Wariboko's Essay on Majority-tribe Privilege in Nigeria
Nimi Wariboko
Dear Colleagues:
This is an article I published in Punch Newspapers Nigeria yesterday, Friday, November 4, 2022. It is about majority-tribe privilege in Nigeria.
Wazobia Republic: The majority-tribe privilege in Nigeria
Majority-tribe privilege is the advantage the Hausa-Fulani, Igbo, and Yoruba enjoy as members of the three big ethnic groups in the country. The mighty advantage of belonging to one of the Big Three, the Wa-Zo-Bia groups, is both unconscious and conscious. For those who enjoy being part of the big tribes, the advantage is unseen to (majority of) them, but it is highly visible to the rest of us that belong to the minority tribes. When national public officials and the media list ethnicities in Nigeria and routinely name Hausa-Fulani, Igbo, and Yoruba, without bothering to mention even one minority tribe, you are reminded that Nigeria is wazobia and the country does not regard your existence. Minority-tribe persons grate under their skin when they hear Wazobia, a portfolio word that reminds them of their exclusion, marginalisation, and irrelevance in the general description of what Nigerian citizenship means. With the way the 2023 elections have become a three-tribe affair, you would be forgiven for thinking they are the only ones in the country.
For more, please click the link below:
https://punchng.com/wazobia-republic-the-majority-tribe-privilege-in-nigeria/
Nimi Wariboko
Boston University
Ibrahim Abdullah
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Okey Iheduru
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Is it tribalizing or trailblazing?
One step forward two steps backward
Is it head following tail or could it be the tail
Between his legs following his tribal head?
When Nimi Wariboko the Walter G. Muelder Professor of Social Ethics at Boston tells some uncomfortable truths, some people, especially those who are feeling most guilty, just can’t take it.
Notes For A Speech from Amiri Baraka : S.O.SThere’s the racist White-Black tribalism in which apart from a few uncle tom/house negroes who have never, not even once complained about racism in their new habitat, perhaps in their own eyes seeing themselves in their very elevated new status as the boss white man’s new African mascot - like Man Friday and thereby an extension of White privilege - Big English & bowtie etc, while at the other Black tribalist abroad ( not a tom) conveniently takes a position similar to Malcolm X at that Oxford Union Debate, Dec. 3 1964
Is there tribalism among African-Americans - as distinct from. e.g. johnny-come-lately first and second-generation Nigerian-Americans who only recently arrived in the United States, some of whom I suppose still retain some of the old cultural affinities, loyalties, food habits, traditional animosities/ hostilities, etc towards those they believe to be lower than the vermin they left behind them in s-hole country?
I ask because of this Richard Pryor joke :
"I think that niggers are the best of people who were slaves, and that’s how they got to be niggers ‘cause they stole the cream-of-the-crop from Africa and brought them over here. And God, as they say, works in mysterious ways, so he made everybody a nigger…he brought us all over here — the best — the kings and queens, the princesses, the
Invocation To Mr. Parker
Toyin Falola
Okey:
You and I should bring back the use of “tribe” as a legitimate label.
What you and I must not do is particularize it to an African zone. I see Europeans as tribal people, as in the case of the tribal war in Ukraine.
Popular usage in Africa has accepted “tribe” and “tribalism.”
TF
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Toyin Falola
Great Nimi:
This essay does not go far enough in terms of ethnic privileges. Some fundamentals must be added:
- Nigeria is unique in sharing ethnic dominance spaces. Analysts do not seem to understand it and compare it to dominant ethnicities in India and China, and the Anglos in the Americas. But when they accuse the Fulani of pushing a one ethnic dominance, they begin to understand both the processes and the danger.
- It does not expose its ideology, far more dangerous than what you can see as benefits to individuals.
- Its public face is actually less threatening than its private face. If I were to tell you what the Yoruba say in private about other people, you will go on a 30-day fasting. In this private zone lies the foundation of genocide as we saw in Rwanda.
In relation to point 3, I know you and Okey are Christians, let me leave you with a passage that I will meditate upon tomorrow:
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
Jeremiah 17:9
Stay well
TF
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Ibrahim Abdullah
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Toyin Falola
IB:
You did not read the second sentence. In that second sentence, Flemish and Walloon are tribes.
“Tribe” is used on the streets in Africa, routinely.
PS: I don’t use it, to be clear.
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Okey Iheduru
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Ibrahim Abdullah
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Toyin Falola
Did you read Achebe’s There Was A Country?
This is one of the best books ever written on “tribe” and comparative British-Nigeria government and governance.
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Toyin Falola
IB:
Is it ignorance when the streets use such words as magic, juju, love portion, decree, not my portion, and hundreds of them?
I don’t think so.
But we can say that we will not adopt them in the academy, which is none of their business. Street people don’t use ethnicity, they use tribe.
PS: We must always provoke, not that we have answers!
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Ibrahim Abdullah
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Moses Ochonu
On Nov 5, 2022, at 6:24 PM, Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Toyin Falola
IB:
You should include me in your interview as I am also a gangster!
Is this what they call themselves? NO!
Listen to their current King!
.
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Samuel Zalanga
I have not responded to a posting on this forum for quite a very
long time, but I found it irresistible to share my reflection on this piece
written by Professor Wariboko. I appreciate the fact that notwithstanding his
status, he cares for Nigeria and is also courageous to engage on such a
difficult topic that often people do not know what to engage with. In
one way, I found the concluding paragraph in the reflection to be a summary of
the fundamental and key issue of concern that his article has raised. The part
in the last paragraph that I found deeply thought-provoking is where he noted
that “my effort in this essay to name an ethical problem in Nigeria as
a majority-tribe privilege is not to give a license to minority tribes to claim
the divine status of victimhood or to portray themselves as saints.”
One of the major issues of concern if not the fundamental issue of concern in postcolonial African history and development is the question of the moral and ethical compass that the African people and especially leaders use to guide the structure and process of development broadly conceptualized. We all agree that the Europeans or White people did a terrible thing by not only colonizing Africa but treating Africans as subhuman during the process of colonization and colonial rule. In a lot of ways, the ways and manner Africans criticized Europeans seem to strongly condemn Europe’s lack of moral and ethical maturity or brazen expression of selfishness in how they justified and rationalized the colonization, oppression and “thingification” of Africans by treating them as things or means to an end instead of the Africans as beings having their own ends.
But on numerous occasions when I sit down to reflect on the history of my life, Nigeria, and many African countries, I feel terribly embarrassed within myself. I feel embarrassed because in spite of all the moral high ground that many of us Africans take against European colonialism and injustice, we have not demonstrated having the moral courage and discipline to create a system of governance to run our countries in a manner that will show beyond any doubt to the most skeptical observer that Black Africans have higher moral and ethical compass that guides the ways and manner they conduct their public affairs compare to Europeans who were willing to dehumanize other people in pursuit of filthy lucre. If as Africans, we have made sincere effort to create such a system, even if we have not argued much in books about who we are as Black people and our heritage, no one will deny us the respect we deserve as human beings that have the capacity to pursue our own social imaginary that is oriented to creating a more just, fair, and inclusive society for all. In such a situation, the system we would have created will prove to any skeptical person that we are different and better than Europeans in terms of our moral and ethical choices in public affairs.
Unfortunately, we did not. We by and large willfully continued the legacy of colonialism and in some cases even entrenched it more. Even when we have accurately documented the terrible things committed to dehumanize us by Westerners, we did not have the courage to transcend it by creating a new and better system that will honor our people and anyone with us. Creating a more just, fair, and inclusive society for everyone is not a simple question of knowing the truth and articulating the right thing to do in an elegant manner. Far more than that, it is a question of cultivating inner liberation where we free ourselves of the domesticating and colonizing power of appetitive / crude human desires, and from there proceeding to have the courage to habituate ourselves to do the right thing, knowing fully that institutionalizing and cultivating justice and fairness will cost us something.
But even more than that, I feel embarrassed by the fact that, after condemning the inhumane way Europeans treated us as Africans and in many respects denying our full humanity, many of us ended up packing our things and leaving our homelands to follow our oppressors back to their countries in search of a greener pasture because we realized in uncertain terms that in spite of all the ways and manner they inhumanely treated us, we cannot develop on our own system that can enable us pursue our “utopia” in our own continent, and so we rushed to follow our oppressors. And now even when it comes to retirement, many of us are afraid of returning to the continent. The problems we have which were highlighted by Professor Wariboko are at the deeper level moral and ethical ones because Nigeria is where she is today not because of lack of people with ability, education, or resources. But the main reason for the current social and political imbroglio is the tragedy of the commons as every group pursues its “utopia” and in the process, capitalize on the legacy of colonial rule, where possible, as a platform to pursue its goals – a point that was highlighted long ago by Peter Ekeh in “Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: A Theoretical Statement.”
One way to approach this issue is to engage it from the point of view of the sociology of knowledge. Long ago, Jeremy Bentham worked hard to develop the utilitarian theory of justice which was later extended by John Stuart Mill. Essentially, the theory argues that the goal of justice is to create the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people i.e., the majority. But in such a situation, what about the minority, the issue that is a central concern in Professor Wariboko’s article? The result of such a situation sometimes is a belief in “trickle down” economics, which means when the majority succeed, the benefit will trickle down to the minority. Other than this, even though John Stuart Mill used ideal utilitarianism to smoothen some of the excesses of mainstream utilitarianism, the reality on the ground is that the minority are treated as disposable or expendable. It is in reaction to this situation that John Rawls will develop a theory or approach to justice that will try as much as possible to guarantee the rights of minorities, which unfortunately, the Nigerian public square ignored in spite of all the erudite intellectuals in the country and ministers and imam that claim to speak directly with God in heaven. John Stuart Mill thought that if people have cultivated certain ideals, they will not be focused just in pursuing hedonistic goals / desires and so that will rectify the danger of the majority just trampling upon the poor like a pair of sandals. The interesting thing is that this is happening by virtue of the normal functioning of the institutions which in many cases as Wariboko highlighted, does not require one being deliberately malevolent. Indeed, the whole thing is taken for granted, something similar to what Arendt called the banality of evil.
What is interesting about this from the point of view of sociology of knowledge is that postcolonial Africans, many of whom are exuberantly condemning ideas from the West as Eurocentric, in this case have swallowed utilitarian ideas that grew in the inner sanctum of European civilization. They have adopted, utilized, and perpetuated it because it serves the social and material interests of some people, just like the Europeans they condemn. So, the language of the majority became just normal and mundane. Thus, Africans can be Afrocentric and still exuberantly adopt European ideas as in the case of utilitarianism (consciously or subconsciously) even when some of us are educated. Meanwhile, people like John Rawls warned seriously about the dangers of ways of conducting public affairs that are rooted in utilitarian vision of society, but unfortunately, such ideas have not been very popular in Africa because there are people who feel adopting them will affect the pursuits of their social and material interests, just as in the US. Human oh human!
John Rawls affirms the role of justice in creating a well-ordered society by stressing the nature of the basic structure of society which in the case of Nigeria is represented in terms of majority-minority group relations as it has shaped the public sphere and discourses. Here is a quote from John Rawls that should have served as caution against some of the realities that Professor Wariboko documented:
The justice of the basic structure is, then, of predominant importance. The first problem of justice is to determine the principles to regulate and to adjust the profound and long-lasting effects of social, natural, and historical contingencies, particularly since these contingencies combined with inequalities generate tendencies that, when left to themselves, are sharply at odds with the freedom and equality appropriate for a well-ordered society.
All societies left alone will have a great number of irregularities. Some people are naturally disadvantaged because of their social circumstances, population size, natural disaster, or geographical location. There are also many other contingencies in life that can make otherwise good people suffer and be disadvantaged. Rawls is asserting that if a society or community decides to ignore all these contingencies that put some people at a disadvantage and become socially marginalized, this will create chaos if not anarchy in the long run because such a society cannot be said to be well-ordered. Nigeria as a country is not exempted from such a reality.
Justice is the process through which a society or community decides to regulate and level things off, otherwise, even if the society thinks it is justified in refusing to use justice to regulate such contingencies, the society will suffer the consequences of such action through violence, instability, and crime i.e., a disordered society. Unfortunately, justice is the least discussed issue or discourse in Nigerian political institutions. If the reader sometimes feels like Nigeria is rowdy and always dealing with one form of social disruption or another, maybe Nigeria as a society and various communities have never taken seriously the need to use justice to smoothen the rougher ages of social life owing to various contingencies that render the live of some people hopeless.
I feel greatly disappointed that Nigeria’s postcolonial history has been infused with a lot of hypocrisy, which has led me to the conclusion that humans, whatever their race or ethnicity, depending on their degree of moral and ethical cultivation and the kind of institutional arrangement in place to check the tendency of human excesses, are the same. I cannot at this moment in my life, given postcolonial African history, say that, if Africans had the power that Europeans have had, there is assurance that they will automatically and definitely do something different. All this is not to lessen the gravity of European inhumanity to Africans, but a call for us Africans to be genuinely and sincerely concerned about the humanity of each other.
I have reflected on this for a very long time as a minority person in Nigeria not only in terms of tribe/ ethnicity but also socially marginalized in terms of socioeconomic status as the son of peasants in rural northeastern Nigeria. At one point, I started asking students in most of the courses that I teach that relate to human society, culture, institutions etc., to bring the answers to these two questions on the first day of class. The first question is: what does it mean to be human? The second question is: what do we owe each other for being human? I tell the students that I do not want to know the race, tribe, ethnicity, religion, national origin, social class, gender etc., of the person. I just want to know what it means to be human because without a deep and thorough attempt to reflect on this as the foundation of our discussion and vision, we cannot build a fair, just and inclusive society for all. Amazingly, the students often begin to raise these questions in their final presentations.
Thinking this way has helped me to decenter myself. If as a person, I cultivate in my heart and soul what it means to be human and what I owe my fellow humans, when I meet with anyone from any part of the world, not just another ethnic group in Nigeria, my mind will not start going helter-skelter on how to relate or treat the person because the moral and ethical philosophy I have cultivated is not to use myself as the model human being but a vision of shared humanity. Many of the people in Nigeria envision their group as the center of the universe and others revolve around them. Sometimes when I hear the recordings in Hausa about identity, I tell people that some Nigerians have a worldview that is quasi-medieval because they see others as just people that should revolve around them. Frankly, if I wake up everyday and think this way, I will die very soon because I will find it boring. Even though I belong to a faith tradition and yes, because of my parents, I have ethnic / tribal origin in Nigeria (both minority), I have learned to cultivate the vision of a shared humanity. I cannot feel more entitled just because I come from a particular group. Cultivating such a vision of the world requires not just holding one’s consciousness accountable but interrogating one’s subconscious mind and reasoning.
I do not want to make this too long or it is already too long. But as Professor Wariboko highlighted, there is so much hypocrisy in Nigeria that sometimes it is difficult for me to just reflect on it and feel comfortable. I am from Bauchi State in the sense that that is where my parents raised me, but my father is from a small town in Yobe and I still maintain contact with my extended family relatives there. It is a minority ethnic group known as “Bade” in Jakusko Local Government of Yobe State. But it is important to deconstruct the hypocrisy behind the majority-minority division in Nigeria. To do this, we need to draw some insights from the principle of analysis of variance in statistics, which says there is “Between Group Variance” and there is “Within Group Variance.” In the US for instance, the measure of inequality within the African American community is higher than the measure of inequality within the US as a whole. So, the majority ideology in Nigeria is never about catering for what John Rawls called “the least advantaged people” within the majority group, nor is it about caring for those that Fanon called “The Wretched of the Earth.” It is just a labor market or competitive strategy which is used as a sacred canopy to cover the selfish desires of the elites i.e., patrons and their clients. Among each of the majority ethnic / tribal groups in Nigeria, there are people who are indeed members of the “Wretched of the Earth” or the “least advantaged people.” The ideology that is used to psychologically persuade them to condone such oppression in the name of ethnic / tribal identity is the sentiment of “Group Worth” according to Donald Horowitz in his book titled “Ethnic Groups in Conflict.” Thus, the least advantaged Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo, is persuaded on grounds of group worth, to feel satisfied that even though he or she is terribly poor and struggling, it is okay because a member of his her ethnic/ tribal group is in power.
Apart from the fact that this indicates a high degree of gullibility, it also suggests, that we claim to have a modern nation state, but we have not been successful in creating the appropriate social-psychological and rational attitudes appropriate for such a complex political system where people will see beyond ethnicity / tribalism as primordial identity and sentiment or as an instrumentalized strategy for pursuing social and material interests of a small class of people but covered with a kind of sacred canopy or cultural myths. Similarly, we also know that within each of these majority ethnic groups, when we study them anthropologically or in the present, we realize that there are so many divisions. Anyone who thinks all the Yoruba, Hausa-Fulani, and Igbo are thickly united is mistaken because a careful study will show divisions. When you hear the way some Hausa people are now commenting on Fulani in Hausa language, you easily realize that there was never any thick unity between them. It was just opportunism and sentiment. Just as social and material interests of people can unite them, it can also divide them. Ethnicity / tribalism have become instruments for the pursuit of private social and material interests. Nigerians in one sense will criticize the West for so many things, but on the other hand, in this case they adopted the utilitarian philosophy and use it, failing to develop a vibrant and solid Nigerian moral and ethical philosophy that respects and honors the dignity of all human beings irrespective of their ethnic origin, religion etc. I wonder whether I will see this new dispensation in my lifetime.
Beyond that, the elites among minority ethnic / tribal groups have often decided to serve as clients to the elites of majority ethnic groups whose ideology is predatory and so we now have a coalition of predatory ruling elites. Even within the minority ethnic / tribal groups, the elites in pursuit of their social and material interests ignore those that are “Wretched of the Earth” among them or those that are “the least advantaged” people. I feel overwhelmed by all this because no matter how much we intellectually analyze what is happening with Western racism, bias, etc., unless we can prove that we Africans have not just the knowledge, but the courage to do the right thing in spite of the cost, through habituating ourselves do stand up for creating a more just, fair, and inclusive society for all, Africa will remain the same for as long as this will remains as it is. Do not expect any miracle. Decolonization in this case should first and foremost begin by eradicating internal colonialism within our countries. Furthermore, if there is inequality in any society, including Nigeria and Africa, the knowledge produced in such a society will be shaped by the structure of inequality. This is a social fact. We cannot, however, eradicate internal colonialism, until we experience inner liberation for the takeover of our social imaginary by crude human instinctual and appetitive desires.
I will end with some concluding thoughts from John Rawls which have implications for how people who privileged themselves over others whether within a group or between groups should think twice about human existence from a deep moral and ethical compass. For John Rawls, A Well-Functioning System of Social Justice Must Minimize the Role of Arbitrary Natural Differences and Attributes that are Products of Genetic Lottery or Historical Contingencies. He observed that:
We do not deserve our place in the distribution of native endowments, any more than we deserve our initial starting place in society. That we deserve the superior character that enables us to make the effort to cultivate our abilities is also problematic; for such character depends in good part upon fortunate family and social circumstances in early life for which we can claim no credit. The notion of desert does not apply here.
In the preceding quote, John Rawls is addressing a fundamental argument that is used to oppose any effort to create a more just and fair society by focusing on equal opportunity to everyone. Well in Nigeria, there is even no discussion of equal opportunity at all whether between majority-minority ethnic / tribal groups, or within majority / minority ethnic tribal groups. In any case, equal opportunity simply means giving people the opportunity to compete to become unequal under presumably fair rules. But the rules are not fair. The argument is that some people naturally have better ability and superior qualities that automatically qualify them to deserve privileges that should be denied others, i.e., they are masters of the universe. Nigerians use this same line of reasoning as it is done by some White people.
While in countries like the United States, this kind of argument has been used to justify racial superiority of Whites over other races, the issue is not just a problem of White people in America, as many of us minorities from Africa tend to think sometimes. In Nigeria, there are certain ethnic groups or religious groups and organizations that claim to be just naturally superior to others and therefore should be granted more privileges than other groups in the country. But Rawls is arguing that even the ability to develop good character or the ability to succeed is highly correlated with family background. Unfortunately, no one has ever been granted a survey questionnaire before he or she was born to decide which family and which ethnic / tribal group they want to be born into. Where we were born and who our parents are, are all products of genetic lottery and therefore one has no right to claim inherent superiority.
I conclude with a feeling that is frankly intellectually pessimistic while maintaining exuberant optimism of the heart and soul. We can do more in Nigeria and Africa. We have the capacity to do so if we are willing to submit ourselves to inner liberation where we do not allow how crude human instinctual / appetitive desires to take over our conscience to the point where we double down to develop scholarly arguments that become a sacred canopy for what Saint Augustine called “libido dominandi” i.e., the lust to conquer and dominate others. Thank you very much to Professor Wariboko for the inspiration.
Samuel
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Dr. Oohay
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Harrow, Kenneth
Sent: Saturday, November 5, 2022 7:58:32 PM
Chielozona Eze
One particular scene in Things Fall Apart has become emblematic of the moral condition and compass of the modern African mind. At the scene of Okonkwo’s death, overwhelmed by shame resulting from his people’s weakness, Obierika turned to the white man and said: “That man was one of the greatest men in Umuofia. He had earlier observed that the white man has “put a knife on the things that held us together, and we have fallen apart.” What stands out among other things is Obierika’s insensitivity to the pain his people’s feudal structure inflicted on certain groups that have no access to power and privilege: the efulefus, the Osu (outcasts), women. He was particularly eager to offload his people's moral problems on the District Officer, who supposedly brought about Okonkwo's demise. Obierika set the stage for the postcolonial African moral compass that consists mainly of indicting the West, in the belief that doing so lets Africans off the moral hook, off the responsibility to search for ways to enhance justice and human flourishing in Africa. Thus very few African minds interrogate the moral structure of their own ethnicity or tribe.
Let the rethinking begin. Thanks, Nimi.
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Out on a limb here:
There are features that are typically Nigerian and as regular as the clockwork phenomenon of “ two Jews, three opinions “
Wherever two Nigerians, e.g. a Hausa/Fulani-man from the Muslim North (Allah) and an Igboman from the Holy Trinity Enclave in the East, or an Igbo-man (Chukwu) from Eastern Nigeria and a Yoruba-man (Olorun) from Western Nigeria meet, it could be as friends and compatriots over a cup of coffee in the most cosmopolitan London or New York City, and when the fortunate or unfortunate subject matter happens to be politics or is political that pops up they will most readily agree with fundamentals such as that “Africa Must Unite” agreed - no problem, and they will agree about the scourge of corruption that’s wrecking the country but further into causes and where and how it all began, some heavy if not ominous disagreements are more than likely to erupt and they are liable to generate at least three opinions even on matters of common ground, common knowledge, common interest…
As Kipling the most famous poet of British Imperial History puts it at the very beginning of his The Ballad of East and West
“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth! “
(As far as religious and ethnic differences go, sadly, inevitably, with the new political realities of this world’s superpowers' involvement in the Middle East, the quarrel between Israel and the Pals portends a more volatile armed conflict erupting very soon. Hopefully, with so much identity politics and religious fervour at play, it will not be ditto in Nigeria, at least, as of yet, there is no military solution on the horizon in Nigeria. )
The erudite quibbling now @ ad nauseam, about the correct word that applies in His Majesty’s English, whether it’s a bloody shame, unsound, unjust, inappropriate and illiterate and that anthropologically or sociologically and maybe politically speaking too, “Nigerian ethnicities” should be substituted for the downright, outdated idea of “Nigerian tribes” is beside the point, when no matter what it’s being properly or improperly called, the damage is being done on a daily basis. For example, recently when Professor Agbaje was kidnapped on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the initial reaction from my source of information was that as usual the dastardly act had been perpetrated by the Fulani boys, the criminals, highway robbers, “hoodlums”...
It’s equally disingenuous to opine, “tribalism no dae” or “don’t exaggerate”. If that should be even remotely the case, then why is everybody talking about it ( TRIBALISM) non-stop?
If tribalism no dae, or tribalism is not as bad as it is being made out to be, and “don’t exaggerate” were remotely the case, then the painful reminder has to be, then, what were the pogroms in Northern Nigeria and what was and is the Biafra idea all about?
One answer could be that things are much, much better now and the causes of that tragedy are now dissipated/ vanished into thin air and are only a thing of the past, IPOB, Operation Python Dance 1, 2. 3. 4, and the court’s final verdict on upstart Nnamdi Kanu still pending, notwithstanding…
It was more than ten years after the Biafra tragedy that Prince Nico Mbarga himself a victim of distinctively Igbo ethnicity was busy highlighting the perennial Nigerian dilemma in his 1981 hit: Tribalism
I was in Nigeria from 1981-84, unbiased and unaligned but not an impartial first-hand eye witness, observing what I understood was happening and my testimony is reliable
All that it takes is some goodwill from all sides and then the problem under review would not be insurmountable, although we have been burdened by it for many centuries and it is this ethnic element that has been contributing so viciously to disunity, the “ divide and rule” policy was used by the impies, has been and is continuously being exploited by local politicians and the ethnic card is, of course, being played ( as always) and not only by some no good doers particularly in the runup to the 2023 Nigerian Presidential Elections.
Where is the centre of gravity of the three main contestants to be found if not at where and what they consider to be their ethnic bases? ( In the recently concluded Swedish Elections, it’s reported that the Sweden Democrats, said to be extreme right and anti-immigration, did not bother to campaign in the strongly immigrant neighbourhoods such as Rinkeby and Tensta.
“We are all Africans “ she said to me, and “We are all Nigerians” may be true but it’s unlikely that Brer Tinubu will be wasting any time campaigning in the heartlands/ ethnic strongholds of Oga Obi’s home territories
When the question of Democracy in Africa was being discussed, I was tempted to chip in with the Divine concept of “The Twelve Tribes of Israel'' - each tribe endowed with special propensities and specific workloads, therefore ideally knowing the role of complementary part they have to contribute to the whole harmonious, smooth-running of The nation Israel - so that for instance, when a census was to be conducted each Israelite had to contribute half a shekel - “the rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less.” - the idea being that “The half-shekel, therefore, emphasises the importance of the commandment, “Love your fellow as yourself.”A Jew himself is only a half, incomplete; he becomes whole only when united with another Jew. “
And there begins the difference between Nigeria and the rest of the world, namely that the Twelve Tribes of Isreal claim a common ancestor in Aba Abraham and his wife Sarah whereas although the Christian and Muslim world as Prophet Muhammad salallahu alaihi wa salaam made clear in his farewell sermon - all mankind, “We are all descendants of Adam and Eve”, yet it could be difficult for the 371 tribes of Nigeria to come together and agree about a common ancestor according to recent history/within living memory/ passed down from generation to generation through any of the various oral traditions…
As has already been pointed out, after looking at the centuries of wars in Europe, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the First World War, the Second World War, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, NATO’s proxy war against Russia, the war clouds hanging over Iran, it’s not only Africa, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Somalia, that has tribe & clan problems, other international dimensions, India and Pakistan, North and South Korea, and back over there where so many of the contributors to this series, men and women of colour are surviving ``Exactly how would an article entitled “Majority White Privilege in America” read?
Biko Agozino
Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
Sent: Sunday, November 6, 2022 11:08 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Wariboko's Essay on Majority-tribe Privilege in Nigeria
EXTERNAL EMAIL: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click any links or open any attachments unless you trust the sender and know the content is safe.
Cornelius Hamelberg
It’s OK to quote Walter Rodney like the Bible, Rodney was sadly cut off at such a young age, like Jesus… but as so much water has gone under the bridge in real contemporary time with those sequences of events as residue and effects still playing out, I think that ideology has to be tempered by at least a modicum of sound psychological insight too with human nature still at play - starting with Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks..I have met more than a few people in real life, and at higher levels of temptation who bear this out. Often, all the enemy has to do is to appeal to certain aspects of the intended victim’s ego - even through flattery and petty rewards, and then he’s completely under control.” How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”, indeed. As one of the Naipauls put it ( in “North of South, and he wasn’t mincing his words: “Some people would sell their grandmothers, for money ”
Over there where Don Biko is professing the many sub-divisions of the Oyibo including the White supremacy confederates, what do you have to say about the various subdivisions of White Immigrants now into their nth generation, the Anglos -Americans, the Irish, I-talian, Jewish, African- and Nigerian- Americans, can they be said to constitute “ tribes” in the American wilderness now transformed to modernity , New York, CHicago, , here’s a video I saw the other day of San Francisco in 1906
Here are some old photos of Freetown ( before my time)
Be honest: It should be nice to be enjoying some Majority-tribe Privilege at least somewhere, shouldn’t it.
For the oppressed, sometime in the near future preferably as soon as possible they pray for some payback time.
James Brown: The Payback
Don Biko,
Much respect
Cornelius
Moses Ochonu
Cornelius Hamelberg
Fifty-something years ago, mention the word “tribe “ thinking associatively, for me it was Sierra Leone tribalism that would have popped up: Temnes, Mendes, Limbas, Creoles (some of the tribes in Sierra Leone).
You know the Tom Lehrer song - National Brotherhood Week where it goes
“ Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Moslems,
And everybody hates the Jews. “ -
You meet a Sierra Leonean out of the country or even in the country, and he asks you, what’s your name, you tell him, it’s Cornelius, he asks you which part of Sierra Leone do you come from, you tell him Freetown and he wants to make sure so he asks, are you Creole?
Telling him that in fact what you really are is an Honourable Yoruba man doesn’t help much.
The Creoles love Abner Cohen‘s Politics of Elite Culture, a whole chapter featuring the Sierra Leone and Leo Spitzer’s The Creoles of Sierra Leone, Akintola Wyse’s The Krio of Sierra Leone - An Interpretive History and relish Arthur Porter’s Creoledom
During the Sierra Leone Civil War which I still prefer to label as the RUF War (23 Mar 1991 – 18 Jan 2002) - the RUF only came to town ( Freetown) on 6th January 1999, and up to that point some of the Creoles had been content to go on with their day to day activities without any worries, gossiping, sharing news of atrocities being committed in the provinces, ( “the bush”, “ the jungle”, still calling it the protectorate, the hinterland, and in a superior manner saying to their neighbours, “ let the savages keep on exterminating one another, as long as they don’t bring their barbarism here” ( here= the Capital) - and then as if from nowhere the RUF guerrillas struck Freetown on 6th of January 1999 with the lightning RUF Operation Spare No Living Thing, purportedly aimed at wiping out the Creoles, the airport having been taken over after a bloody battle and nowehere for the Creoles to run, Mr. Raymond Abioseh Johnson issuing instructions to the nightwtachman to barricade the garage and the rest of his dwelling and hiding his wife and daughters unbder the bed or in the kitchen wasn’t going fo offer much reistance, the blood-curdling name of the operation is enough to make you realize that but for the ECOMORG under Nigerian Military command which had to bomb the rebels in Freetown, if their operation had succeeed it would have made the 100 days of the Rwanda Genocide look like a school picnic…
O how I wish that I was not so easily identifiable as a so-called Creole, a very tiny and fragile minority for that matter, and transposing those lyrics to the everlasting Sierra Leone reality Lehrer would have been singing
“O the Mendes hate the Temnes
And the Temnes hate the Mendes
And today’s Limbas also hate the Mendes
And everybody hates the Creoles!”
And my impression is that it’s a bit of that - vengeance is mine saith the Lord and payback that’s being visited on the brave, long-suffering, and dedicated Mayor of Freetown, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, even as you read this.
In early 1970 a Fulani elder here in Sweden told me that at school he had been whipped by a Creole classmate called Cornelius Williams, who had taken off his leather belt and whipped him, and told him Kotoh Muhammadu, “ That is the price you must pay for your civilization “ I asked the Kotoh, and then what did you do, didn’t you break his rotten ess? Kotoh replied , “What could I do?” Shiooor. I begged him to consider that I am not at all like the scoundrel Cornelius Williams and that I hope that that Cornelius does not remind him of me...
In 1970, I find myself in Ghana, I felt at home in Accra - I have a first cousin Paul Tunde Tagoe - my mother’s sister’s son, whose father was Ga - and his large family, other family people in Takoradi, you mention “tribe” and I think “ The Ashanti Confederacy” which Kwame Arhin was forever going on about.
A little earlier when studying US history, you mention tribes, and one would think of various Native American Tribes and e.g. the Northwestern Confederacy, the later Indian reservations…
Fast forward to these days we are being told that “ The White Man” in the United States is having nightmares, that one of the most fearful problems facing the White Man is not only the for him the very unpleasant idea that the Yellow Man - CHINA - is soon to become the World’s Super Economic Power Numero Uno but that he ( The Oyibo) is on a sure path to losing his White Privilege Majority Status in the United States of America and that there’s precious little he can do about it, such as reversing the population trends ( supporting abortion certainly won’t help) nor does stopping immigration or effete attempts such as President Rumpo’s the last time around thumping on about the Wal, the wall. The wall along the US-Mexico border to keep Mexicans out - and that “ Mexico is going to pay for the wall”...
To be continued with, more relevance to the theme "Majority-tribe Privilege in Nigeria"
Michael Afolayan
Cornelius Hamelberg
Friend of the world means an enemy of God?
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
Thanks to Michael Afolayan, through whose lens I’ll embark on my 2nd humble reading of Nimi Wariboko’s appeal as a divine call to arms ( moral arms) speaking truth to power and truth to us, we’re not going to put him in stocks as some people di with Jeremiah, maybe because his words are soothing ( like balm to the soul) and diplomatic, he cannot be accused of being a rabble-rouser, as he has spoken in accordance with the Biblical proverb 15:1 from which we can all learn: “A soft word turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”Cornelius Hamelberg
From Jesus Sermon on the Mount :
“ Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt has lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.”
Michael Afolayan has just intimated his brother Nimi Wariboko,
“Your words are divine! Thanks for doing this. You spoke the truth without hurting anyone; your language of dissent seems polite and quite soothing.”
True. He spoke the truth and shamed the devil, but I’m not sure what Michael Afolayan has in mind and exactly what he means quite literally by telling Nimi Wariboko, “Your words are divine”.
I don't suppose he’s thereby elevating Professor Wariboko to some kind of prophetic status, or on a lesser scale, the Chair of Prophecy at Boston University. If anything, hopefully, what he has in mind is more in line with the saying, “To err is human, to forgive divine “
I guess it’s OK to be morally agitated and morally incensed without breaking anyone’s bones - a stronger word yet - morally outraged about the state of affairs in Nigeria, if not ever since time began, then at least for the past couple of years. Some unhappy citizens - of all ethnicities without exception could even take a dim and more short-sighted view as they keep on reminding us that e.g. the security situation in the country has only gone from bad to worse since Brother Buhari took over after winning a landslide election victory in 2015 and 2019 and that the deterioration in the country's security situation is perhaps understandable after all the two-termer did tell us from the very beginning, “ Don't expect miracles !”
Then the question is when you don’t expect miracles when you entertain no great expectations, what then do you expect, and what are you liable to get?
Sometimes, what you expect is what you get.
Unfortunately, some people get what they least expect and believe that they have to take it stoically.
“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
The way I see it - sometimes, enough is enough - and I was there with the suffering masses and welcomed Brother Buhari’s military take-over on 31/12/1983 to usher in the beginning of the Happy New Year, before, during, and after which I could see inequalities all over the place - everywhere - perhaps, starting with the hierarchies that you find in the military from exalted Brigadier-General down to the lowly Sargeant - such is the reality - all men are created equal but some are more equal than others. I . you, Neem Karoli Baba, we all know this and that’s why I couldn’t and didn't complain then - nor did most Nigerian civil servants at my neck of the creek, because they didn’t get paid for Christmas - although every working day they had gone to work faithfully, and Praise the Lord, when Brothers Muhammadu Buhari & Tunde Idiagbon took over, within days of their declaring a War Against Indiscipline, without exception, everybody had got paid their several months arrears in salary - that was a very desirable type of equalisation and that was the best way to begin a happy New Year.
Friday, November 4, 2022. Naturally, like the people’s poet, Nimi Wariboko the Walter G. Muelder Professor of Social Ethics at Boston University would like to remedy the situation, would like to right each and every wrong. He can cry unto the Lord, like Iyov / Job he can cry and complain all he wants, but as a man of the cloth, he already knows that as things are, the world is not fair - mainstream Christian doctrine, its ethics, theologies, and stories would have us believe that Satan is currently in charge of planet Earth.
No evidence has been presented to show that anyone is guilty of breaking the law or violating the nation’s constitution. In my view, the essay reads like a preamble that should justify the convening of a national sovereign conference to discuss the best way forward to creating the United States of Nigeria in which power devolves to the people, through majority rule…
More seriously, to be continued by addressing the issue of "Majority-tribe Privilege in Nigeria"Cornelius Hamelberg
The fact is that when the heavyweight elephants fight or discuss, the grass can only ask questions.
This is one experimental approach, with unlimited freedom of speech, others to follow.
If it’s discrimination that we’re talking about - and discrimination covers all the sub-categories such as racism, tribalism, anti-semitism not to mention religious bigotry about the kuffar, for example, it should come as no surprise that as in Nigeria, so also in Sierra Leone, certain features remain the same. Some of the discrimination is unconscious and can even go unnoticed, indefinitely. Take for example the Prince of Wales School Song - and one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Prince of Wales School that I attended in Sierra Leone, is that it was the only secondary school in the country that did not have religion on its syllabus. People of all faiths and backgrounds attended that school but religion was not offered or taught as a school subject - and yet there are these verses in the school song: ( 5 Verses):
Verse 2
“T'is not alone in science lore her manly sons excel;
The cricket and the athletic grounds their tale of triumph tell.
The Church, the State, the Camp and Bar, with varied voice attest,
That whereso'er bright honour calls, her sons are with the best.”
As for the last line in this verse, it’s pretty grim and it deserves a wince:
Verse 3 👍
“ As on her walls we read the names renowned in former days,
With beating hearts we vow to match their daring and their praise;
For who would care through time to drift with dull and drowsy face,
Unworthy of his faith and name, his father and his race.”
These are some of the other facts: For better or for worse in the consciousness of the Nigerian polity ( that is people all over the Federation) the Fulani are represented by President Buhari of good name, as well as all the fallout about Fulani Herdsmen, etc, etc. but nobody can claim ditto that e.g. the Igbo represent Boko Haram…
If this is a national consciousness-raising, a moral crusade that in good conscience, good citizen Nimi Waroboko is embarking on one can at the outset observe that miraculously, and this cannot be said to reek of hypocrisy - like the Pharisees, even given his religious background, in all his exhortations and heartfelt prevarications in this piece, Holy Man Nimi Wariboko does not quote the Bible, not even once.
This has its own virtues since there are probably God-forsaken atheists among us who would not much relish or take kindly to any kind of futile argumentum ad verecundiam, as they see it or any specious arguments based on an appeal to any authority in whom they do not believe. I myself fell asleep yesterday in the middle of reading Philp Larkin’s Aubade Church Going, not that it was dull, boring or painful ( because amusing - some of it) but because, as sometimes is the case, it was a matter of “ the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak “ and the fact is - as my Better Half can testify, I sometimes fall asleep reading the Bible - and of course, I only read or study the Quran when in a state of absolute wudu.
In my opinion, of absolute relevance should be, what do the Holy Books that we believe in say about the topic at hand, “ Majority-tribe Privilege in Nigeria”?
The Hausa-Fulani-Igbo-Yoruba - and for good measure during President Goodluck Jonathan’s tenure we should not fail to include the oil-rich Ijaws too, who we are to suppose, during the good( or bad) old days of Goodluck Jonathan were not exempt from manifesting puffed-up feelings of greatness, excellence, superiority, inclusion, exaltation chest-beating with the notion” WE are in POWER!” WE !!!!!!!!
Should the Hausa– Fulani- Yoruba-Igbo abandon what they see as their blessings, and divest themselves of their sense of privilege and entitlement? Let’s be reasonable. Do you want to request that they stop beating their chests and stop telling their fellow citizens ( and some of their enemies) that by God’s Grace, “WE are in POWER”? ( Last night I heard on CNN that some Republicans are saying that if they wrest control of both houses, not a penny more is going to Ukraine!)
When were the privileged and entitled on this earth ever been known to do such a thing as voluntarily abandoned property, titles, privilege their sense of entitlement
I don’t remember Bishop David Oyedepo, and the others, that I also listen to and learn from, Pastor Adeboye, Pastor Kumuyi, and Pastor Gbile Akanni, to name just four, I don’t recall any of them preaching for or against “ Majority-tribe Privilege in Nigeria” and if I had the opportunity I’d like to ask them, that kind of feeling and the behaviour that goes with it, is it a crime? Is it a sin? Does it violate the Nigerian constitution or citizens' rights to feelings of well-being and Christian fellowship or does it only to a greater or lesser extent harm what could be more harmonious social relations of the time that we would all enjoy if we all felt that we the people, all of us are in power and thereby empowered? I suppose that if I asked the aforementioned pastors, they would probably give the same answer as my own personal, trustworthy pastor and friend, Professor Samuel Oloruntoba who I’m sure would say, “ You can only be EMPOWERED by THE HOLY SPIRIT
Always of relevance to the issue of majority tribes and the distribution of power - in the context of our one-man-one -vote -winner-takes-all democracies in Africa are Oliver Goldsmith's opening lines in The Vicar of Wakefield :
"I was ever of the opinion, that the honest man who married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population. "
In Matthew 5:43-48 and Luke 6:27-36 Jesus preaches extensively on the theme “Love your enemies”. In the interests of the survival of humanity, it’s the sort of message that Senor António Guterres should be conveying to Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi, to India and Pakistan, Israel and the Palestinians, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Patriarch Kirill :
“ Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you… bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
Therefore, let’s take it for granted that it is only out of the fullness of his heart and generosity of spirit that Mobolaji Aluko prays, “ May your tribe increase!”
Finally, the population forecast for Nigeria 2025-2050
There are practical steps that could be taken to level out the perceived imbalance - and this was forcibly brought to my attention just the other day when I read The Book of Revelation Chapter 7 about the 144,000 Sealed that it would be exactly 12, 000 souls from each of the 12 Tribes of Israel!
Ban gula ban gula :The aggrieved minority tribes, marginalized ethnicities, could step up their rate of production and self-perpetuation by transforming themselves into awesome baby-making and family-raising machines making themselves as numerous as the stars, the grains of sand on the beaches - and at the same please producing enough food through subsistence farming to call themselves truly independent…
Cornelius Hamelberg
As far as human nature is concerned, it’s natural that almost nobody wants to be the tail, not even in the name of humility, nor does anyone, anybody, any tribe, any ethnicity, any nation, or any country want to be the tail. As our dear Pius Adesanmi put it on the nation’s collective behalf, " Naija No Dey Carry Last “ or as we say in Sierra Leone, “ kick bokit” and even Prince Nico Mbarga wishes that if you behave beautifully, “you be alpha and omega” and hence some people pray the prayer: May We Be The Head And Not The Tail
Biko Agozino
ogunlakaiye
Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Sent: Tuesday, November 8, 2022 4:24 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Wariboko's Essay on Majority-tribe Privilege in Nigeria
Cornelius Hamelberg
Baba Kadiri,
This is a warning.
That’s a subversive submission
From you and probably liable to litigation
State prosecution
If unlucky, charges for sedition
To be pressed by your good friend:
The Honourable Abubakar Malami
The one you love so well
Just because you live in Sweden, believe in freedom of speech and are used to shooting your mouth about almost anything that takes your fancy, do you think that you can sit over here out of harm’s way and say whatever you like about Nigeria?
Be warned.
I would press charges against you too if I were the Attorney-General of Nigeria and a KC to boot…
Because of that your Yoruba majority tribe's sense of privilege and entitlement, with that your vainglorious demand that even “God should speak to you in Yoruba if He wants you to listen to him” etc, should you be brave or cowardly enough to refuse to turn up to face the charges, and I was blessed to be the Honourable Prosecutor-General, you’d only have yourself to blame for the harsh punishment that I’d recommend to be meted out to you, for contempt of court.
And have no doubt about it, when you would eventually be dragged to court by the court bailiffs, to face the music, the trial will be conducted in His Majesty's English.
I suppose you could request a translator and interpreter in Yoruba if you so prefer. In which case I suppose that A-G Abubakar Malami would also need to have a translator and interpreter in order to understand your very beautifully polished & eloquent Yoruba, your vårdad språk. Or perhaps you would prefer to address him in slang, like Say Tokio kid? That would only be making things more difficult for yourself, after which ( only yourself to blame) you should be expecting or suspecting - since you are a suspicious type, that nothing short of a very long sentence should be coming your way - or you could be appealing directly to His Majesty Charles III or Ojogbon Falola I to pay your bail or to raise cash to pay the billion naira ransom money because I’m sure that after you are granted bail you will almost most certainly be kidnapped on your way to the hotel ( as I heard on Swedish Radio way back in the 80s of the last century, the Swedish voice exclaimed “ Nigeria! first I was robbed by the Police and then by the military, on my way from the airport to my hotel “)
And whilst at it I think that they should proceed posthaste to file charges against the authors of the various public letters addressed to President Muhammadu Buhari for contents that should be deemed unpatriotic and insulting, all aimed at holding the president up to ridicule and putting the country to shame. The authors of those treasonous epistles can thank their lucky stars that they are living in a democracy like Nigeria, because there are countries which they know so well, where they would have been facing the death penalty and executed long ago, without trial.
Just in case your guilty conscience wants a public explanation of why you merit prosecution let me explain. Let's start with the term Wazobia . You are familiar with the full import of that term, because in Sweden for example Swedish is the official language, isn't it? And in the United States, it’s English and Spanish, isn’t it? But in both of these countries, we have minority languages which are recognised as minority languages. In Sweden, we have National Minority Languages and yet the whole country is governed through the agency of the Swedish language which you speak so well. Anything wrong with that? You notice that Walloon is not represented - my Better half is of Walloon ancestry - her father wrote a 500-page book about the Walloons in Sweden .// Karl Kilbom: The Walloons - but I wonder who else speaks Walloon outside of Belgium? We can’t say that about English can we?
You want to advocate universal equal language rights? In time, with more massive immigration, I suppose you should want to be advocating Yoruba as a minority language in Sweden. What about Arabic Farsi, Turkish, Kurdish?
Please go ahead and submit your justification - for Nigeria’s minority language rights as legal tender and a more convenient vehicle for the administration of the country in those areas where the language is understood.
I’m sure of this: The Brits at the Old Colonial Office knew their mission well and learned a lot from how the Roman Empire was administered. Domestically speaking Modern Nigeria, a former colony of the British Empire is in herself an Empire - internally - in terms of diversity and vastness, all under a single Caesar (Mr President) and as a colonial inheritance with many of those internal structures still in place, such as the language of administration, the 371 ethnicities under one flag geared to be administered smoothly.
Baba Kadiri, you ought not to be afraid of your trial - it will be no Pontus Pilate, and you are no Jesus either, but as Nigerian citizens, you should expect a fair trial.
In Acts 16:37-38 and Acts 22:25-28 we learn that Paul / St.Paul) was a citizen of Rome and that this citizenship conferred on him certain privileges, just as Swedish citizenship confers certain privileges so too Nigerian citizenship confers certain rights and privileges: my humble plea is that it should still be OK to have English as the official language and that it should be made accessible to everybody in Nigeria, as a, as a birthright. Do you agree?
Dear Baba Kadiri,
Something light for your listening delight: Putumayo presents Latin Jazz
And some nice Apala
Salimonu Kadiri
Sent: 09 November 2022 15:44
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Wariboko's Essay on Majority-tribe Privilege in Nigeria
Baba Kadiri,
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Baba Kadiri,
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
'Cause none of them can stop the time “
( Robert Nesta Marley: Redemption Song
In which language do the people in Nigeria’s senate conduct their business?
Do directives from the Federal and the Local Governments to people get translated into all the local languages? Do radio stations broadcast in all languages? Shouldn’t all languages be supported, and developed, or should some languages be banned?
The language qualification to be an MP in Sierra Leone is not so demanding: To qualify as a member of Parliament in Sierra Leone he (or she) must be “ able to speak and to read the English Language with a degree of proficiency sufficient to enable him to take an active part in the proceedings of Parliament”.
There are no provisions about indigenous languages, all that’s required is that you speak-y and read-y a little big English. A few PhDs in His Majesty's Mother Tongue should go a long way if you want to go to Heaven, especially if it’s each one teach one instead of the big ass wanting to be crowned king of the castle because he’s got a string of degrees, longer than his monkey's tail…
So, you understand that Sierra Leone was thoroughly colonised.
I crave your indulgence.
Menahem advises that we count our blessings, cheer up, and stop being grumpy, be more concerned about the state of our souls, “For what doth it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?”
At least, we are not the only ones complaining about Gloom and Despondency
You got that right: Gloom & Despondency,
not to mention doomsday prophets and the approaching DOOM!
Last night. I attended a Zoom study circle that deliberated on the Book of Revelation with a focus on Chapters 10 and 11 - enough to make all the hype about climate change melt into insignificance compared to the survival of mankind up to a much later date - after The Rapture, The Great Tribulation, the appearance of arrogant people's role model, the Antichrist who is known in Islam as Dajjal, and in the so-called “ Old Testament” as the "Abomination of Desolation", the one who will install himself in the Third Temple in Jerusalem and demand to be worshipped! According to last night's exegesis, this is where “the Jews” will revolt !!!
Earlier in the day I had been at Willys and wanted to buy some nicely packaged flatfish but wasn’t sure exactly what species it belonged to because consuming non-kosher fish is absolutely out of the question. So I checked on my cellphone and got this answer which I feel is of relevance to all of us since there are health issues raised because some fish are toxic: Tunas and Flatfish. I sent the link to a Jewish friend living further down South and got this terse reply:
“Thanks for the link, but I don’t follow Messianic (Jesus-believing Jewish sources) on any point of Jewish law. Scripture Truth Ministries isn’t a Jewish organisation."
Me : Thanks. I didn't realise it was a messianic site; I was at Willys checking out whether a certain fish was Kosher or not and this site popped up. I can now tuck in to the next yummy tuna sandwich
In our case, presently it’s nothing so serious, it’s merely about our little language problems and what colonialism has done to us.
Consider:
About what glories would the likes of Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka who has made Nigeria proud be singing today to the outside world and to most of his countrymen & women in Nigeria, not to mention those at Oxford, those scattered throughout the African Diaspora, North, South, East, and West, without the blessings of the glorious English Language? Where would we be? Where would Nigeria be? In fact, would there be or have been a Nigeria without Lord Lugard? God forbid, not that I’m remotely suggesting that Lord Lugard is Lord!
And what about the Nigerian Media? The Nigerian Newspapers' universal readership. Wouldn’t the term Cosmopolitanism lose its meaning if we were all trapped in the Tower of Babylon or locked up in the Tower of Babel and whatever stooge or stooges sitting at Aso Rock couldn’t understand the babble coming from dear President Chidi Anthony Opara, the President of the Revolutionary People’s Poets' Council ( the RPPC) headquartered in their special corner at the Owerri Motor Park, in Abia State, Nigeria?
Pause for a moment, and just imagine, the word for come in Hebrew is “ Bo - hence Parashat Bo
And the word for come in Kalabari is also “ Bo” -
It may interest you to know that Bo is also the capital of the “Mende Line” in Sierra Leone, which is pronounced “Shierra Leone “ in Themne, so that even at international events Dr Ernest Bai Koroma the then President used to pronounce the name of our country as “Shierra Leone”. The question here is, should the name of the country be pronounced with the same accent, intonation and inflection as the last colonial Governor-General, Sir Maurice Doorman?
As for the new man, just like Julius Caesar the new Mr President of Sierra Leone, former Brigadier Julius Maada Bio, he knows how to pronounce the name of the country of which he is president according to RP, although I suspect ( I’m also a suspicious kind of fellow) and that’s why I suspect that the rascal would like to move the capital of the country to BO - to first of all try to decongest his capital Freetown - a good move - and secondly to provide himself with the necessary legal cover to helter-skelter embark on massive infrastructure development of Bo, the heartland of his ethnic base, even if he wants to claim that he’s from Bonthe Sherbro Island. I wouldn’t put it past Julius Maada Bio to build a massive Roman Catholic Cathedral in BO, of the type that the Ivory Coast’s Félix Houphouët-Boigny erected in his home town, the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, at a cost of US$300 million. - as his legacy, that which survives him. With Ernest Koroma it was roads - he ( or was it China?) built roads. Maada Bio could store up rewards for himself in Heaven by building a massive cathedral down here on earth, in BO, where a preeminent secondary school Christ The King’s College is located - another great school where they teach a lot of Buckingham Palace English, to the extent that you find the most voluble and the most argumentative people in Sierra Leone are products of that school, such as my late dear - really dear friend Arthur Abraham - when I knew him best and was closest to him, he was a total Nkrumahist - in fact, dressed in the same regalia - the Safari short sleeves Mao tunic, the cult of personality - “African Personality” and the exiled Kwame Nkrumah used to send Arthur’s Nkrumah Club cratesful of Chinese beer. This only goes to show that a sound colonial English education from CKC, BO doesn’t necessarily produce a bad fellow.
Forgive me if you think that I “digress” a little or a lot of this kind of clutter…
In the case of the Kalabari “Bo ”with which I am familiar - body language, means come - sometimes aided by a gesture of the hand, fingers upwards or downwards depending on the difference in status or authority between the beckoner and the one being addressed, and also, of course, their gender relations ( smile). Power relations. My only point here is that we ought not to limit language, (including His majesty’s English, to only the printed or the written word, since there’s also the social and cultural context etc, which means that our erudite lexicographers could explore the possibilities offered by “ Nigerian English” to solve/ diminish/ bridge the gap created by the type of English spoken and understood by Man Friday, the polite lingo in the House of Commons, as sometimes distinct from the lingo they enjoy in the House of Lords (one stairs up) and they seem to be given more ample time to blow their Lordly minds ( I’m thinking of Lordly types such as the late V. S. Naipaul - and as far as the commonplace stiff upper lips go I’ve only read “Life in the Jungle “ the autobiography of Michael Heseltine and that was more than twenty years ago.
Just now the King James Version of the New Testament is more challenging - more than 56 years ago when the King James Version, published in 1611 was studied as but a feature of the state of the English language at the period - and how many years interval was it before Orwell’s Politics and the English Language was published in 1946 - not to mention how enormously the state of the language has changed since then, even if, say in the 1960s in most educated Sierra Leone, the journalese was still lagging behind with sweet love talk peppered with proverbs from the King James version &some Shir Hashirim
Otherwise, the state of the spoken and written language is still stagnant and at ease with churning up the already quaint Victorian expressions and of course, contemporarily at ease with the Victorian morality that went with it, even over there in the precious colonial sunshine ( think vitamin d) known as tropical West Africa, the Mosquito coast, and when the jihadi mosquitoes got really crazy, it became The White Man’s Grave….
Thanks for your sabr/patience, assuming that you waded through all that. Now to the nitty-gritty.
Should you persist, then in my view most of your advocacy in this forum so far ( apart from your hostile stance against LGBTQ issues) deserves a national or international award for “Civil Courage”, especially in those areas where you are swimming upriver, against the counter-revolutionary mainstream currents
And although up to this point you have not invoked the option of “ Civil disobedience” - of the type that would bring down the wrath of Operation Python Dance upon pour souls, on the surface at least your advocacy seems to be in violation of some parts of Sections 50-52 of the Criminal Code part of Nigeria’s sedition law with regard to intention, either that or some of the clauses are badly in need of adjustment since it seems to outlaw/ criminalise even reasonable suggestions pleading for peaceful change, is evil itself, not to mention someone not recommending the death penalty for ransom kidnapping and other forms of pernicious corruption.
The law of which you are in default states that seditious intention includes
iii) to persuade the citizens or other inhabitants of Nigeria to attempt to procure by lawful means the alteration of any matter in Nigeria as by law established
Sly & The Family Stone: In Time
I haven't read this over.
Wishing you a peaceful weekend
Cornelius
Cornelius Hamelberg
Baba Kadiri,
What the world needs right now is Chesed… like Abraham …
Diagnosing the problem more accurately, without exaggeration, as you rightly point out, it’s the lack of citizen education - in all languages - as to everyone’s rights and civic responsibilities - and equality before the law.
Even there, as we all know, what’s also lacking is efficient and effective law-enforcement and the mechanism whereby the criminals, wayward politician and other fraudsters can be roped in and held accountable, brought to book, be forced to vomit the stolen money, and then be awarded long prison sentences for wilful mismanagement of public funds, the Billions of Naira REVENUE ALLOCATIONS
Each statuary example should in effect serve as a deterrent to would -be fraudsters, bank-robbers, ransom-kidnappers, as the lesson “Crime Does Not Pay” is set up as posters, in public places and in government offices , on billboards along the major highways, if necessary outside the mega-churches..
The crux of the problem is clientelism , the long chain - not of command but of corruption, the long chain of corruption, longer than the donkey’s tail, but more invidious, longer than the thieving monkey’s tail and infinitely more corrupt, and the many links in that chain, from the commander-in-thief down to the lowliest of the dependants to whom
a few crumbs of the billions of Naira Revenue Allocations eventually trickle down to…
The crux of the matter, in what is now the culture of corruption is that - not only in Nigeria, but everywhere in West, Central, East , and Southern Africa, when the president is from Tribe B, then everybody in Tribe B or Ethnicity B feels, “ We the privileged people of Tribe B are now in power!”
This is even true of the United States where according to Richard Pryor, all Black people belong to the same tribe, one tribe : The African-American Nation ! So when Brother Obama - the chief “House Negro” so to speak was the one calling the shots in the Oval Office and a poor Brother in Kamala Harris’ California - the three strikes state, got arrested for lifting a loaf of bread, hoping for immunity, his tendency would be to intimidate the cop with the question, “ Hey man, do you know who is sitting in the White House?”
Ditto the Fulani Herdsman has enjoyed an increased sense of wellbeing, of entitlement with impunity since Brother Buhari ascended to Aso Rock.
Meanwhile , Baba Kadiri, what’s your take on Peyman Kia and Payam Kia, accused of spying for Russia ?