently visit the gardens for fresh air, roasted fish, small chops and some drinks. I am a stakeholder and frequently take my international visitors to such gardens and precisely because of the atmosphere, they have come to love Abuja. It is a great asset to the city and God bless Nasir El-Rufai for his insight.

However, since the exit of El-Rufai from the FCT Administration, Abuja is gradually returning to the old era where the master plan is ignored. Green areas and sewage lines appear to be giving way, again, to buildings. Indeed, structures are beginning to emerge in green areas. Mostly affected are private operators of gardens, who use the green areas, on the approval of the FCT administration, for recreational purpose. Successive Ministers have sought to close down the gardens and many think they are interested in allocating the land for new construction. The Aliero FCT administration in fact allotted some gardens for the issuance of certificate of occupancy (C of O). Indeed in 2009, Minister Aliero was taken to court for his ban on parks. He then argued that the parks had to be closed because robbers and prostitutes were flooding the places. I remember my response to him at that time was that the real robbers who steal billions from government coffers retain suites at Hilton Hotel, a well-known and notorious den of iniquity in Abuja. Why was the Hilton not closed down by Aliero at that time and why has the current Minister allowed Hilton serve alcohol for 24-hours each day? 

I think Minister Bello of the FCT is too decent a person to seek to allocate the lands parks are situated in but it is clear he has been sold a dummy in terms of the moral argument that people should not be allowed to drink beer after 7pm. Abuja is a multi-cultural, and indeed international city and it is a great disservice to Nigeria to seek to impose provincial values on a cosmopolitan city. The parks and garden owners have sued the FCT Minister on the issue and he should not have imposed and implemented the early closure ban. The minister should uphold the rule of law and call his aides to order and stop the enforcement of the closure of parks and gardens by 7pm in the Federal Capital Territory.

The other moral crusade in Abuja is against so-called prostitutes but not their male customers, who are apparently considered as the moral pillars of contemporary Nigerian society. For decades, raids have been organised in different locations, leading to the arrest of hundreds of women by agents of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) Joint Task Team. The team goes around night clubs and arrest all the women in them for prostitution. The task force has been systematically arresting women in the streets after 10 p.m. and any woman seen outside is assumed to be a criminal and prostitute, and treated as such. Independent Nigeria has therefore fully restored the colonial rule of arbitrarily arresting people in the streets for “loitering and wondering”, but this time the targets are exclusively female. This enforcement agency has made complete nonsense of our Constitution, which protects the human rights of all Nigerians, including the right to walk in the streets, day and night. 

Over the years, concordant reports indicate that some of these women were sexually assaulted and released after the “moral policemen” had sex with them. Others paid bribes and were released and it was the few who refused to be blackmailed that were taken to court and charged with prostitution. It is really shameful that this would occur in the capital city of Nigeria. The charge of prostitution has become an instrument for committing terrible crimes against women. All the clubs had men and women in them but they pick on only the women, in a blatantly discriminatory approach. Some of the women were professionals, AND YES, RESPONSIBLE PROFESSIONAL WOMEN ALSO HAVE THE RIGHT TO GO AND ENJOY THEMSELVES IN CLUBS, JUST AS MEN DO. The women who resisted arrest and made the argument that they have the right to go to clubs are often thoroughly beaten up for daring to stand for their rights.

The Abuja authorities justify their war on women on the basis of the implementation of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board Act 1997, which is a statutory act applicable in the Federal Capital Territory. The law gives them powers to: “Keep owned or occupied tenements clean, neat, keep grass low and trim, cut and trim flowers; keep drainage running through the tenement free from blockage. Provide adequate dust bin and sanitary convenience … must not use residential premises for the sale of alcoholic drinks or as a restaurant or for other commercial activity.” Out of all these responsibilities, their only focus is to arrest women. No, Abuja does not need fake moral policing.

 

Professor Jibrin Ibrahim
Senior Fellow
Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja
Follow me on twitter @jibrinibrahim17

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Jul 11, 2022, 3:33:14 PM7/11/22
to Salimonu Kadiri, usaafric...@googlegroups.com
​Throughout history and until recently, Nigeria has been a country where marriages between females and males have been very important aspects of her culture. In the unpolluted Nigerian culture of yesteryears, sexual intercourse was restricted within marriage and the purpose of sexual intercourse was to procreate because children stood as insurance against old-age. The Yoruba people used to say aphoristically : Eniti o bimo, Omo ni o masin, Eniti kò bimo, Omo ni o ma sin. Roughly translated, it means whether one is barren in life or not, children will bury one at death. In every ethnic language in Nigeria words like harlot, whore, prostitute, adultery, fornication and concubine were unknown until the Bible and Quran were translated into our indigenous languages. Thus, for instances, the invented words for harlot, whore, prostitute, adultery and fornication in Yoruba language are Àgbèrè and Panságà, while the invented word for concubine is Àlè. In Yoruba culture, a male person who remains a bachelor at a matured age is regarded either as a eunuch (AKÚRA) or sexually impotent (ÒKÓBÓ). A female who remains a bachelor at the age of marriage-maturity is regarded as a woman without sheath (LÁKÍRIBOTO TI KÒ LÓJU AWE). The purpose of sexual intercourse as practised by Africans and the sexual self-control and discipline was noted by the first British Governor General of colonised Nigeria, Lord Lugard, when he wrote in 1922 : The custom, which seems fairly general among the negro tribes, of suckling a child for two or three years, during which a woman lives apart from her husband, tends to decrease population. He added that 'polygamy ensured that every available female was mated.' (The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, p.66-67, By Lord Lugard). 

Noteworthy in Lugard's observation is that polygamous system gave every woman the possibility of procreating and as such there were no extra females left to serve the sexual lust of men as prostitutes. Contrary to sexual behaviour in Europe Lord Lugard could still not understand in 1922, when he wrote his book, why 'negro tribes' could abstain from having sex with nursing mothers for two to three years. Historically, the idea of marriage and the institutionalisation of husband and wife were introduced into Europe by the Jews. In fact, a major reason why European men in particular developed deep hatred for the Jews was the establishment of marriage institution resulting in husband and wife. The English men complained bitterly about their life being marred because of being forced to become husbands by getting marry to women who became wives. Incidentally, the word for poison in the Swedish language is GIFT and synonymously, to get marry in Swedish language is called GIFT, as if a marriage is poison. 

Earlier on males' access to sexual intercourse with females in Europe were arranged through duels at which the winners had sex with women of their choice. Men in Europe of that time never took responsibility for the children that resulted out of duels between men over women with whom they have had sex. Although 33% of Europe's population was wiped out in the 14th century due to bubonic plague, Europe became overpopulated afterwards within two centuries because of reckless and uncontrollable sexual behaviours of European men. The excessive European population resulted in finding foreign lands to conquer and plant Europeans there, e.g., North and South America, Australia , New Zealand and South Africa.  

Africans, Nigerians in particular, copy bad things from the cultures of Western World while abandoning good things in our cultures. Just like Europe and the U.S., Nigeria now has female prostitutes in all her big cities and of course we have lawmakers who are almost hundred per cent males enacting laws to arrest and convict prostitutes but not their customers who are mostly men. In Sweden the male customers of female prostitutes are criminalised under the law that forbids sex buying (Sex-köp). In reality, sex cannot be bought, it can only be hired or rented by the utilizer for a specific time where-after, the prostitute retains her sexual organ. When one hires or rents an apartment from a landlady or a landlord, the renter/hirer is named a tenant and not a purchaser of an apartment. Thus, a customer to a prostitute can be said to have commit sexual tenancy (Sex-hyres-gäst) while the prostitute only acts as sex-lady (sex-hyres-värd). Incidentally, majority of the Swedish lawmakers are males, just like in many parts of the world, therefore they thought that men's sexual tenancies under female sex-lords should be glorified as sex buying (sex-köp). Sweden is the only country in the world that has appreciated the fact that men's unquenchable appetite for sex is what is responsible for female prostitution and has therefore criminalised sexual tenancy and not the sexual lords. Instead of chasing and harassing Nigerian women for prostitution, it would have been more effective to enact a law stipulating that any male person that has sexual intercourse with any woman with whom he is not married should be charged for rape. With such law, sexual intercourse between a man and a woman will be restricted within legally married couples. 
S. Kadiri  

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Jibrin Ibrahim <jibrinib...@gmail.com>
Sent: 08 July 2022 08:14
To: 'chidi opara reports' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Minister and Beer Gardens
 
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
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
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAPWX8rULxgd-BwLkBaPdG%2BebSsXSvRL0c00jMwqKUYoyBar3ew%40mail.gmail.com.

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

unread,
Jul 12, 2022, 4:11:36 AM7/12/22
to usaafricadialogue
fantasy-

''Historically, the idea of marriage and the institutionalisation of husband and wife were introduced into Europe by the Jews. In fact, a major reason why European men in particular developed deep hatred for the Jews was the establishment of marriage institution resulting in husband and wife. The English men complained bitterly about their life being marred because of being forced to become husbands by getting marry to women who became wives. Incidentally, the word for poison in the Swedish language is GIFT and synonymously, to get marry in Swedish language is called GIFT, as if a marriage is poison. 

Earlier on males' access to sexual intercourse with females in Europe were arranged through duels at which the winners had sex with women of their choice. Men in Europe of that time never took responsibility for the children that resulted out of duels between men over women with whom they have had sex. Although 33% of Europe's population was wiped out in the 14th century due to bubonic plague, Europe became overpopulated afterwards within two centuries because of reckless and uncontrollable sexual behaviours of European men. The excessive European population resulted in finding foreign lands to conquer and plant Europeans there, e.g., North and South America, Australia , New Zealand and South Africa.  ''

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DU0PR03MB8415236A332C6B51C835E339AE859%40DU0PR03MB8415.eurprd03.prod.outlook.com.

Harrow, Kenneth

unread,
Jul 12, 2022, 6:57:13 AM7/12/22
to usaafricadialogue
antisemitic fantasy, which may seem innocuous till the next killing of jews occurs.
not the kind of posting we should be seeing or sharing
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2022 1:11 AM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Minister and Beer Gardens
 

Toyin Falola

unread,
Jul 12, 2022, 6:59:01 AM7/12/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Apologies, Ken.

I was not reading that read, after the initial posting by Jibrin.

Harrow, Kenneth

unread,
Jul 12, 2022, 7:03:32 AM7/12/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
thanks toyin

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Jul 12, 2022, 9:01:01 AM7/12/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
We started with the Garden of Eden, with one man , one woman, the serpent and the forbidden fruit, and about 6000 years later we are at  the proliferation of Beer Gardens and rampant prostitution ( said to be the world's oldest profession) in post-colonial, post-missionary and post- missionary positions in Nigeria.

There's also all the political harlotry that's regularly taken up in the social media and by some of the moral paragons and some of the loose-lipped political commentators on the naija media and blogs. 

Who's worse , the "political prostitutes" or the Jaguar Nanas? Let's leave it to the Pentecostal pastors and the police magistrates to tell us.

This prognosis names Nigeria as one of the major contributors to the explosive world population increase : https://www.rt.com/news/558787-un-report-global-population-progress/

In my view, how we tackle population growth is as important as the measures the world has to adopt in a concerted effort to curb the inevitable problems caused by climate change.


You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/usaafricadialogue/S4nK1--o2Qo/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DM6PR11MB3356E22A5EA17B529128FB26F4869%40DM6PR11MB3356.namprd11.prod.outlook.com.

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Jul 19, 2022, 4:36:03 PM7/19/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com, Salimonu Kadiri, har...@msu.edu
​Here, I have to deal with the fallacy of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju's fantasy whereby fallacy is an expression that may sound reasonable or superficially true but is actually flawed or dishonest.

Geographically, the landmass of Europe is 10.6 million square kilometres as, for example, against Africa's landmass of 30 million, 321 thousand and 130 square kilometres. In 1986 when the evil Samaritans propagated that Africa's population was on the verge of being decimated by HIV/AIDS, the population of Africa was 570 million people, whereas the population of Europe then, was 700 million. Despite the fact that the landmass of Africa has always been about three times bigger than Europe, the population of Africa, throughout human history, has always been less than that of Europe simply because of the rigid sexual control and discipline of both genders in Africa. For evidence, let's revisit the Bubonic Plague which was said to have wiped out 33% of the Europe's population between 1346 and 1350. Yet, barely two centuries later, Europe became overpopulated, forcing her to transplant its excessive population growth in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, as well as North and South America. Where did the gigantic number of Europeans transplanted into non-European parts of the world come from? It is not fantasy, but real historical occurrence that the overpopulation of Europe was a product of European men's sexual activities perpetrated on their women under raw and brutal circumstances.

 It is not fantasy either that as far back as 1576, Sir Humphrey Gilbert published *Discourse to prove a passage by the North West to Cathia and East Indies* wherein he set out the advantages of establishing colonial settlements to be inhabited by British proletarians and criminals who were denied opportunity of decent living in Britain. His solution to mass poverty and the crime caused by it in Britain was this, "We might inhabit part of those countries and settle, there, such needy people of our country which now trouble the commonwealth, through want here at home are forced to commit outrageous offences, whereby they were daily consumed with gallows." (p.71, The Crisis of Britain and the British Empire, by R. Palme Dutt). Therefore, early British settlers in the U.S. were mostly convicts from Britain and when the U.S. secured her independence from Britain, Australia was founded as a dumping ground for British convicts. 

It is not fantasy that the idea of one God, the creator of heaven and earth and everything therein was introduced by the Hebrews to the Romans just like the idea of marriage between a man and a woman. The Romans adopted the Hebrew religion, modified and made it their own before spreading it in all over Europe in what became Roman Catholic Church headed by a Pope in Rome. It is a fact in history and not a fantasy that the Pope Clement VII, the head of Roman Catholic Church refused to grant King Henry VIII divorce from his wife, Queen Catharine of Aragon, in 1532. King Henry VIII severed religious relation with Rome and caused the Parliament to pass the Act of Supremacy in 1533, whereby he became the Supreme Head of the Church of England. The only daughter Henry the 8th had with Queen Catharine of Aragon, Princess Mary, was said to have been born blind because King Henry infected Catharine with syphilis. That Henry VIII, as a forerunner in the western world system of serial monogamy by men, married six times with different women and supported himself with chains of concubines around the corners of England is not a fiction but an established fact in history. 

In Nigeria's cultural and ethnic languages in which I was raised up, there were no words for sodomy, homosexuality, lesbianism/tribadism, necrophilism, scatology/coprology, sadomasochism, oral sex/fellatio, prostitution and bestiality/zoophilia as are commonly deployed in Euro-American daily languages. But those perverse vocabularies are being forced on Nigeria (Africa) by neo-colonialists through our educated elites. On Monday, 13 January 2014, President Goodluck Jonathan signed into law *Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Law* whereby same-sex marriage or civil union will attract 14 years prison sentence. In addition, anyone who registers, operates or participates in gay clubs, societies and organisations, or who directly or indirectly makes a public show of same-sex relationship breaks the law which is punishable up to 10 years in prison. Only a marriage contract between a man and a woman, according to the law, shall be recognised as valid in Nigeria. On the same day, the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry said, "The United States is deeply concerned by Nigeria's new law which dangerously restricts freedom of assembly, association and expression for all Nigerians. People everywhere deserve to live in freedom and equality. No one should face violence or discrimination for who they are or who they love." As if all Nigerians are same-sex lovers, the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, thought that Nigeria's same sex marriage prohibition law is dangerous for all Nigerians. Consequently, the then U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr James Entwistle, threatened U.S sanction on Nigeria because of the country's Gay-marriage law according to online Nigerian Vanguard of 21 January 2014. How nice it would have been if the U.S. government of Barrack Obama had sanctioned the Nigerian government for failing to provide potable water for Nigerians to prevent water borne diseases ravaging the country? How beautiful it would have been if Obama's government had threatened the Nigerian rulers with sanction for stealing funds meant for infrastructures and putting children in schools? While Nigeria was threatened with sanction for enacting law to safeguard procreation and continuity of family, the U.S. on Thursday, 19 June 2014, actually imposed sanction on Uganda over her anti-homosexual law which could see homosexuals jailed for life. A written statement by the U.S. National Security Council spokes-woman, Caitlin Hayden, said, "The Department of State is taking measures to prevent entry into the United States by certain Uganda Officials involved in serious human rights abuses against LGBT individuals."

Sick sexual inclinations were unknown in Nigeria (Africa) until the arrival of HIV/AIDS. Under the pretext of preventing the spread of HIV, those who claimed to care for our health more than we do ourselves invaded our country with condoms so as to encourage illicit sex. Thus, educated Nigerian men, women, boys, and girls talk openly about dating one another which means meeting just to copulate for fun. Whereas our forebearers taught us in our various ethnic languages that, anatomically and physiologically, the functions of the mouth are to talk, eat and drink, the perverted use of the mouth as a sexual organ has been introduced to Nigerians by the global rulers in what is called fellatio or oral sex. So far, we have not heard of the practice of bestiality (zoophilia) in Nigeria (Africa) as in Europe and the U.S.A. In his 2003 book titled : Sinners and Citizens - Bestiality and Homosexuality in Sweden, 1880-1950, Professor Jens Rydström, confirmed that bestiality which earlier had been punished with death sentence in Sweden was decriminalised and became legal from July 1, 1944 (p. 206-207). Earlier, in the 1995 edition of the Swedish National Encyclopaedia, Volume 18, p. 254, bestiality is defined as sexual intercourse between human being and animal. Further explanation says, "Bestiality was in the Middle age Swedish laws a crime punished with death sentence. Even the animal in question was killed. The same decision was contained in year 1734 law. Later, in case laws those rules were mildly applied and after 1778 no death sentence was executed. Through 1864 penal code, death sentence was abolished and instead, two years hard labour, highest, was introduced. It was not until 1944 that bestiality was decriminalised as well as homosexuality." For further information the National Encyclopaedia referred readers to the 1992 unpublished book by one J. Liljequist titled, Crime, Sin and Punishment : The Crime of Bestiality in 17th and 18th Century Sweden. Out of curiosity, I borrowed the book from University of Stockholm. On page 2 of the book, one is informed that between six and seven-hundred zoophilia were publicly executed in Sweden from 1635 and up to 1778 when the last death sentence for bestiality was carried out. On page 19, it was written, "Already in year 1171, Pope Alexander III in a letter to the Archbishop of Uppsala (Sweden) complained about intelligent reports on bestialities, infanticides and incest that often occurred among the Swedes." Further on p.20, Liljequist asserted, "An English penal code from 1290 stipulates, for example, whoso ever has sexual intercourse with a Jew, cattle or a person of the same gender should be buried alive." I found historical cases of bestiality in Europe and the U.S narrated by Liljequist and Rydström very plausible and I care less about the fiction which intellectual mythologists and sorcerers would want to read into it.

In my 1995 edition of Collins English Dictionary, p. 1407, a Semite is defined as a member of the group of Caucasoid peoples who speak a Semitic language including the Jews and Arabs, as well as the ancient Babylonians, Assyrians and Phoenicians. With this definition Kenneth is totally wrong in attributing my statement, that the Jews brought the idea of marriage and the institution of husband and wife to Europe which European men abhorred, as antisemitic fantasy. Not only the Jews are Semites and I have not advocated that any Semite, Jewish or otherwise should be killed for being what they are. If I narrate that in Shakespeare play, the Merchant of Venice, the Jewish money lender, Shylock, was depicted as a wicked person who wanted to cut a pound of flesh from Anthonio for defaulting to pay his debt, that will not qualify me to be labelled for antisemitism. Pointing out through history, that Europeans hate the Jews does not make me a supporter of Jewish haters. I know that discussion on sexual perversities and varieties as they are practised in the U.S. and Europe may be too sensitive for Kenneth to engage in, nevertheless, he has no veto power to close the discussion by branding it antisemitic fantasy which should not be the kind of posting *we should be seeing or sharing. Who are the *we*, himself and Adepoju or the entire forum appropriated as his patriarchate? In May 2015, Kenneth, posted the following on this forum : In Cameroon when we were there in the 1970s, Mabel Smythe was the U.S. Ambassador. To the Cameroonians, this light-skinned African American woman was white! Not mixed, not black. They were astonished, when we said she was black! To an American it was obvious she was black! If it had been in the Caribbean, they would have not only called her a femme de couleur, a woman of colour, but more an octroon, or one of those horrible terms designating how much white or black blood she had. It was one Ogugua Anunoby who queried Kenneth about what he meant by *woman of colour.* His reply to the query on 8 May 2015 reads, "Dear OA : .... But in this case, persons of colour, women of colour, are commonly used respectful terms. You might not like them, but an individual dislike doesn't constitute grounds for defining a term derogatory. We don't invent a vocabulary; it is shared and its values are shared ones. That's how language works." These racist rants were posted and shared and I now wonder how Kenneth would have reacted if someone had described him in a post on this forum as, this pale-skinned Asian American and a man without colour or a colourless man. If Mabel Smythe was an African American, Kenneth should logically be an Asian American (because of his Middle East origin).
S. Kadiri  

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu>
Sent: 12 July 2022 12:53

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

unread,
Jul 19, 2022, 6:42:17 PM7/19/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Oga Salimonu,

I'm having difficulty observing how you have demonstrated the factuality of your claims that Jews introduced marriage into Europe and that Europeans hated Jews for that, that before then male/female relationships were arranged through duels and that European men took  no responsibility for the children born thereby, situations leading to overpopulation in Europe"

Pure fantasy ignoring centuries of European history.

Are you aware that duelling was an upper class pursuit, having little or nothing to do with other classes?

You need to look into the centuries of European social history.

You depict Europeans of the centuries you have in mind as less than animals in their gender relations, since even animals take care of their young and maintain families.

Such suppositions have no anchor in any history.

Thanks

Toyin




Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Jul 21, 2022, 8:46:39 AM7/21/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
​Chief Priest Oluwatoyin,

I have not depicted Europeans as less than animals in their gender relations and, in fact, it is not my fantasy that sexual intercourse between human and animal, known as bestiality (zoophilia), is practised in Europe and the U.S. The anatomical name for the female social organ called vagina is a Latin word which means sheath. In my mother tongue, sheath is called ÃPÓ in which farmers keep their machetes. The sexually primitive and perverse Euro-Americans regard the sexual organ of the male as a sword which they keep and withdraw at will in the female's sheath, the vagina.

Please, can you refer me to any book on Europe's social history where overpopulation of Europe, after bubonic plague decimated 33% of European population in the 14th century, is discussed as non-copulating activities of European men. Alternatively, if you disagree with me that there was overpopulation and wide-spread poverty in Europe from 16th century upwards, can you tell me from where European settlers in North and South America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, came? At a lecture in Oxford in 1870, John Ruskin was said to have proffered the following solution to the raging poverty then in England due to overpopulation, "This is what England must do or perish. She must found colonies as fast as and as far as she is able, formed of the most energic and worthiest of men; seizing any piece of fruitful ground she can set her foot on, and there teaching her colonists that their chief virtue is to be fidelity to their country, and that their first aim is to advance the power of England by land and sea (quoted by Lord Elton, in Imperial Common-wealth, p. 416)." Further on p. 417 of Lord Elton's Imperial Commonwealth, the leader of British White settlers in Rhodesia, the present day Zambia and Zimbabwe, was said to have written a letter from Kimberly in 1877, containing the following, "I contend that, we (the Britons) are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we (the Britons) inhabit, the better it is for the human race. I contend that every acre added to our territory provides for the birth of more of the English race who otherwise would not have been brought into existence." From a public gathering addressed by Cecil Rhodes in 1895, the English journalist, William Thomas Stead, reported him as having said, "I was in the East End of London yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for 'bread,' 'bread,' 'bread,' and on my way home I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism . . . My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e. in order to save the 40, 000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we, colonial statesmen, must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, .... The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread-and-butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists (p.737, Lenin's Selected Work, Volume 1; also, Lenin's Collected Works, p. 257, Volume 22)." It is noteworthy that Cecil Rhode put the population of Great Britain, with a landmass of 229, 523 square kilometres, to 40 million people in 1895. Interestingly, Nigeria, a colony of Britain, has a landmass of 923,773 square kilometres with a population of 35 million people at independence in 1960. Nigeria in size, will contain Great Britain four times and still have extra 1,681 square kilometres left. One does not need to be a Cambridge Philosopher to calculate how often the British men were stocking sword inside the sheath and withdrawing it at will to produce 40 million inhabitants in 1895. Many aspects of past human history are like dungs and no matter how some people may try to deodorize it, the stench will still be felt by those who have their nostrils unclogged.
S. Kadiri

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

unread,
Jul 21, 2022, 12:42:10 PM7/21/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
The qs remains:

Amidst the entire spectrum you have given could you point out one by one how you have demonstrated the validity of the following assertions:

 "your claims that Jews introduced marriage into Europe and that Europeans hated Jews for that, that before then male/female relationships were arranged through duels and that European men took  no responsibility for the children born thereby, situations leading to overpopulation in Europe"

Thanks

Toyin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DU0PR03MB841532776D422FE4929FBCF6AE8E9%40DU0PR03MB8415.eurprd03.prod.outlook.com.

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Jul 21, 2022, 5:53:37 PM7/21/22
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

The history of antisemitism in Europe

I should have responded earlier but I've spent the last three idyllic days at Torö, circa five English miles North of Baba Kadiri's residence ...

Baba Kadiri's major weaknesses in this thread are his innate tendencies towards exaggeration, his penchant for naive over-simplifications and for taking some extreme positions with his overgeneralizations which are plentifully in evidence here. 

For example, he argues that to the best of his knowledge before the white man came, there were no words for prostitute (the world's oldest profession) , no words for concubine, homosexual , Sodom and Gomorrah and allied sexual phenomena that are indeed older than the Bible and much older than the uncreated Quran, to be found in the Yoruba Language, and that the non-existence of such nouns, adjectives, or even euphemisms in the pre-colonial, pre-Islamic and pre-Christian Yoruba Language is solid proof that such actions were never a part of Yoruba human nature or Yoruba culture. 

A sceptic could readily agree with Baba Kadiri’s idealism, that maybe during the Golden Age of the Yoruba, to a very limited and perhaps hidden extent such ( from his point of view) immoral practices were never glorified or viewed as an ideal part of what a Yoruba cultural chauvinist would like to promote or exalt as exemplary pre-Colonial and pre - foreign religious missionary Yoruba Civilisation and the academic studies available on the sexual mores of the pre-missionary / pre-colonial Yoruba Civilisation may or may not  bear Baba Kadiri  out on this.

Like you, my main beef with Baba Kadiri is his tall, absurd and unfounded claim that 

“Historically, the idea of marriage and the institutionalisation of husband and wife were introduced into Europe by the Jews. In fact, a major reason why European men in particular developed deep hatred for the Jews was the establishment of marriage institutions resulting in husband and wife. The English men complained bitterly about their life being marred because of being forced to become husbands by getting to marry to women who became wives.” 

I have battled  with him - in vain over this on the telephone, but he is as stubborn as Soyinka's proverbial goat. I have argued with him that at no time in history did “the Jews” impose their marriage traditions on others  - not even the wisest King Solomon who had so many wives and concubines.

Here’s  an ethically very un -Yoruba  Bertrand Russell sounding off on sex and marriage 

So, one would have thought that it was the Christendom of Paul that started it all ( the moralising  about one man , one woman, one Adam, one Eve, and  the beginning of the doctrine of Original Sin

For our perusal ; 

The history of monogamy in Europe

Christianity : monogamy was recommended for bishops

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Jul 25, 2022, 4:59:58 PM7/25/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
I am acquainted with the history of anti-Jews in Europe but not that of antisemitism, simply because of the fact which I stated earlier, that the Jew is a component in the Semite group of people. Now, welcome home from your idyllic three days at TORÖ.

About me, Menahem Hamelberg wrote, "Baba Kadiri major weaknesses in this thread are his innate tendencies towards exaggeration, his penchant for naive oversimplifications and for taking some extreme positions with his overgeneralizations which are plentifully in evidence here." Of course, I was expecting to be told what constituted exaggeration, naive oversimplifications and overgeneralizations, in my submissions on this thread from the only Menahem Hamelberg on this planet. Regrettably, my expectation was crushed as Menahem Hamelberg could give only one example of my supposed exaggeration, oversimplifications and oversimplifications. He wrote, "For example, he argues that to the best of his knowledge before the white man came, there were no words for prostitute (the world's oldest profession), no words for concubine, homosexual, Sodom and Gomorrah and allied sexual phenomena that are indeed older than the Bible and much more older than the uncreated Quran, to be found in the Yoruba Language, and that the non-existence of such nouns, adjectives, or even euphemisms in the pre-colonial, pre-Islamic and pre-Christian Yoruba Language, is solid proof that such actions were never a part of Yoruba human nature or Yoruba culture." To begin with, from where did Menahem Hamelberg learn that prostitution is a profession and, even, the oldest one? To be professional, one must be engaged in an occupation requiring special training in sciences or liberal arts or trade. So, what special training did a woman or a man who engage in sexual intercourse in exchange for money undergo in order to perform? There are intellectual prostitutes too, especially in Africa where an official can use his/her position to export a thousand Kilogram of diamond in exchange for one hundred packets of cigarette. Very often, African intellectual prostitutes offer their talents or works to their global masters in exchange for pittance. That is just be a diversion in a broader perspective.

As a man without colour once parented us on this forum, "we don't invent a vocabulary, it is shared, and its values are shared ones. That's how language works." Premised on the aforesaid, I am now listing, once more, common sexual perversities in Europe and the U.S. that were unknown in any of Nigerian languages until our subjugation by the Western World. They are, Homosexual/Sodomy, Lesbian/Tribade, Fellatio/Oral sex including Anilingus, Paederasty, Incest, Voyeurism, Necrophilism, Scatology/Coprology, Sadomasochism and Bestiality (Zoophilia). If the aforementioned sexual practices are, according to you, exaggeration, naive oversimplifications and overgeneralizations, the best option open to you is to correct me by stating the exact indigenous words for the named sexual perversities in any of Nigerian (African) language, especially Yoruba, in pre-colonial era.

Despite the fact that Menahem Hamelberg quoted me correctly as follows, "Historically the idea of marriage and institutionalisation of husband and wife were introduced into Europe by the Jews," yet, he distorted my statement by falsefully attributing to me the word I never used when he wrote, "I have argued with him that at no time in history did the Jews impose their marriage traditions on others." Is there no difference between, introduction and imposition or do they really mean the same thing? Your bed-mate on this thread, Oluwatoyin Adepoju, has requested me to validate my assertion that irresponsible sexual intercourse by European men led to mass production of children that were not catered for, leading to overpopulation and the need for conquest of foreign lands to settle their surplus populations. The validity of my assertion rested on the historical fact that 33% of the population of Europe was wiped out during the outbreak of bubonic plague (so-named Black Death) in the 14th century. Two centuries later, Europe's population grew astronomically to the extent that its extra population was planted into North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Only a metaphysician would believe that after Europe was ravaged by bubonic plague in the 14th century, children fell like rain from heaven to flood Europe with overpopulation which had nothing to do with uncontrolled sexual intercourse perpetrated by European males on their females. Let's remember, for instance, that when Cicil Rhodes was agitating, in 1895, for more foreign land to be acquired by Great Britain to settle her poverty-stricken people, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand contained, mostly of, English people. Whereas the population of Great Britain, with a land mass of 229, 523, was said to be 40 million people in 1895 by Cicil Rhodes, 65 years later at independence, Nigeria with a land mass of 923, 773 square kilometres, which would contain Great Britain four times and still have extra 5, 681 square kilometres left, had a population of 35 million inhabitants. In order to curb unwanted pregnancy and childbirths condom was invented, not because European women demanded it, but to satisfy the extreme sexual appetite of European men. In Africa, boys at my own time were not brought up to regard their sexual organ as iron metal that could rust if not used regularly as it is the norm in Europe and the U.S.  

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: 21 July 2022 23:52
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Jul 25, 2022, 7:05:53 PM7/25/22
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

The problem with Baba Kadiri is that he would like to have his cake and eat it too.

Baba Kadiri has to finally make up his mind exactly where he stands on this issue. 

On the one hand he would like us all to believe him when he concedes that “The Jews” did not impose their marriage traditions on hapless European males , but rather they “ introduced”  the idea of marriage - so he alleges, his exact words: “ the idea of marriage and the institutionalisation of husband and wife were introduced into Europe by the Jews.” 

Introduced by “the Jews”, he says, not by the Christians. 

Exactly when this idea was introduced, he does not say, and if this idea supplanted or displaced earlier ideas and practices, such as so called “ pagan” practices he does not tell us. 

In Upper Six  under the tutelage of our English teacher Mr. Bankole Thompson, we studied John Dover Wilson’s Life in Shakespeare's England to get an insight into among other things his Sonnet 116 ,  Banky’s favourite Shakespearean Sonnet. But that sonnet was written 62 years after King Henry V111, the serial monogamist, had already blessed the Hereafter. Which means that the practice of monogamy / serial monogamy was already well established long before that date. 

Fast forward to living history, it should interest you to know that in the wonderful Swedish countryside, Professor Bernard Porter’s beautiful summer residence is located at Anne Boleyn Avenue. We ( Better Half & I) spent a few glorious summer days there with him and his Better Half, two years ago and I swelled with fond memories about this today as I read his latest blog entry.

Anyway it is Europe and not the UK in particular that is of such great concern to our monomaniacal Baba Kadiri who still stubbornly persists, babbling on with his diatribe ( dribble) :  

“Only a metaphysician would believe that after Europe was ravaged by bubonic plague in the 14th century, children fell like rain from heaven to flood Europe with overpopulation which had nothing to do with uncontrolled sexual intercourse perpetrated by European males on their females”

 Perpetrated? Babbling on as if unaware that it’s a general commandment in the Bible, and is addressed to all mankind : Be fruitful and multiply 

It is a commandment that is not to be taken less seriously after e.g. the population decimation caused by e.g The Holocaust. 

It should be interesting to hear what others have to say about the condom. I think that it’s the kind of unexpected ( maybe a rather  indecorous) question that should have been tossed at Sunak & Truss when they debated ( I think that Liz Truss won the debate hands down. And she was more likeable, also showed such civilised self-restraint , forbearance , calmness and poise, being rudely interrupted in mid-sentence ( a cardinal sin in Sweden) time without number by the terribly excited and excitable Rishi irrepressibly, supposedly  playing the role of whizz kid…

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Jul 26, 2022, 9:50:40 AM7/26/22
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Corrections: 

Mr. Bankole Thompson earlier referred to is none other than

Justice Rosolu John Bankole Thompson of Blessed Memory

The debate in question :Liz Truss vs Rishi Sunak 

Cornel West: has defined it : “Justice is what love looks like in public”

 There are debates and there are debates.There’s also the basic decorum that is to be taken as for granted. More on this Sunak.-Truss debate should it surface on a separate thread.  Suffice it to say that there were several agonising occasions when the moderator should have insisted that the presumptuous Sunak hold his peace until Liz Truss had finished saying what she was saying; even if there was no way of knowing whether or not she was in the middle of a periodic sentence. Time after time Sunak  insisted in shooting himself in the leg and maybe that’s why the moderator thought that it was OK to keep on giving him enough rope with which to hang himself in public. The besserwisser is no charmer like Brother Obama, the UK’s Tory Party is not anything like Uncle Sam’s Democrats and with all the tittle-tattle about taxation of course more Republican than mere Thatcher’s apostles, which they both claim to be. I thank God that the very likeable Liz Truss is nothing like the dreadful Mrs Hillary Clinton, and of course the UK is definitely not the United States of America…

I’m getting sick and tired of the auto correct: Why should it be “ dribble” when “drivel” is intended?

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Jul 26, 2022, 1:59:38 PM7/26/22
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

As far as British Foreign Ministers go, one of Liz Truss' predecessor  William Hague was a good example...

This snippet from today’s New York Times, Morning Briefing: 

"Each candidate has tried to adopt the style of Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister whose right-wing policies remain popular among the Conservative voters that Sunak and Truss hope to win over. They are casting themselves as the heir to Thatcher’s free-market, low-tax, deregulatory revolution at home and her robust defense of Western democracy abroad.

But experts on Thatcher say the candidates are cherry-picking the legacy of the woman known as the Iron Lady. They are emphasizing the crowd-pleasing elements while glossing over the less appetizing ones, like tax increases in 1981, during the depths of a recession, at a time when she was determined to curb runaway inflation

Sunak: He kicked off his campaign over the weekend in Grantham, Thatcher’s birthplace, and described his agenda as “common-sense Thatcherism.” His approach echoes Thatcher’s belief in balancing the books and her dislike of borrowing, which she viewed as a burden on future generations.

Sunak served in Boris Johnson’s government and is responsible for some of the economic policies he now proposes to sweep away.

Truss: She is channelling Thatcher in a more stylistic way and has modeled her appearances on the international stage closely on the Iron Lady’s. Truss has copied famous images, including one of Thatcher at the turret of a tank in West Germany.

She has even taken to wearing a silk pussy-bow blouse, a familiar Thatcher look, which could risk self-parody. Truss has rejected the comparison, which she casts as gendered. “

If  that upstart Sunak’s supremacist and near-oppressive /bullying.positions in that first head- to- head debate is all too depressing  let’s take some respite at Oxford Union for a  refreshing, down-to-earth, amicable one of our own Anthony Joshua not in the boxing ring or the debating ring , not a Professor Chicken wings  big grammar, but  a cool calm and collected  Anthony Joshua | Full Q&A at The Oxford Union 

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Jul 27, 2022, 12:12:49 PM7/27/22
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Baba  Kadiri, the Judgmental, 

Let’s be real.

My conscience will not rest unless I squeeze some more concessions from you. 

Really you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You are still preaching against what you see as the “immorality” of  “overpopulation :

 “Only a metaphysician would believe that after Europe was ravaged by bubonic plague in the 14th century, children fell like rain from heaven to flood Europe with overpopulation which had nothing to do with uncontrolled sexual intercourse perpetrated by European males on their females.”

In this context, think again :  don’t you think that “perpetrated” is too strong a word? Imagine , if our fathers had used condoms then it’s possible that none of us would have been born. None of us would have been penetrating  or  “ perpetrating”,,, 

What about Nigeria `, all set to be the third most populous nation on planet earth by 2050

And what do you have to say about India which is more populated than Africa.And  China?

Surely it’s not marriage that’s driving population growth? ( BTW,  in Sierra Leone, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments “  was the sonnets usually reeled off by the old  stiff-upper lip CMS Creole gentleman , at weddings, with liberal sprinklings of erudite phrases in Greek and Latin, and, of course, a good dose of relevant passages  from the King James Version the Bible - 1st Corinthians Chapter 13  in particular and of course, the final warning which Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey has made famous : “What God has joined together -  let no man put asunder” ( There are a good number of mistakes, misunderstandings etc  but for its Yoruba contents alone, Chapter 4 of Abner Cohen’s  Politics of Elite Culture - about Sierra Leone Creoles, should make it a worthwhile read)

By now, Malthus is probably “ old hat”. Seriously, in 21st Century Europe the lamentation is about negative population growth - the reverse of the export of excess populations in Europe, to Africa, to the America’s and to form penal colonies in faraway places like Australia, and other  colonial and unethical matters that you have been complaining about..

Talking about numbers, it’s reported here that Rishi Sunak interrupted Lis Truss 31 times during their 1st head-to-head on TV two days ago . Interrupting someone who is speaking / cutting him/ her off in mid sentence - especially in a debate, is the height of bad manners. Why the moderator did not bring him to order from his very first interruption, remains a mystery. Of course, Liz could have insisted each  time, “ Can I please finish what I’m saying?” - even in his state of self-absorption he would have got the message….

That’s one of the most extraordinary things about the Prophet of Islam, salallahu alaihi wa salaam : he never - at no time whatsoever did he interrupt someone who was speaking  -in fact he would ask - have you finished what you are saying before he himself would start speaking ( I have read Sahih Muslim  through and through)



On Monday, 25 July 2022 at 22:59:58 UTC+2 ogunlakaiye wrote:

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Aug 9, 2022, 12:03:44 PM8/9/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
​We are in an era when truth is meant to be totally rejected and falsehood as well as evil machinations are to be warmly accepted and upheld as societal norms. While the literate, but not educated, professors would want us to believe that Africa was nothing before the continent was colonised and Africa will be nothing without the neo-colonialists, I want to submit that not everything done in the U.S. and Europe (including U.K.) is good, and not everything done in Africa is bad. Africans were something before the colonizers came and we can be something without them. The only problem is that we have to discover why and how we fell down, in order to know how to get up.

Now that your pride parade week in Stockholm is newly over, I will restrain myself from defining what is a man and a woman and the purpose of sexual intercourse between a male and a female. I was delighted to read your admission that after Bubonic plague wiped out 33% of European (including U.K.) population in the 14th Century, Europe became overpopulated within two centuries which warranted the conquest of foreign lands to settle excess European population. Had Menahem Hamelberg stopped at admitting, though indirectly, that there was overpopulation in Europe from 16th century upwards, one should have considered the matter settled. Instead, Menahem Hamelberg stated rudely, "Babbling on as if unaware that it's a general commandment in the Bible, and is addressed to all mankind : Be fruitful and multiply." The same Commander who ordered mankind to be fruitful and multiply also issued the Decalogue containing, among others, "Thou shall not steal, and thou shall not kill." Unless we want to be stupid wilfully, shall we believe that the said commander had wanted mankind to be fruitful and multiply at the expense of one another by killing and stealing one another's territory in disobedience to the commander's own order, as contained, in Exodus 20 : 1-17. Neither Bubonic Plague nor Holocaust should cause mankind to disobey any of the ten commandments in Exodus 20 : 1-17.

Babbling sensibly, I recognise that the Commander in the Bible, Genesis 2 : 20-24, created a man called Adam from whose rib he created a woman called Eve. And God brought her to Adam who retorted, "This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh! She is to be called a woman because she was taken from a man." Thus, it is not a fantasy, but an established fact, that the Commander in the Bible defined what constitutes sexual intercourse when he ordered mankind to be fruitful and multiply because regeneration of mankind requires a male and a female as he created them. And in Genesis 2 : 24 mankind is told, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife : and they shall be one flesh." Please, note that the Commander in the Bible spoke of distinct mankind with two genders in verses 20 to 24 referred to as, man and woman, father and mother, as well as wife. In Mark 10 : 2-9 we are told that the Pharisees asked Jesus, "Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for any reason?" And Jesus answered, "But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife ... and they shall be one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." When the commander in the Bible ordered mankind to be fruitful and multiply, he/she could not have meant that mankind should be inserting and thrusting penis into each other's anus/rectum, mouth (so-called fellatio/oral sex, or anilingus = licking anus with mouth) or performing sexual-intercourse on animals (so called bestiality or zoophilia). Whatever the Bible or Quran says and regardless of savage twist you insist on giving to pure biology the fact remains that procreation (being fruitful and multiply) requires sexual intercourse between opposite genders and even in this age of In-Vitro-Fertility (IVF), ingredients for assisted pregnancy must still be obtained from a male and female.

Earlier in your submission on this thread, you claimed that prostitution is the oldest profession on earth and I have asked you why and how you consider it, at all, as a profession and you never replied. Just as there was no word for prostitute in Yoruba language until the colonialists brought it, so also was there no word for condom because in the most pre-colonial Africa sexual intercourse was never considered as recreation by Africans of both genders as it were in Europe and USA. Let me recall that in Victorian England, your ancestral land, six bestial murders of prostitutes occurred in London East End between August 6 and November 9, 1888, in the so called 'Jack the Ripper's murder.' Among suspects for the murder of the prostitutes was 79-year-old Prime Minister of England at that time, William Gladstone, who was well-known for his unquenchable thirst and unlimited appetite for prostitutes. Later in those mysterious cases of murder of the six prostitutes, successor to the throne of England and grandson of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert Victor, was suspected to be behind the murders. It was an established fact that Prince Albert Victor had been infected with syphilis at the age of 16. However, after the sixth murder on November 9, 1888, Queen Victoria sent Albert on a long voyage abroad and murders by 'Jack the Ripper' ceased. When Prince Albert returned to England after his voyage abroad, he was immediately remanded in a mental hospital where he died in 1892. Up till today, the murder of the six prostitutes as well as who was 'Jack the Ripper' remain unsolved. Also, in Queen Elizabeth II's England, the government of Harold Macmillan was forced to resign in 1964 after sex scandals in which the key actors were the Defence Minister, John Profumo and Lord Astor. While Profumo was a regular customer of the 18-year-old prostitute, Christine Keeler, Lord Astor derived sexual satisfaction from being whipped on bare bottom (otherwise called flagellation) by the 16-year-old prostitute, Mandy Rice-Davies. Almost ten years later in 1973, England's deputy Minister of Defence, Lord Lambton was photographed naked in bed with a 26-year-old high society prostitute, Norma Levy, who also had parallel recreational sex affairs with Lord Jellicoe. Writing about prostitutes and the practice of recreational sex by men in Europe and the U.S. from the past up to the present day will fill volumes of books. Nevertheless, it will suffice to repeat once more what Lord Lugard observed in Africa in 1922 that polygamy then guaranteed that all available women were mated and men never had sex with nursing mothers until after two to three years. 

In the 1990s during the era of HIV/AIDS, you would remember that two medical doctors in Stockholm, Brith Christenson and Per Lundbergh declared Africans in Sweden as the greatest danger to the health of the Swedes because, according to him, African men refused to use condoms while copulating with Swedish women. That declaration first appeared in the Swedish medical journal Nr. 7 of 1993 and was published later by all mainstream newspapers in Sweden. A professor of social anthropology at the University of Lund, in Sweden, Kajsa Ekholm Friedman, who claimed to have done field works in Congo from 1985 upwards, wrote an article in the Swedish Journal of Social Medicine nr. 9-10, 1993, titled, "Central African View on Masculine Sexuality." (p. 483 - 488)
Although Kajsa declared that his research was limited to Congo, she was in no doubt that similar notion about sex in other parts of the continent south of Sahara existed. She wrote that in Central Africa sex is associated only with procreation. Man, there, sees his sperm as life-generating that should only be deposited in the woman. "Sex and deposit of sperm in her is one and the same thing. Potency self lies in the sperm," Kajsa asserted. She continued, "There is very little of homosexuality in Africa, South of Sahara." Why there is scarcity of homosexuals in Africa, Kajsa explained, "is due to the control of the elderly men over the sexuality of the youths at early age. Youths were married off in early age and could not decide themselves." She speculated that homosexuals perhaps existed but they had no chance to live out their homosexuality since they are betrothed at early age by the elderly men. Kajsa added, "But the notion of sex, which firstly is about depositing his sperm in the woman is still a huge barrier against homosexual behaviour and against the use of condom (p 485)." Kajsa narrated that the Congolese are strikingly strict about sex and many of the perversions the Swedes engage in appeared not to exist at all. She wrote, "I discern no paedophiles, no incest case in the sense of sexual abuse against small children, no sexual arousal leading to violence against women, and that cannot be explained away with that they are perhaps well-hidden because all appeared to know everything about all." Kajsa illustrated lack of perversity in the Congo thus, "A man who had spent a long time in France and got a new idea from there wanted to practise oral sex on his wife when he returned home. Rumour spread immediately in the area. The woman did not understand at all his behaviour and she confided in the usual way with neighbours who advised her to take him to the village court. What was hereally doing, was he trying to eat her, or what was it about? There he stood with tears running along the cheeks and tried to explain himself before dumbfounded audience (p. 485)."  Although Kajsa confirmed that extramarital and premarital trysts were condemned and impossible to conceal in Africa as at 1985 in the Congo, she added that African men were starved of sex because of its restriction within marriage and many without money could not marry. Therefore, she concluded that Sweden where sex is recreational provided haven for sexually starved Africans. Noteworthy, is that sexual intercourse between two unmarried was decriminalised in Sweden in 1864 with the exception that the man would be fined 100 riksdaler if he at a paternity suit was sentenced to payment of maintenance allowance.

Elsewhere on this thread, you accused me of being judgemental because of my insistence on complying with biological reality as far as sexual intercourse is concerned. You have tried on many occasions to convince me that those who engage in male to male or female to female sexual practice are created like that and therefore are natural. Of course, I dismissed that as nonsense. It is not possible for a male person to have sexual intercourse with another male person without violating the natural and biological functions of human physiology. In 1993, Dean Harmer claimed he did analysis of the genetics of the male homosexuality and discovered a particular region on the X-chromosome that *seemed* to correlate with being homosexual. If being a homosexual were proven to be as much a function of genes, medical scientists and other researchers asserted, then there should be genes for other vices such as thieves, fraudsters, murderers etc., that could also be identified. In reality, if everything done by mankind is natural because it is in the gene, then there will be nothing as crime. Harmer's finding could not withstand the test of time and it vanished into thin air. On homosexual intercourse, Gordon T. Stewart wrote in 1994, "Male homosexual relationships without anal intercourse or injection of drugs - arguably the majority - are not associated with AIDS; neither is lesbianism. AIDS began and prevailed among .... passive male, and sometimes female, recipients of anal intercourse. This is because the rectal mucosa and its supporting tissues are relatively fragile, designed for excretory and not intrusive activity. When the thin submucosa is eroded and blood vessels are damaged, the tissues and blood stream are opened to invasion by all the organisms of the faecal microflora, by the pathogens of all the sexually transmitted diseases and many others. The risk of trauma and infections increases greatly with the frequency, variety (Oro-anal =anilingus/lingua-vaginal). ....//.... The frequent presence of semen in the rectum and blood of (the homosexual) adds allogenic, 'non-self' reactions which dysregulate immune responses. The faecal microflora interacts with semen to form N-nitroso compounds, some of which are immunosuppressive and carcinogenic (Gordon T. Stewart, Emeritus Professor of Public Health, University of Glassgow, UK, on p.176, AIDS : Virus- or Drug Induced edited by Professor Peter H. Duesberg)." Further on p. 177, Gordon T. Stewart wrote, "Male homosexuals(that are penetrated in the anus) have anti-spermatozoa antibodies in the blood, which cross-react with T-cells and have been linked to the occurrence of azoospermia and testicular atrophy in homosexual men. The same antibodies have been detected in female patients with AIDS and are cross-reactive with T-cells and HIV antibodies. The common factor is obviously anal intercourse, a main risk-factor for female as for male AIDS. These cross-reactions reflect a mixed state of allogenic and auto-immunity in which patients, with or without HIV, reject their own T-cells because they cannot distinguish them from antigens, from spermatozoa ...." Physiologically, the mouth and anus are not meant for sexual intercourse and to say that to those who engage in oral and anal sexual intercourse is not phobia against homosexuals.
S. Kadiri  

 


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: 26 July 2022 14:00

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Aug 13, 2022, 8:23:06 AM8/13/22
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Of course, such was the prudishness and hypocrisy in Victorian society  - we gather that much from the social history and the literature of the Victorian era, that even the legs of tables were covered / hijabed by tablecloths,  to conceal the supposed indecencies of legs carved in wood. 

Whilst at it, in support of his own personal bigotry, anti-imported religions, anti-colonialism and anti-postcolonialism, since he takes a special delight in illustrating his own homegrown Yoruba & universal truths through proverbs, Baba Kadiri could have quoted Blake of the Romantic, pre-Victorian age: “Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion” ( but for the fact - so he tells us, that there were no brothels and no ashawoes renting out their treasures  / plying their trade before the white man,  Missionary Christianity and al-Islam invaded Yoruba land and turned Yoruba culture and society upside-down and corrupted eveything

Typical: 

In his survey of possible suspects in the Jack the Ripper case, since it seems that it is mostly high-profile Victorians that he is interested in nailing, Baba Kadiri does spare Prince Albert Victor, and does not hesitate to rope in “79-year-old Prime Minister of England at that time, William Gladstone” who he tells us “ was well-known for his unquenchable thirst and unlimited appetite for prostitutes.” 

Since he was not there, from where did Baba Kadiri imbibe the calumny that dear old Gladstone who is laid to rest at Westminsiter Abbey, “was well-known for his unquenchable thirst and unlimited appetite for prostitutes”?

Is this not tantamount to bearing false witness against thy neighbour?

Has Baba Kadiri not told us in this forum that it is a Yoruba tradition not to speak ill of the dead, especially when they are not here to defend themselves? 

William Gladstone, Jack The Ripper? :

“More than most parliamentarians of the time he proved an ability to connect with the Victorian working classes. Famous for his spirited debates with Disraeli, there was no friendship between them throughout their long political lives, and for his attempts at fighting the social evil of prostitution, he would invite prostitutes home for tea, in the hope of persuading them to change their ways. This practice caused him much ridicule and the risk of possible scandal throughout his political career. Some writers have suggested that he took this reforming zeal a little further than he should, and was in fact Jack the Ripper. In 1888 at the time of the Whitechapel murders, Gladstone was almost 80 years old, and therefore could not possibly have been mistaken for someone of 28/35 years of age, which is the age many of the eyewitnesses described Jack the Ripper. Gladstone died from cancer at the age of 88 on 19 May 1898 at Hawarden Castle Flint, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.” 

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Aug 14, 2022, 6:14:32 PM8/14/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Ignoring your perfidy of words and coprolalia associated with them, I find the following from you ridiculously amusing : ... since he takes special delight in illustrating his homegrown Yoruba and universal truths through proverbs, Baba Kadiri .... tells us that there were no brothels and no ashawoes renting out their treasures/plying their trade before the white man, Missionary Christianity and al-Islam invaded Yoruba land and turned Yoruba culture and society upside-down and corrupted everything. Your response to my postulation on non-existence of prostitutes in Africa (mark you not only in Yoruba land) falls under what the Latin people call ignoratio elenchi. If there were brothels and prostitutes in Africa (and of course in Yoruba land) before the advent of colonialism, Christianity and Islam, the onus is on you tell us when and where were they situated. It is not my homegrown Yoruba truths that made the first Colonial Governor General of Nigeria, Fredick Daltrey Lugard, to pen down the following in 1922, "The custom, which seems fairly general among the negro tribes, of sulking a child for two or three years, during which a woman lives apart from the husband, tends to decrease population (p.66, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa)." And on p. 67 he wrote that ''polygamy ensures that every female is mated.'' If polygamy as it was practised in Africa ensured that every female was mated, according to Lugard, where did Menahem Hamelberg get his African prostitutes and brothels in pre-colonial Africa? In Yoruba language there was no word for prostitute or brothel before the translation of Bible into Yoruba and I am inclined to believe that the entire black Africa lacked such words in their languages before colonialism. The word Ashewo in Yoruba is a slang implying prostitute but which in direct translation means money changer. Sexual intercourse between a man and woman in pre-colonial Africa was never practised as a recreation or just for masculine pleasure. In hundred years time, the likes of Menahem Hamelberg will tell Africans that condom existed in Africa before Euro-American world began exporting condoms to Africa.

As for William Gladstone, an unbiased reader would observe that I did not assert that Gladstone was Jack the Ripper murderer and that I only stated he was suspected of the murders because he was well-known for his unquenchable thirst and unlimited appetite for prostitutes. In Menahem Hamelberg's self-portrait of Gladstone we are informed that "he(Gladstone) would invite prostitutes home for tea, in the hope of persuading them to change their ways." Gladstone was not a pastor and his house was not a Church, therefore his invitations to prostitutes to come to his house for tea was subjected to many interpretations then and I have not committed any crime against the dead by referring to history as it was recorded. In fact, suspicion against Gladstone fizzled out as the 16-year-old Prince Albert Victor became prime suspect and he was sent on foreign voyage whereby murder by Jack the Ripper stopped. That was just a simple linear algebra and that ends my contribution on this thread.
S. Kadiri

Sent: 13 August 2022 14:15

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Aug 14, 2022, 10:10:29 PM8/14/22
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Those were some very fanciful conjectures Ogunlakaiye dressed up in his latest contribution to this thread, quoting the likes of his Mighty colonial Lord Lugard the less than omniscient and his limited field of observation, in support of some vain idealism, that the world’s oldest profession was not practised in Africa which was a veritable Garden of Eden before the white man came with his Bible to Africa and mucked up everything with his Christianity and his civilisation.

Another non-sequitur and calumny from you: ” the 16-year-old Prince Albert Victor became prime suspect and he was sent on foreign voyage whereby murder by Jack the Ripper stopped.” Really? Your open and shut case of cause and effect? Then you had better examine the other suspects 

In other areas, Baba Ogunlakaiye demands very high standards of proof of the sort that even the exhibitions of ancient Egypt that were featured the first week in August at the British Museum, and the African exhibition - ( including a lot of art treasures from Nigeria that were on display in room 24 of the British Museum  - formerly a part of the museum of mankind which is now being housed in the British Museum) cannot provide.

2.  That in the pre-colonial period there was no what Baba Ogunlakaiye refers to as “recreational sex”  what you would refer to as “perfidy of words and coprolalia associated with them” as described here  - that it was all to beget children, and even more contentious than that

3  - and Africa is still a big continent - yet,  in spite of the evidence suggested by the varieties of sexual diversity among all humankind - including “ Africans”,  you still insist that in pre-colonial Africa homosexuality was non-existent. And you want this kind of “African” exceptionalism to be taken seriously. It reminds me of Ahmedinejad famously announcing that “ In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country.” (USA) - as if he has never been to Qazvin where the joke is that you can’t even bend down to pick up a coin that fell from your pocket, as if he’s not familiar with some of the decadence described by one Peter Lamborn Wilson. And as if it’s all okey-dokey in Iran for the LGBT communities there 

Last night, I listened to Jiddu Krishnamurti deliberating on homosexuality. I wonder on what grounds you would like to categorically dismiss what he has to say.

 Talking about “ condoms” it might interest you to know the Prophet of Islam’s answer to a query about coitus interruptus , in short, coitus interruptus or no coitus interruptus, the child that is destined to be born will be born…

Any news about who has won the Presidential elections in Kenya? 

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

unread,
Aug 15, 2022, 4:53:02 AM8/15/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Cornelius' unique style of writing and scholarship needs to be studied for it's contribution to techniques of expression, of discourse, of intertextuality in the Information Age ushered in by the Internet.

Idiosyncratic, witty, learned, jocoserious-James Joyce's term for the harmony of the jocular and the serious-historically broad ranging in correlating world history and personal history, engaging his fascination with and scope of learning and direct engagement with Judaism, Islam and various  aspects of the African experience in various  times and places.

The Internet and social media have transformed the world of self expression and publishing, of  sharing such creations with the world.

Cornelious' distinctive expressive and exploratory style is an example of this unique enablement in human history.

Thanks

Toyin

Toyin Falola

unread,
Aug 15, 2022, 5:05:17 AM8/15/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

And I suspect he is the same person as Kadiri Ogunlakaiye, so he engages in dialogue with himself, a binary that juxtaposes. Last May, I planned to go to Sweden to knock on his door without notice but….

Like Toyin Adepoju, his knowledge crosses the lines to a genius state, half normal, half eccentric, but all three are the crabs in a rock—in the strength of calmness they flourish.

TF

--

Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at


Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

unread,
Aug 15, 2022, 5:48:05 AM8/15/22
to usaafricadialogue
i am trying to understand why i am at times so described-

''Like Toyin Adepoju, his knowledge crosses the lines to a genius state, half normal, half eccentric''

thanks

toyin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/SN7PR06MB724761338E0AE18BC269C4EFF8689%40SN7PR06MB7247.namprd06.prod.outlook.com.
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages