Hallelujah! The UK elections have been done
Cornelius Hamelberg
The header about the USA-Africa Dialogue Series reads:
“This series presents debates, data, news, and information about Africa, the African Diaspora, and global events as they relate to Africa. It is a Pan-African listserve that reaches the entire world, and focuses on issues of importance to Africa and its diaspora. Welcome”
Yet, it’s an inexplicable surprise, surprise, unless of course one or more of the wisest pundits, political scientists, futurologists, stargazers of strategists amongst us want to explain for the lost sheep, bards, Ogas, landlords, men of deeds, why there has been a Zero number of words about this latest UK Elections in which the UK electorate has had to make an epic decision that ( all things being connected) should affect all of us, including those of us in Nigeria, one of the UK’s biggest former colonies, a colony which has grown
exponentially as a market from a nation with a population of 33 million souls to feed when she became independent on the 1st of October 1960 and following the progressive doctrine of “be fruitful and multiply” has now indeed developed as one of the biggest markets, not only in Africa, with a population nearing 200 million mortals and the mothers still delivering their endless series of endless births
Is the latest UK Elections certainly not an event that relates to Africa and an” issue of importance to Africa and its diaspora”?
Are the former British colonies not members of The Commonwealth and indeed, when some of our African heads of state catch the flu or are in need of urgent medical attention do they not fly or flee to London for that purpose? In fact, is English not the official language of Africa’s Commonwealth nations and are we not going to forge some very important trade, education, cultural relations with post-Brexit Britain?
A possible explanation is a sometimes-distant attitude of “Let them sort out things out by themselves, over there, Ojare!”
Wherever we may be, we do have our various perspectives and understandings. In all fairness, in the runup to that Brexit referendum and shortly after the murder of Jo Cox, it was a matter of great concern for some immigrants, since immigration was one of the major issues, and we did have Barrister Emetulu a British-Nigerian resident/Nigerian-Brit domiciled in the UK, stoutly and vociferously advocating that they stay in the EU (shmile)
Last night The UK’s victorious and jubilant Prime Minister described his nation as, “The greatest democracy in the world!” - in my opinion, with enough free air to be an example and an inspiration to some of our fledgeling democracies groping or grovelling about basic rights and freedoms, especially the rights of peaceful and peaceable dissent even dissension and even if some of us, perhaps especially those voluntarily exiled in the US Diaspora from where we will be endless discussing the next US Presidential elections in this series, some of us more attracted to breathing “the air around Tom Paine” than the air around Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.
There are many matters arising from this Brexit election and one of the most significant ( thinking of ethnicity here) is the spectacular success of the SNP, the Scottish National Party and the implications therefore both in the United Kingdom and may be as something for the multi-ethnic democracies to consider about possibilities for the smallies….
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
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