COMMUNITY CONCEPTS OF ATROCITY AND ATROCITY-PREVENTION

[Edward Kissi]

As many of you know, I have been involved in research and teaching on the Holocaust, Genocide, Human Rights, Genocide-prevention, Atrocity-prevention, and the prevention of identity-based violence for many years. Some may even be aware of my article in African Security Review in which I argue for a concept of “moral pan-Africanism”  as a framework for sustainable regional peace and security in Africa.

 

In recent years, I have worked with many international organizations, museums, and academic institutions to find practical community-based solutions to genocide and identity-based violence. Sadly, these atrocities continue in all human societies with maddening regularity. Some would argue that their recurrence, despite the large body of scholarship and teaching on their causes, prevention, and impact, expose the limitations of genocide-prevention research and activism, or the incorrigible nature of humans as perpetrators.

 

As someone who grew up in a village in Ghana organized on community cultural and moral logics embedded in proverbs, folklores, and axioms, I am aware of values-laden proverbs that served my community well. Some of these community proverbs highlighted the “intersectionality” of human life, the moral necessity to defend the dignity of every human being, and the harm to self and society inherent in hate-speech. On intersectionality of human destinies, my Kwawu people say that “obi afumkwan nkye na asi obi de mu”. This could be translated into English as: it does not take long for one person’s path to his farm to intersect with another’s. This community view that our lives are interconnected and what has been done to others can also be done to us made people in my local community admonish anyone who incited violence against others. On harm to oneself and community when people maltreat their fellow human beings, the Kwawu have a warning: wo twa wo tekrema we a na wonwee nam biara. Crudely translated: when you cut your tongue and eat it, you have not eaten any meat. Or, elegantly, if you roast your tongue for dinner you have not eaten any meaningful meal. You have harmed yourself and your community instead.

 

Certainly, these community maxims never banished conflict in Kwawu society but they warned against it. They provided theoretical frameworks for the prevention of atrocities.

 

I have been thinking of compiling and comparing such community-driven responses to atrocities, genocide and identity-based violence in Africa. Therefore, I am looking for many African community proverbs, maxims, stories, etc, that “discouraged” violence against groups based on their identity (ethnicity, beliefs, appearance, etc), or advocated inter-group harmony as the foundation of community security. Or proverbs and maxims that “encouraged” such violence and how that is explained.

 

My aim here is to look deeper into African societies and discover valuable traditions, values, mores, etc, that have been overlooked by genocide and identity-based violence researchers.  I want to examine the commonalities in these community values and think about how communities can be viable partners in genocide-prevention and the prevention of identity-based violence in Africa. I want to use these as conceptual bedrocks for teaching a course on “applied genocide-prevention” in a certificate program for genocide-prevention practitioners.

 

I need your help! You can share your community anti-atrocity proverbs, maxims, axioms (and their English translations) in this forum or you can share them privately with me at ekis...@gmail.com, or eki...@usf.edu. You will be credited for your contribution.

 

 

Edward Kissi

 

 

 

Edward Kissi, Ph.D

Professor

School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies

University of South Florida

4202 East Fowler Avenue

Tampa, Florida 33620

813 974-7784

 

 

 

Africans and the Holocaust

 

Integrating sub-Saharan Africa into a historical and cultural study of the Holocaust

 

Caught between the Union Jack and the Nazi Swastika: African Protests over Ambiguous Status under British Imperialism and Potential Transfer to Nazi Colonialism

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

There is a great poem, "Ayajo Asuwada"  on this theme from the Ifa systems of knowledge, a poem translated and discussed in Akinsola Akiwowo's "Towards a Sociology of Knowledge from an Africab Oral poetry."" 

The paper inspired significant responses which one can ascertain from Googling the name of the paper.

Thanks 

Toyin

On Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 8:21 PM Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:

Wonderful. There are a good number of these

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Wonderful. There are a good number of these

On Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 6:47 PM 'Edward Kissi' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

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[Biko Agozino]

Dibie na agwo otule, o debelu ike ya na elu? Igbo proverb meaning, The witch who concocts diarrhea, is she hiding her own anus in the sky? Or as Marley sang, when the rain falls, it won't fall on one man's housetop. Remember that.

Biko

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[Edward Kissi]

Thanks, Toyin. I will look for it. 

Ed Kissi

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 13, 2024, at 3:56 PM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

magnificent- 

Dibie na agwo otule, o debelu ike ya na elu? Igbo proverb meaning, The witch who concocts diarrhea, is she hiding her own anus in the sky?

my only problem with this one is that it smacks of the misogyny in the name of witchcraft that women have suffered in Africa and Europe.

one wonders  why these stigmatizations about evil use of magical powers in traditional African and pre-modern Western contexts are almost always directed at women, and hardly ever  at men, hardly ever at wizards.

the rescue of the image of the witch-often a concocted, imagined image, began with gerald gardner's founding of the religion of wicca in the 20th century and has mushroomed with such fictional works as the harry potter novels and films, one of the latest being the very successful  film adaptation of the deborah harkness novelistic series a discovery of witches, new developments in which the concept of the witch has been reworked to mean a  way,  that embrace both men and women, of working with  spiritual powers.

i look forward to a similar liberating development in africa.

correlative concepts in yoruba culture, for example, are ''aje''( the bearers, often feminine,  of mysterious transformative powers),  ''awon iya wa osoronga'' (our arcane mothers) and ''oso'' ( a wizard, more or less, i understand) -my own translations.

what Gardner and his successors did in developing modern western witchcraft can be emulated in Africa since the information showing their methods as well as the African resources that can be similarly deployed is readily available in print.

Mercedes Morgana Bonilla, in the US, I think, responding to the international character of Yoruba origin Orisha spirituality, where the aje concept is found, was able to sketch out a theoretical and practice directed development of Yoruba aje spirituality, the first effort to publicly develop what at best had  always been a shadowy spirituality even in Yorubaland but her efforts were marred by accusations of plagiarizing Teresa Washinton's books coming from her then University of Ife PhD, Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts: Manifestations of Aje in Africana Literature and Architects of Existence, as well  fraudulent claims of connection with Yoruba aje as well as a non-functional system of training, fleecing people for money.

I recognized her, however, as being a powerful ritual artist, adept in the use of images in evoking the arcane and the numinous, seamlessly organizing a broad range of sources  around her imagistic evocations, as evident at her Facebook pages. 

Even if she plagiarized Washington, I understand her version of aje to be more mature than that of Washington's first book, which I am acquainted with, because I understand Washington as assimilating and trying to justify the horrific depictions of aje in ese ifa, Ifa literature and trying to justify them as depicting the aje as agents of dreadful justice, a view the sustainability of which i'm sceptical about.

Even if Mercedes  were guilty of what she was accused of, accusations she was unable to convince me she was not guilty of when I chatted with her, such issues of attribution and claims of non-existent connections could be addressed by owning up to them and reworking her system to steer clear of such falsehoods that often bedevil efforts to create a spirituality.

She seems to have chosen instead to disband her practice or its public projection. Such people as the US olorisha Ayele Kumari have taken up the challenge of developing versions of aje spirituality but it might not be done as boldly and in a manner that is as readily visible as Mercedes' methods.

Yoruba aje spirituality is a currently fragmented structure of ideas evident in ese ifa, Ifa literature, Gelede and other female centred spiritualities from Osun to Iya Mopo, female centred forms powerfully described and at times developed by the philosophical thought and visual art of Susanne Wenger and such  scholarship as that of the Drewals and Babatunde Lawal on Gelede and scholarship on Ogboni, in which Lawal's work is pre-eminent.

One of the best chapters in Lawal's Gelede book opens with that superb Aayajo Asuwada poem translated and discussed by Akiwowo. Lawal seems to link the varied expressions of the feminine principle in  Orisha spirituality with the Asuwada principle of terrestrial and cosmic unity Akiwowo highlights as dramatized by the Ayajo Asuwada poem, evident even within the destructive powers in the universe as they are intertwined with the creative, the unity of creation and destruction in the cosmos being one motif  that may be distilled from what can be described as the contradictory depictions of aje in ese ifa, between bloodthirsty, irrationally destructive creatures and a creatively fundamental feminine essence, embodied in all women, indispensable to the workings of the universe.

A correlative development of feminine spiritual agents, unifying creative and destructive possibilities,  occured in the centuries of Hindu history, with Kali and possibly with the dakinis in Tibetan Buddhism. Such comparative refinements may be employed in taking advantage of, distilling and integrating the convoluted depictions of feminine spiritual powers in the Orisha tradition.

Apologies for seeming to go off on a tangent, but the relationship between the Ayajo Asuwada poem and insights of interpersonal unity represented by proverbs of the kind Kissi is looking for suggests such proverbs may be anchored in or demonstrated as dramatising an ontology, a view of the nature of being, itself further grounded within a metaphysics, a perspective of the essence, structure and dynamism of the cosmos, worked out, in Ayajo Asuwada, in terms of an imaginative account of the creation of the world in its derivation from an ultimate identity of which each existent is an expression, an ontological unity expressed in the coherence that enables the animate and inanimate structuring of the world, from the gathering of strands to constitute hair on the head, the coming together of trees to form forests and more.

The brilliantly imagistic proverb Agozino quotes, on the other hand, both dramatizes the need for enlightened self interest through recognizing mutuality of effects in what affects communities but also provokes questions as to why the evil magical agent, the rogue spiritual character untethered from creative social values in the traditional Nigerian and perhaps sub Saharan African context, the African version of the pre-modern Western image of the witch, is often a woman, leading to the question of how factual that picture is, and of the factuality of the correlative witch image in African contexts, those of pre-modern Europe being now understood as pure superstition, giving way to a modern creative reworking of the image of the witch.

I have attached  Akiwowo's paper being referenced, and what I think is another of his papers on a similar subject. I wanted to add  two engagements with his work but gmail would not accept the resulting mail size. There is a need of a collected volume of his works and engagements with it, if such a volume does not exist yet.

thanks

toyin

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[cornelius...@gmail.com]

A layman’s aside.

Can the mechanisms that can result from the research that Professor Kissi has embarked on be incorporated into conflict resolution and peacekeeping through agencies such as The African Union and the United Nations? Ideally, to what foreseeable extent could such mechanisms have dampened the political motivations that erupted into e.g. The Sierra Leone Civil War ?

 Perhaps, you only have some minor tribal skirmishes in mind, of the kind that erupt from time time, or lessons to be learned from the Rwandan Genocide which could have been averted if the desired preventive mechanisms had been in place…

First, the family as the basic unit of society - according to Gaddafi’s Green Book, then that dreaded word, the TRIBE, its shared history via which its identity was gradually formed, and paradoxically, the tribal wisdom which Professor Edward Kissi with his tremendous background and experience, invokes in the service of conflict prevention / containment. Based on religion and other factors, the crux of the matter is that some tribes believe themselves to be greater, not only numerically superior, in terms of numbers, but also more divinely favoured by their God, and “more civilised” than other tribes. Some tribes sometimes grab what they believe to be divinely sanctioned, namely grabbing the ancestral lands of other tribes as the Israelites did in the ancient Middle East, and as happened in North America. The latest (old news) that popped up  about this on Youtube, only four days ago : The 1967 Biafran Invasion of Benin

These days, just as in the good old days of “might is right”, in addition to the fighting over resources ( as is currently happening in Eastern DR Congo) , grazing land, access to water, greener pastures etc ( “First a full stomach and then ethics”) is the religion factor  : the role of religion in conflict in Africa. Dear Professor Kissi,  I’m not a pessimist, but do you seriously believe that indigenous African  “ community anti-atrocity proverbs, maxims, axioms” are likely to succeed  where the maxims that are to be found in the various Bibles and in the Quran of the combatants  have not been sufficiently compelling to get the contending warriors to lay their weapons down? 

Wars are more likely to diminish and even dis-appear once the various tribes morph into  NATIONS in which “ all men are created equal “  - nations in which we - not only the poets are all “mouthpieces of the Almighty”, governed by the Rule of Law.

In my opinion, that’s what we’ve got to work for even as we teach / inculcate respect for the ancestors,  the National Anthem and The Flag. 

[cornelius...@gmail.com]

A luta continua : Biko Agozino vs the evil criminal justice system !

I’m impressed by this avant-garde, Igbo witticism from the ancestral reservoir of wisdom, to wit ,

“Proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten.” 

It would seem that through colonialism, English Language Dominance ( English Language Imperialism) and Christian Missionary Activities, the word “ anus” is not so decorous, not the kind of word you’d ever hear at Sunday School. In fact is it not a miracle that Ojogbon let it through the moderator's sensitive linguistic filter? 

“ her own anus in the sky” indeed, the height of hubris

We now know that Chidi is coming from the same ancestral reservoir with his 

“The sky

Urinates,

Downpour!”

But back to the real matter at hand. In the same spirit but less vulgar - from Brer Brecht ( one of Baba Soyinka’s favourites) : 

“When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out ‘stop!’ When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.”

For you, me, Tinubu, Trump, we, Kamala, the female witches, all of us : 

The Interrogation of the Good, by Bertolt Brecht

[Edward Kissi]

Kinsman Cornelius, you raise some excellent questions here. Your pessimism is also apt because as I noted, the frequency of atrocities in our community of humans casts doubt on our ability to prevent or contain these catastrophes. Neverthekess, my thinking is that there must be some African indigenous knowledge that contains pathways to addressing my research and teaching interests. 

I spoke last week on zoom with a peace education activist in the DRC and asked him about the dehumanization and targeting of albinos in his country and asked if there are indigenous/cultural prohibitions on that attitude. He told he had not thought about that but one wise-saying comes into his mind which he shared. It was a defense of albino identity but one that was different from my Kwawu people’s anti-albino cultural attitudes. These are the commonalities and contradixtions I am interested in. So Cornelius, I need four of them from you. 

Ed Kissi

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 14, 2024, at 1:36 PM, cornelius...@gmail.com <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[cornelius...@gmail.com]

Professor Edward Kissi,

Shalom Aleichem !

Our commonalities : First of all I have a wonderful friend here in Sweden, from Ghana, by the name of Micah Kissi // Micah Kissi of Ewe ethnicity. He is very religious ( a holy man) and I’m sure that with respect to the work that you are doing, he would be prone to be quoting Jesus, that “Blessed are the peacemakers, because they will be called sons of God”

The devil, in contrast, likes blood and is always busy promoting bloodbaths. A contradiction coming up: The bard sings that sometimes Satan comes as a “Man of Peace” 

Of what you requested, here is the first of the four that I can think of at the moment:

Sierra Leone , where, for example we have the Great Scarcies and the Little Scarcies River As you know, rivers are landmarks that sometimes serve as borders and this story, mythical or real, could be situated in another African country in which a river divides people into North and South habitats, such rivers sometimes separating Tribe X in the north from Tribe Y on the southern bank. The story goes that when the Tribe X boy is circa 12 years old, as part of his rite of passage into young manhood, his father takes him aside to confide in him some adult tribal truths that he should now be old enough to deal with. “Son”, he says,” Now you have to be very careful. You see the people on the Northern side of this river, stay away from them , but if you ever get close, you will observe that their lips are red: They are cannibals”

At his coming of age ceremony, the same warning is  given to the Tribe Y boy, and that’s how an equilibrium of mutual distrust and fear is created in the children at such a young, impressionable age, maybe forever. 

Surely, for African and Muslim parties to any conflict, the requirements for salvation in both Christianity and Islam are a much higher authority than “ indigenous/cultural prohibitions”?

Just asking. 

Most probably, the truth is that

“From the east, from the west

From the south to the north

Ah, na the same people

I say, "From the south, from the north

From the west to the east

Na the same people" (Tony Allen : Secret Agent

[Biko Agozino]

Cornel,

Uranus is not a bad word. 

Ike is not a bad word in Igbo, it is homologous with strength, ike, which is why we joke that the European struggling to learn Igbo said that his nyash has finished when he meant his strength. 

When you give a proverb to the wise, he will know but if you give a proverb to the ofeke fool, he will break his neck trying to twist it. Those prudes suffering from colonial mentalities who are questioning the morality of the words in the proverb may have missed the morale of the saying - if you support bad governmentaslity because of ethnic-class-gender-race chauvinism, will you buy your own fuel, food, medicine, or security at a parapo discount?

Oluwatoyin, Witch is a female gender compared to wizard that is male-gendered in English. You are right that witchcraft is shunned in societies that do not celebrate Halloween while wizardry is cherished in sports and drama - Wizard of Oz. No be juju be that? Aje or Amosu is gender-neutral in African languages, as Oyewumi argues. There is maleness in she or s/he and woman or wo/man. 

To tackle the abuse of people, male and female, in witch-hunting across Africa,  Azikiwe recommended in Renascent Africa (1937) that we should adopt the scientific method in everything we do. He used the example of claims that someone could spread deadly poison in the air to harm others but he asked whether the evil genius would be breathing a different air? Infant mortality is not caused by witches but by often preventable diseases, he concluded.

Awolowo disagreed with Zik in 'Juju as Science' (1939) and said that juju is an African super-science with which enemies kill victims by calling their names three times at cross-roads. He later admitted that he threw all his charms into the rubbish heap because they did not work and he said that this alarmed his fellow tenants in his compound.

Kissi, nothing works for community development like education and critical thinking. Africa hugs the bottom, ike, of the Human Development Index league table due to the denial of educational opportunities to the masses. This is easily fixed with relevant education for all, including boys and girls, irrespective of religion, ethnicity, class, gender or race.

Biko

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/681ef07f-7d57-405d-9315-523acf96f7d6n%40googlegroups.com

.

[cornelius...@gmail.com]

Tragedy 

True: there’s nothing wrong with Uranus 

My Brother, or beautiful skyscrapers with anus

Up in the sky. BTW that’s a reason why

Some of the gulf states in the Arab 

League are not making any bellicose 

Noises about their cousins in Israel:

In any future war they’d hate to see

Their skyscrapers being levelled with the rubble

And their assets in American Banks being either 

Frozen, Seized, or Stolen or all their lust 

turning into dust

For more on this, check out The Tall Buildings Prophecy 

Hermeneutics may be a difficult word; even

More difficult is putting it into practice. It’s bad 

Enough trying to hazard a guess as to what 

The Hebrew Poets of yesteryears meant 

Employing their special Lashon Hakodesh 

Vocabulary, even using tools such as Gematria

Or by approaching their prophetic poetry like Peter Obi’s

Daddy, solely invoking the guidance of the Holy Spirit 

The Ruach Ha-kodesh

Could be ditto about the ancient Lingo, IGBO

Those proverbs, “the palm oil with which words are eaten”

Tower of Babel! What colonialism has done to some of us !

Somebody told me that a philosopher had convinced him 

That “God” exists. By which magic words did he perform

The miracle ? So, Ratzinger’s explanation was a proof?

Yours truly is still treading water

At stage one: How To Read A Poem

And to love / enjoy

Understand / appreciate

Embrace or hate it. 

Fast forward to wrapping it up with what you obviously want us to believe is your unassailable conclusion: “education and critical thinking” the panacea to all evil. 

Really? 

I prefer, Reishis chochma yirat Adonai :The beginning of wisdom is the fear of Hashem

Education and critical thinking of course a step in the right direction and an important factor in each country's ranking according to Human Development Index ( data from 2022)

[Salimonu Kadiri]

While I have not had time to participate in recent discussions on this forum I find it appealing to challenge the following statements by Professor Biko Agozino. He stated, ".... Azikiwe recommended in Renascent Africa (1937) that we should adopt the scientific method in everything we do. He used the example of claims that someone could spread deadly poison in the air to harm others, but he asked whether the evil genius would be breathing a different air? Infant mortality is not caused by witches but by often preventable diseases, he concluded."  Of course, one should pardon Azikiwe because his knowledge of science in 1937 was not up to the standard that one could disseminate poison in the atmosphere and apply a prophylaxis on self in order to avoid being a victim of the poison.

However, in his conflict with Dr Kingsley Ozumba Mbadiwe that started in December 1957, while on board the ship returning from the London Constitutional Conference, Azikiwe, the scientist according to Biko Agozino, told Mbadiwe, "I believe you are after my blood." "And Mbadiwe flatly denied the allegation," Azikiwe said. The unconvinced Azikiwe then told Mbadiwe, "Inasmuch as the two of us are Ibo speaking we should perform an oath-taking ceremony which Ibo people call IGBANDU. I suggested that he should arrange for this event to take place neither at ARONDIZUOGU, his home town, nor at ONITSHA, my hometown, but that it should be held at a neutral place in IBOLAND, where we should be represented by four to six relatives each side." Azikiwe concluded, "Dr Mbadiwe has not been willing to agree to perform the IGBANDU ceremony, and until he does I shall forever be suspicious of him (Nigerian Daily Times, June 23, 1958)." Obviously, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe  believed that IGBANDU-IBO OATH-TAKING CEREMONY would have negative consequence(s) on whoever among the two lied on oath.

S. Kadiri

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of cornelius...@gmail.com <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: 17 September 2024 15:28
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - COMMUNITY CONCEPTS OF ATROCITY AND ATROCITY-PREVENTION

 

Africans and the Holocaust

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/67d842b0-d1dd-43a5-9623-b296b29577d4n%40googlegroups.com.

[Biko Agozino]

Al Kadiri,

Thanks for the archival news report from Daily Times of 1958. I will file this one.

Igbandu is a covenant or agreement of non-aggression among the Igbo. It is not witchcraft. It is similar to the Aburi Accord in which Gowon and Ojukwu agreed to resolve the crisis in Nigeria through non-violent means but Gowon reneged on that covenant and declared a police action that started the avoidable genocidal war. Avoiding someone who threatens your life is not due to the fear of juju because they can try to harm you physically and not just spiritually. Zik was a social scientist and not a Dibie.

You may be correct in suggesting that science has advanced and made it possible for air poisoners to secure their own bodies with applications like gas masks today but such advancements were anticipated by the scientific methods that Azikiwe called for and that Awo eventually agreed with when he threw away his impotent charms.

 In the fight against colonialism, for instance, no fantasies about poisoning the air that the colonizers breathed would work because the masses of the people would also succumb to such air pollution too, no mumbo jumbo would free prisoners from their chains, and calling the names of the colonizers three times at crossroads would not kill them with laughter. 

The scientific method is to educate the leaders of the struggle to restore independence, establish newspapers with which to educate and mobilize the masses, and form political parties that would unite the people and lead the struggle to victory. That was what Zik did and he detailed the blueprint in his memoirs, My Odyssey. It was a successful experiment to the extent that Nigeria regained political independence on a platter of gold, as he put it. Abi no be so?

Biko

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[ogunlakaiye]

Ogbuefu  Agozino,

You averred that "Igbandu is a covenant or agreement of non-aggression among the Igbo. It is not a witchcraft."  I can observe that you are trying to modernize the word IGBANDU to suit your taste. There is difference between performing an IGBANDU OATH-TAKING CEREMONY and  signing non-aggression treaty between two parties. IGBANDU is a witchcraft that puts a spell on false oath-taker. In those days, a person who stole a cock of his neighbour in Igboland and denied it would be forced to swear or undergo IGBANDU ceremony. If it was true that he had actually stolen the cock but swore on IGBANDU to deny that he did not, the consequence could be that the cock thief might start to crow relentlessly like a cock.

The internal crisis within the NCNC that led to the Zik must go demand in 1958 was not between Azikiwe and Mbadiwe alone. The NCNC Reform Committee was led by Mbadiwe as Chairman, Mr. I.R.E. Iweka as Vice-Chairman, Chief H.O. Davies as First Chairman,  Alhaji N.B. Soule as Patron,  Mr. L.N. Obioha as Vice-Patron, Chief Kolawole Balogun as General Secretary etc. On the other hand, the NCNC Strategic Committee had Azikiwe as National President, J.O. Fadahunsi as First National President, R.A. Njoku as Second National Vice-President, F.S. McEwen as National Secretary, Chief F.S. Okotie-Eboh as National Treasurer, T.O.S. Benson as National Financial Secretary, Fred U. Anyiam as National Publicity Secretary etc.  Both the NCNC Reform Committee led by Dr Mbadiwe and the NCNC Strategic Committee led by Dr Azikiwe contained not only IBO people (as the tribe was then known) but other Nigerians. Why was Azikiwe asking Mbadiwe to exclusively perform Igbandu oath-taking ceremony with him over who should lead the NCNC, a national party containing other ethnic groups in Nigeria?

From your wrong premise that IGBANDU is an IBO non-aggression pact you veered off, "It (IGBANDU) is similar to the Aburi Accord in which Gowon and Ojukwu agreed to resolve the crisis in Nigeria through non-violent means but Gowon reneged on that covenant and declared a police action that started the genocidal war." Aburi accord was not between Gowon and Ojukwu alone. Others that participated in the Aburi meeting were, Colonel Adeyinka Adebayo (West), Lt. Colonel David Ejor (Midwest) and Lt. Colonel Hassan Katsina (North) and Major Austin Peters (Lagos). Had Adebayo, Ejor, Katsina and Peters not agreed with Gowon, police action would not have been possible to be declared against Ojukwu. You claimed that the Police action 'started the genocidal war' but Ojukwu who fought the war said, ''I put myself out and saved the people from genocide." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/596712.stm. IBBC News, January 13, 2000, in Biafra: Thirty Years On by Barnaby Philips. So, Professor  Biko Agozino, please read history as it was recorded and not what you imagine it to be lest, you will be reading your mind and not what actually happened.

S. Kadiri

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Ojukwu may be described as contributing to saving Igbos from genocide in the North by urging them to return to the East for refuge.

The civil war is another story

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/452c810d-af9c-4e6e-bc3a-f9630def8984n%40googlegroups.com.

[cornelius...@gmail.com]

Feeling a little uncomfortable with  missionary labels such as  “ witchcraft!” and “superstition”

Thinking about the (1) SOTAH which has fallen into desuetude since the ritual  is said to have lost its efficacy because these days people are not so holy 

Also thinking about (2) Kapparot

Question for Biko and Baba Kadiri : Is taking the oath of office on the Bible more serious than other forms of oath taking by the believers in Juju?  

[Biko Agozino]

Asiwaju Kadiri,

Na lie o, asi gi, Iro ni, Igbandu is not what you made up as written history without citation or reference. History is to be read critically and not literally 'as it was written' contrary to your suggested grammatology. Here is a source that is verifiable and valid:

"Igba ndu, an integral part of traditional Igbo social and political system, is a ritual alliance between two persons or groups of individuals. Regarded as the strongest and most meaningful bond that can exist, it was used on the group level to validate community contracts and on a personal level to create the ritual bond necessary for social and trade intercourse or to effect a genuine reconciliation between people for whom regular intercourse was imperative because of kin relationship or common residence in a neighbourhood. It was also a means of establishing the confidence necessary for intercourse between strangers who desired to establish relationship that could not be ignored or broken. Igba ndu was thus the most serious of the many non-violent coercive mechanisms for ensuring the stability of an Igbo group. Its sociological importance is examined against the features of the Igbo traditional judicial system." Felicia Ekejiuba, AfricaBib | Igba ndu: an Igbo mechanism of social control and adjustment

AfricaBib | Igba ndu: an Igbo mechanism of social control and adjustment

You also misrepresented the Aburi Accord between the Federal Government of Nigeria and the aggrieved Eastern Region. None of the other regions of Nigeria had tens of thousands of their citizens being massacred in other parts of Nigeria without a single culprit arrested because the genocide was being carried out by government forces alongside the masses. The regional governors attended as delegates of the Federal Government under Gowon. There were nine signatories but most of them were witnesses to the dispute resolution. They declared their commitment that the governors must agree with the decisions of the federal military council, virtually giving each of them a veto power and the right to be consulted. Was the Eastern region consulted before the creation of 12 states and was the opposition to that resolved without resorting to force as agreed in Aburi? The war was preventable. You no gree?

Cornel,

Superstition is also found in European and Asian cultures but that does not prevent them from pursuing scientific knowledge even more as well. Religion is a free country where you believe what you like or like what you believe but science is more evidence-based with room for trial and error in the constant search for answers and improvements in knowledge as opposed to fatalism. Anyone who is against scientific knowledge should explain why. 

Education, education, education, is the key to Nkrumah's contribution to The Ghana Revolution especially after the colonizers jailed him and expelled nationalist teachers and students, forcing him to launch the independent National Schools Movement, according to C.L.R. James. 

Nkrumah stated in his autobiography that he believed the superstition that a mermaid or Mamiwata inhabited a sunken slave ship near his hometown. That was apparently until he met Azikiwe who declared on the steps of the court building in Accra, "I am a living spirit", after winning the appeal against his conviction for sedition following his publication of an oped by a Sierra Leonean, Isaac Theophilus Akunna Wallace-Johnson, asking if Africans have a God or if God only served European interests? Nkrumah asked Zik where an African got the courage to challenge the British lion and win and Zik and he answered that it no be juju. Zik gave him a recommendation letter for admission to Lincoln University. The rest is history.

Biko

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/a4716e08-1c13-4a01-9275-53aefee5c4den%40googlegroups.com.

[cornelius...@gmail.com]

Let's give thanks and praises for all that science vs superstition and various religious dogmas. And what about just plain common sense vs nonsense? 

Religion is so much a natural aspect of our culture and society that  fortunately / unfortunately, Biko ( almost wrote ”Boko”) cannot hope to be elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria if he preaches an iota against Christianity or criticises, questions or ridicules any aspect of Al-Islam. Nor can he get away with propagating Marx's “Religion is the opium of the people” and expect that The Faithful in Sokoto & Kano will show up at his rallies or waste any precious ballots on him. Of course, his countrymen in Boko Haram might turn up at his rallies but only in order to disrupt them and to cause some confusion. So, the best way forward is to be pragmatic by promising all of them, including the Boko Haram People, a Better Life here on earth, before they go to heaven /paradise / the Olam Ha-Ba ( Instead of Olam Ha-Ba, the wretched auto-correction had gone ahead and written “the haba ha Obama”. (What’s that supposed to be? If I'm not careful it might even suggest “the haba ha Kamala”- which must be a pleasant place after all, since her middle name is Devi, Kamala Devi Harris 

You emphasise “Education, education, education” - and the greatest contribution that Chief Obafemi Awolowo made to Nigeria’s development was his education policy ,wasn’t it ?

[cornelius...@gmail.com]

N.B. Yesterday, after listening to an Edo brother for the better part of an hour , at this late stage, I now have a better understanding of Nigeria's history (1966-1970) and about the Yoruba - Igbo interface. On the other hand , this new understanding could be summarily terminated or considerably modified by Baba Kadiri, but I doubt that he can change water into ogogoro...

In the meantime

Correction : Of course, his countrymen in Boko Haram might turn up at his rallies but only in order to disrupt them , to cause some confusion and to inflict grievous bodily harm ( their trademark .

https://leadership.ng/pictorial-tears-as-77-victims-of-boko-haram-attack-buried-in-yobe/

President Tinubu should “dialogue” with them ?

In my view, in that case Mr. President should send Pastor Adeboye to the dialogue /negotiations for the peace deal, with his final message  - 1. Repent before it’s too late  2. ”If you don't pay your tithe you won't go to heaven. Full stop” it's pay or perish…

Of course, such a message is radically different from what’s to be found at Louis Farrakhan’s newspaper website The Final Call. Which message is more radical is up to the believer. As Professor Agozino  has told both the believers and the disbelievers, “Religion is a free country where you believe what you like or like what you believe”

Surah Al-Kafirun is of the same view and is explicit about this 👍

1. Say: O disbelievers!

2. I worship not that which ye worship;

3. Nor worship ye that which I worship.

4. And I shall not worship that which ye worship.

5. Nor will ye worship that which I worship.

6. Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion.

Looking back through the vistas of history, and looking forward, we must appreciate that some of the religious leaders, prophets etc have appeared from time to time to reform whatever decadent societies in which they lived

Bhagavad Gita 4. 7- 8 : Lord Krishna says, "Whenever there is a decline in righteousness and an increase in unrighteousness, O Arjun, at that time I manifest myself on earth. To protect the righteous, to annihilate the wicked, and to re-establish the principles of dharma I appear on this earth, age after age"

Today, the cry is

“ How long shall they kill our prophets

While we stand aside and look?” ( Redemption Song 

 

On Thursday 19 September 2024 at 23:27:18 UTC+2 Biko Agozino wrote:

[Biko Agozino]

Cornel Agent Provocateur,

Thanks for your nomination of yours truly to run for President of Nigeria but that jungle appears hell-bent on failing as a state and no individual Harry Porter is capable of salvaging it with a juju wand. 

Be careful about spreading hateful false propaganda through hypothetical wishful thinking because not all your readers will know that you are making up false allegations against the innocent. I have never insulted any religion and never will. Indeed, I respect all religions because I was raised as an altar boy at my father's African shrine and at the Rev. Father's Catholic Church that ran my school and was thereby taught the morality of religious tolerance.

You wrote: 

"You emphasise “Education, education, education” - and the greatest contribution that Chief Obafemi Awolowo made to Nigeria’s development was his education policy ,wasn’t it ?"

No doubt about that, Awolowo's best contribution to Western Nigeria was his policy of Ile Iwe Ofe or free school building. However, according to Awo himself in his autobiography, he implemented the policy as a strategy to enable the West to catch up with the East in education because the Eastern region was building more schools, training more teachers, and registering more students than the Western region. The explanation was necessary because many Westerners were opposing the extra levies and taxes imposed by Awo to fund the free elementary education policy whereas the Eastern region relied on subsidies to the schools built by the communities and by the missionaries, with up to 46% of the regional budget going to education. 

Today, almost none of the make-shift buildings erected by Awo still stands while the solid buildings constructed with rocks in Eastern communities still stand strong, no shaking. Currently, the Eastern region remains at the top of the WAEC league tables with all the five states in the East scoring in the top ten states while the home state of the great University of Ibadan, Oyo, and the sister state, Osun, are embracing the bottom ten states along with the less educated Northern states despite deliberate marginalization of the East by the Conquistadores. 

That was the question I wanted to pose to the late Olubadan when he appeared on the Toyin Falola show, and bragged about Ibadan as the cradle of western education in Nigeria:  How come a region that received western education much earlier than the East was still struggling to attain high levels of academic achievement? The approaches of Azikiwe, Nyerere,  and Nkrumah may help the whole of Africa to banish illiteracy once and for all - Each One Teach One.

Biko

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/6d180c6a-4905-47e7-ac44-de2e8c5a9919n%40googlegroups.com.

[cornelius...@gmail.com]

Prof Agozino,

As always, much respect, although I’m genuinely surprised that in the name of “religious tolerance” an academic criminologist of your stature has never criticised any religion, and  “never will”. This can only mean that you were / are indifferent to what happened to Deborah Samuels or that you have probably taken Bishop Krister Stendahl's three rules to heart, especially the one that requires that you should “Leave room for “holy envy.” I doubt the sincerity in your boasting ”I respect all religions because I was raised as an altar boy at my father's African shrine and at the Rev. Father's Catholic Church that ran my school and was thereby taught the morality of religious tolerance.”

Really?

As you know, for the fanatics it’s “ Ya either got faith or ya got unbelief and there ain't neutral ground”

I have been following Ray Chehade vs The Catholic Church on Facebook; I thought that The Inquisition and the other crimes against humanity aside, instead of “the morality of religious tolerance” the real reality is a matter of 

“Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics

And the Catholics hate the Protestants

And the Hindus hate the Moslems

And everybody hates the Jews” ( National Brotherhood Week)

At the national level education being the sine qua non of development, shouldn’t this be the priority, especially for the North. Shouldn’t the strong be helping the weak? 

Either consciously or unconsciously you are certainly playing the role of Agent Provocateur knowing full well that e.g. Baba Kadiri will feel provoked when you say this sort of thing : 

“No doubt about that, Awolowo's best contribution to Western Nigeria was his policy of Ile Iwe Ofe or free school building. However, according to Awo himself in his autobiography, he implemented the policy as a strategy to enable the West to catch up with the East in education because the Eastern region was building more schools, training more teachers, and registering more students than the Western region” etc etc etc

Understandably,  “Criticism is as inevitable as breathing” 

I thought of this in relation to Chidi chiming, 

Christ to Peter: "upon this rock I shall build my church".

Christ to Peter: "get thee behind me Satan!".

All you have to do is to remain calm and await the thunder from Shango and the hammer from Ogun’s Baba Kadiri representing the Truth and the Yoruba, Baba Kadiri at the service of the intellectual rivalry between the Igbo and the Yoruba , between Achebe and Soyinka, mindful of this other reality, that when the elephants fight it's the grass that suffers

[cornelius...@gmail.com]

Correction: 

Re -  "Be careful about spreading hateful false propaganda through hypothetical wishful thinking because not all your readers will know that you are making up false allegations against the innocent. I have never insulted any religion and never will." ( Write Biko Agozino) 

All I said was,"  Religion is so much a natural aspect of our culture and society that  fortunately / unfortunately, Biko ( almost wrote ”Boko”) cannot hope to be elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria if he preaches an iota against Christianity or criticises, questions or ridicules any aspect of Al-Islam. Nor can he get away with propagating Marx's “Religion is the opium of the people” and expect that The Faithful in Sokoto & Kano will show up at his rallies or waste any precious ballots on him."

A misreading cannot show that I mad any " false allegations against the innocent" there !

On Friday 20 September 2024 at 18:30:17 UTC+2 Biko Agozino wrote:

[Michael Afolayan]

". . . but that jungle appears hell-bent on failing as a state and no individual Harry Porter is capable of salvaging it with a juju wand." (Biko Agozino)

Are you for real, Biko? Educate me, Bro., which jungle are you talking about here? And, if you don't believe Cornelius' misrepresentation of your position on religion, and you dismissed it as "hypothetical wishful thinking," why would you believe on his tongue-in-cheek nomination of you as one to run for president of Nigeria? And, by the way, I don't even think Cornelius did nominate you, not even tongue-in-cheek. You see, that place you sentenced to Dante's "Inferno" is where some of us, your friends, brethren, colleagues, former colleagues, etc., live, and we truly enjoy it, and that is after living in your comfort zone called America for many decades, and we even still carry the blue booklet in our pockets. In Swahili, it is "polepole," in Yoruba, it is "pẹ̀lẹ́pẹ̀lé," and your folks there in the Sunshine State would simply say, "careful-careful." Don't call a dog a bad name in order to justify killing (and eating) it. You don't even live in Springfield, Ohio!

MOA

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/806974600.15216459.1726761685328%40mail.yahoo.com.

[cornelius...@gmail.com]

“…the morality of religious tolerance” indeed 

Of possible interest to the literary folks, and for the sake of brevity, not levity 

The Portrayal of Religion in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

We shall not speak about Pope Pius and the Holocaust 

But, what saith the criminologist about The Jesuit Oath ?

With regard to tolerance ( where the more accommodating word is “ acceptance”) I suppose that on the whole the LGBTQ community worldwide must commend the Holy Roman Catholic Church for not being vindictive by taking Frédéric Martel to court for libel and slander  -and for not passing an Iranian-style fatwa for his head or putting out a contract on him for his damning exposé, “ In the Closet of The Vatican”. 

I brought the matter up with Robert, a Roman Catholic friend from Minnesota ( who I first met at an Igbo baptism at a Roman Catholic Church here in Stockholm -where to my surprise the mass was celebrated in the Igbo Language) and Robert’s bottom line was Matthew 16:17-19 with an emphasis on Matthew 16 : 18 : ”And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. “

On Friday 20 September 2024 at 18:30:17 UTC+2 Biko Agozino wrote:

[Biko Agozino]

Dear Michael,

Na only una dey enjoy o (said someone before Fela asked, 'make I yab them?' Yab them, yab them, chorused the audience). The masses are suffering and protesting against bad governmentality for Naijungle. You no see am abi you no dey hear? 

Of course, Cornel Agent Provocateur no fit nominate anyone to run for president of the jungle because he is not a citizen of the jungle, tongue-in-cheek or not. I was simply rejecting any such suggestion from anyone that I should run for the top office in a jungle, I no go gree for anyone. If my Ward nominates me in Enugu, I go say, Tufiakwa, no thank you.

However, I will share your optimism if you say that things go better even for jungle. Here is my preferred solution to the failed state jungle justice reigning across Africa that some of you phantom bourgeois elements claim to enjoy (suffering and smiling):

https://digitalscholarship.tsu.edu/ajcjs/vol1/iss2/1/

In Ibadan: The Penkelmese Years, Soyinka offered a hilarious take on the Nigerian flag that was imposed by colonizers as a joke and retained by compradors who recently also went back to the colonial anthem. Soyinka said that the person who designed the rag flag must be dyslexic. Out of the many colors in the world, the person chose green twice to signify agriculture and forests or jungle, suggesting that our people live in peace surrounded by jungles. There is no black in the green-white-green. The white is supposed to represent peace but where is the peace now? Make una dey enjoy o, but no forget the suffering masses.

Cornel dey craze o. I done catch am now. You no see how he dey quote irrelevant scriptures about irrelevant topics? No be craze be that? 

Biko

Biko

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/1015831294.6966959.1726914654780%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

The Professor is right, as usual

when it comes to the irrelevancies

of the missionary teachings 

about “the morality of religious tolerance”

in his jungle demo-crazy 

So, instead of the Holy Bible 

he would prefer to recommend 

The Jungle Book 

The Ballad of East and West 

The Ballad of Biafra and Oduduwa 

is all set to continue 

“to the last syllable of recorded time”

If laughter is the best medicine 

here’s some from Mister Macaroni, 

or if you prefer, 

from Mr macaroni…

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

The description of Nigeria as a jungle is a coinage by the more right wing pro-Biafra Igbos from what I have observed on Facebook.

This description is fed by both historical observation and an ideological bias against the nation, a bias ultimately rooted possibly in a sense of persistent ant-Igbo injustice emerging from the pre-war anti-Igbo pogroms and the civil war and  a reading of the civil war that canonizes Biafra as hero or victim or both

This style of thinking might be puzzling to others outside that ethno/ideological enclave even as they observe developments in Nigeria that suggest a breakdowns of  law and order in some contexts.

Thanks 

Toyin

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[Biko Agozino]

Jungle, jungle, everywhere, not identified by only Igbo and the Igbo are not the only ones being preyed upon:

Nigeria is a jungle - Google Search

Nigeria is a jungle - Google Search

Biko

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[cornelius...@gmail.com]

Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti : 

“Fool for forty, na fool forever. Na so the book people dey talk

I no go tell my brother like that” ( Monkey Banana ) 

Re - “ Cornel dey craze o. I done catch am now. You no see how he dey quote irrelevant scriptures about irrelevant topics? No be craze be that? “ Biko Agozino the comedian, in jest. And if the mad dog bites you you’re gonna get rabies.  

Indeed, that was the not so arrogant Professor Agozino Biko, alias “Samson Agonistes” this time incarnated as a thought police constable in person, a prisoner of conscience, happily flapping around in his Made-in-America jumpsuit, arrogating to himself the right to weigh in on momentous issues such as what a free person is free to say and what a free man, especially one recently escaped from his mental asylum should not say in cyberspace. Crazy is as crazy says. You don’t have to be a professor to be diagnosed and certified as crazy; some people obtain a certificate that certifies them as crazy in order to avoid doing their military service. The bit  that I quoted was Agozino the self-appointed thought-police writing from his free speech zone over there in Virginia, from Virginia Tech to be precise, a foul piece of idle breeze blowing a thunderstorm from his behind and recreational ganja shmoke curling out of his nostrils, a Naija way of talking, as my friend from Princeton who looks like Spiro Agnew would say, “Street”, and I’d have to correct him, tell him it’s “Owerri Motor Park Poetry”  - Onitsha Market Literature at its most elevated in the pidgin speakeasy. The highly esteemed Dr Alban himself made that much clear in Hello Africa  -

“Takes a long time to travel the globe, so why be shy?

Why be humble? I just came straight out the jungle”

That’s akin to giving ammunition to the racists - considering that we’re all from Revolutionary  Haiti , which is why some of us are now being accused of abducting, slaughtering and consuming other peoples beloved pets, cats and man’s best friend, dogs. I asked an Oyibo Africa specialist what he thought about all this and he told me that he was not at all surprised. Not at all surprised? “Yes”, he reiterated, “You know that for people from the Congo and Cameroon what’s known as “Bushmeat“ is a delicacy”.

But “cats and dogs!”?, I remonstrated, “and furthermore the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio are not from Cameroon and the Congo  - they are mostly from the Eastern Ghana and Togo area”. 

But what do I know? 

What’s widely known even by Biko Agozino is

that you can take a monkey out of the jungle but 

it’s a more arduous, almost an impossible, 

Superhuman, psychiatric & civilizational 

task to take the jungle out of the monkey, and that 

being the case, who would you be able to do that? 

Teaching him or her Bible and Quranic ethics or merely

AHIMSA in thought, word and deed, would fail to accomplish

the necessary transition From animal to human ¨( it takes time)

but the Quran reports the vice versa :”Be ye then detested apes!” 

Fela said it all without any mention 

Of holy words, in Beasts of No Nation

There are good reasons for the conscientious Pan-Africanist to be even more concerned that we get the right man or woman as next President of Nigeria, than if the United States is going to be saddled with a Hindu Devi for the next four years  - the emphasis on Kamala Devi Harris,  Devi  not “ Devil” 

About nominating Biko for Prezzo of Nigeria, why should he be surprised or want to shirk the onerous responsibility of rising to the challenge ? After all it’s not as if he would be the first African or the first Nigerian leader ever to have studied abroad and he knows that ZIK his idol and Kwame Nkrumah and indeed Nigeria’s latest President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu also studied in the United States and that there is this long list of African political leaders who studied abroad that should encourage him to be brave and to take up the challenge 

“The drunken politician leaps

Upon the street where mothers weep

And the saviors who are fast asleep, they wait for you” ( Biko for President : I want you 

Who knows? Perhaps, he’s only being coy, like Caesar

 (“I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?”)

But no, and nobody is saying  jungle brother Biko Ago is a coward or too woebegone as a pessimist, now that the criminologist in voluntary exile in the United States has indicated that he has no ambition to be democratically elected President of Nigeria which he refers to as a “jungle” that “appears hell-bent on failing as a state and no individual Harry Porter (Potter?) is capable of salvaging it with a juju wand.”

 As if Nigeria is beyond redemption or wouldn’t have a better chance of rising in the Human Development Index , if Biko Agozino became president. Of course, as a criminologist he would probably continue in the tradition of his predecessors, waging an all out war against tribalism and corruption.

All of the above being written when according to Arutz Sheva,  Daily Alert and PressTV a major conflagration / escalation is on the horizon along the  Hezbollah - Iran- Israel axis this US presidential election season, and depending on the outcome of the US Presidential Election, we are on the brink of the third and final World War

 Is the World Walking Blindfolded Toward a Nuclear War? Prof Rodrigue Tremblay

Something more sublime and not so crazy  : Matteo Mancuso : Crossing the Ford

[Salimonu Kadiri]

Ezemuo Agozino!

I have not had time until now to respond to your invented history of Nigeria on the above topic but as the saying goes, better late than never. To begin with, you have presented Felicia Ekejiuba's 1971 version of the meaning of the 'Ibo oath swearing ritual called Igbandu which Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe requested Dr Kingsley Ozumba to perform with him in 1958.' Contrary to the single word, 'Igbandu,' used in 1958 by Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Sisi Felicia Ekejiuba modernised it into two words, 'Igba ndu' which is not the same thing as Igbandu. Since Lady Ekejiuba wrote her thesis in Ibadan the heart of Yoruba land, she might have come across the Yoruba words, IGBÁ DÚDÚ, which she conflated with Igbandu and corrupted it to IGBA NDU. IGBÁ DÚDÚ in Yoruba is a black calabash in which herbal concoction is prepared. In her confused mind, she wrote, "Igba ndu was thus non-violent coercive  mechanism for ensuring stability of an Igbo group." Azikiwe had accused Mbadiwe of betraying him and wishing him dead, which Mbadiwe denied. It would sound more sensible that Azikiwe then requested the two of them to swear an Ibo 'Igbandu oath' believing that whoever among the two told lie would suffer the wrath of lying under Igbandu oath. You and Sisi Felicia Ekejiuba talked about 'IGBA NDU but Zik talked about IGBANDU which is coercive.

What was referred to as 'Aburi Accord' was actually 'Supreme Military Council Meeting outside Nigeria.' After the bloody coup of July 29, 1966, Lt. Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, then Governor of Eastern Region refused to attend Supreme Military Council in Lagos. He did not recognise Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon as the head of  Supreme Military Council of Nigeria. It was at that stage that Ghana facilitated the meeting of Nigeria's Supreme Military Council in Aburi, between January 4 and 5, 1967. Members of the Supreme Military Council in attendance at that meeting were Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon, Col. Robert Adeyinka Adebayo, Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Lt. Col. David Ejoor, Lt. Col. Hassan Katsina, Commodore J.E.A. Wey, Major Mobolaji Johnson, Alhaji Kam Salem, and Mr. T. Omobare. Secretaries were: M. Solomon Akenzua - Permanent Under-Secretary, Federal Cabinet Office, Mr. P.T. Odumosu - Secretary to the Military Governor, Western Region, N.U. Akpan - Secretary to the Military Governor's Office Eastern Region, Mr. D.P. Lawani - Under Secretary, Military Governor's Office, Midwest Region and Alhaji Ali Akilu - Secretary to the Military Governor, Northern Region. In February 1967, the Supreme Military Council scheduled its meeting to take place in Benin, Midwest Region, to map out the implementation of what was agreed upon in Aburi. Ojukwu did not attend the meeting but he sent Lt. Colonel Phillip Effiong. Through Decree No. 8 of March 17, 1967, the administration of Nigeria was decentralised in accordance with the agreements reached at Aburi but empowers the Federal Military Government to declare a State of Emergency in any part of Nigeria if needed. On March 31, 1967, Ojukwu issued Revenue Collection Edict whereby he took control of railways, airports, harbours coal, electricity and postal communications situated within the borders of the Eastern Region.

"Was Eastern Region consulted before the creation of 12 States and was the opposition to that resolved without resorting to force as agreed in Aburi," you queried? The creation of 12 States was preceded by the meeting of the Eastern Consultative Assembly convened by Ojukwu on May 26, 1967, in which he asserted that the East was fully prepared to defend itself.  He boasted that, "There is no power in this country or in Black Africa to subdue us by force." Thereafter he gave the Eastern Consultative Assembly three alternatives to choose from. These were (a) Accepting the terms of the North and Gowon and thereby submit to domination by the North, or (b) Continuing the present stalemate and drift, or (c) Ensuring the survival of our people by asserting our autonomy."  On May 27, 1967, the Eastern Consultative Assembly unanimously passed a resolution mandating Ojukwu to declare sovereign Republic of Biafra at an early practicable date. A few hours after the Eastern Consultative Assembly's resolution empowering Ojukwu to declare Eastern Region a Republic of Biafra, Yakubu Gowon assumed full powers, declared a state of emergency throughout the country, abrogated Decree No.8 and, carved the nation into twelve new States instead of the four regions. On May 30, 1967, Ojukwu declared Eastern Region as Republic of Biafra, thereby incorporating the ethnic minority groups of Ibibio, Efik, Ogoni, Ijaw, and Ogoja into his Ibo (as it was then known) Republic of Biafra. Here, perhaps, you need to be reminded that on February 23, 1966, Isaac Adaka Boro seceded and declared his Niger Delta People's Republic. Boro declared his Republic in response to his, and his people's, perceived Ibo domination of Eastern Region's minorities. Major General Ironsi and Lt. Col. Ojukwu crushed Boro's rebellion within twelve days whereby Boro was captured and incarcerated only to be released by Gowon on the outbreak of war against Biafra. Had Ojukwu accepted Decree No. 8 of 17 March 1967 that contained everything agreed upon at Aburi, in Ghana, the war would have been avoided.

In your exchange with Cornelius Hamelberg you asserted that "Awolowo's best contribution to Western Nigeria was his policy of Ile Iwe Ofe or free school building." You concluded that "he implemented the policy in order to enable the West catch up with the East in education." Awolowo's idea about the importance of education in the development of Nigeria had nothing to do with catching up with the Eastern Region. In his book, Path to the Nigerian Freedom published in 1947, Awolowo stated seven reasons why he was opposed to self-government for Nigeria which Azikiwe and others were clamouring for then. Opposing self-government then he averred, "The existence of a microscopic literary class would lead to exploitation of the great majority of illiterates by the intelligentsia." The literary class in Nigeria in 1947 as well as in 2024 are those who are fluent in spoken and written English which is what is called being educated in Nigeria. The few educated class in Nigeria as foreseen by Awolowo already in 1947 are the ones exploiting the masses of Nigeria today. Awolowo and his colleagues in the Action Group believed that if everyone was educated, exploitation of man by man would be minimal. Therefore, in the Action Group election manifesto for the Western House of Assembly 1951, the party promised that if elected, it would introduce free universal primary education for all children of school-going age; free medical treatment for all children up to the age of 18, among other things, before the end of their five years tenure. True to their election promise, Free Primary Education was introduced throughout Western Region in 1955. May I refresh your memory that the Western Region of that time up to 1963, contained not only the Yoruba ethnic group but Benin (the entire Edo State of today), Asaba and Agbor (then known as Western Ibo), Sapele, Warri, and Ughelli all of which are now in Delta State. Both the current Edo and Niger Delta State as components of the Western Region in 1955 enjoyed Awolowo's Free Primary Education. All Ibo from the Eastern Region resident in Western Region enjoyed Awolowo's free primary education. In fact, people from Onitsha in the present day Anambra State relocated to Asaba in order that their children could enjoy Awolowo's Free Primary Education. Your poor knowledge of Yoruba language made you to translate Awolowo's Free Primary Education as ILÉ ÌWE ÒFE or Free School Building. ILÉ ÌWE ÒFE in Yoruba will translate to Library where books are loaned out free of charge. A school in Yoruba language is called ILÉ ÈKÓ which literarily means the house of learning and which is quite different from the house of knowledge called, ILÉ ÌMÒ. Many Yoruba, Ibo, Edo, Itsjekiri, and Uhrobo that attended Awolowo free primary education later turned out to be physicians, engineers, scientists, lawyers and politicians of which some are now dead while others as still alive. You can check out that.

 If it is believable that Awolowo implemented Free Primary Education so that the West could catch up with the Eastern Region educationally, then Azikiwe must have decided to prevent the West from catching up with the East since his government abolished school fees for all primary education from infant 1 to standard VI as from January 1957. For Free Primary School implementation in 1957, Azikiwe's government had budgeted £2, 886,000 only to discover later that the total cost was to be £5,446,000 with the result that Azikiwe's government expenditure on education was 43% of its total budget. The estimated £6 million budget for free primary education in 1958 was beyond the ability of the government of Eastern Region to provide. Therefore, Azikiwe's government re-introduced school fees from January 1958 for primary school education which it had abolished from January 1957. 

Since you are a professor, the least I expect you is not to be a cuddler of ethnic tarradiddle and tribal flapdoodle. On my part, I have grown beyond debating 'my tribe is better than your tribe or my tribe is more educated than your tribe' as far as Nigeria is concerned. It will be a thing of pride to me, and indeed the whole of Nigeria and Africa, if the Government of Abia State has turned Abia into New York; the Government of Anambra State has turned Anambra into Paris; if the Government of Ebonyi State has turned Ebonyi into Manchester; if the Government of Enugu state has turned Enugu into London; and if the Government of Imo state has turned Imo into Berlin. The rest of Nigeria and Africa will just have line up to solicit the support of those Governors in which application of education have been industrially and economically demonstrated to help develop Nigeria and continental Africa. The late Senator Dr Chuba Okadigbo's paternal origin was Onitsha but he attended primary and secondary school in Asaba which was then in Awolowo's governed Western Region. Interestingly, Chuba Okadigbo enjoyed Awolowo's free primary education in the last year of his primary school. During an altercation with Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe in the late 1990s, Senator, Dr Chuba Okadigbo said, "If you are emotionally attached to your tribe, religion or political leaning to the point that truth and justice become secondary considerations, your education is useless. Your exposure is useless. If you cannot reason beyond petty sentiments, you are a liability to mankind." You need to learn from the wise words of late Dr Chuba Okadigbo.

Concerning acquisition of Western education by Nigerians, history recorded that Dr Ògúntólú Sápara-Williams, a Yoruba man, was the first Nigerian medical doctor that graduated from Edinburg University in Britain, in 1896. The first Ibo medical doctor graduated in 1935. Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe was the first Igbo University graduate in 1934. When Nnamdi Azikiwe returned to Nigeria from Ghana, he joined the Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM) which had just won the three seats for Lagos to the Legislative Council in Lagos and which hitherto, since 1922, had been won by Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) led by Herbert Samuel Heelas MacCaulay. Nnamdi Azikiwe narrated his position within the NYM as follows: "Among its (NYM) leaders at this time were Dr Akinola Maja, H.S.A. Thomas, Jubril Martin and Mr (now Sir) Kofoworola Abayomi. Prominent among its (NYM) BACK-BENCHERS were Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Chief S.L. Akintola, J.A. Tuyo, Hamzat A, Subair, F. Ogugua-Arah, Shonibare and L. Duro Emmanuel (p.309, ZIK - Selected Speeches of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe)." Since the calibre of the people in the NYM educationally could only concede back-bench to Nnamdi Azikiwe, he resigned from the NYM to eventually form the first Tribal Union in Nigeria, in 1943, which he named, Ibo Federal Union and changed later to Ibo State Union. That was the platform on which he formed the N.C.N.C., and rest is history.

In his submission on this topic on September 19, 2024, Conelius Hamelberg rhetorically presumed that "Biko cannot hope to be elected President of Federal Republic of Nigeria if he preaches against Christianity, or Al-Islam ..." Biko took Mr. Hamelberg's rhetorical supposition as if he was being nominated  to contest for the President of Nigeria. Thus, Biko wrote, "Thanks for your nomination of yours truly to run for the President of Nigeria but that jungle (Nigeria) appears hell bent on failing as a state and no individual Harry Porter is capable of salvaging it with a juju wand." Donald Trump must have met or listened to a lot of Africans like Professor Biko Agozino, when he averred during his presidency that whenever "Africans come on visit to the United States, they don't want to return home to their hots." United States was once a jungle before Europeans conquered it and built it up into towns and cities. Obama is an African-American and Bil Clinton is not a European-American but an American; Donald Trump is not a European-American but an American while Kamala Harris is an Afro-Asian-American. What are you Biko? Before answering that question let me remind you of a Nigerian aphorism that says, "No matter how long a mangrove tree stays under the water in the swamp, it can never turn into a crocodile." No matter how long your sojourn in America is, at best, you can only be an African-American in a country with current hashtag #BlackLivesMatter!!

S. Kadiri

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of cornelius...@gmail.com <cornelius...@gmail.com>

Sent: 21 September 2024 18:56

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/128f40d2-f2c1-4965-935d-a7e5c1803207n%40googlegroups.com.

[Dr. Oohay]

Perhaps, one BIG factor that generally accounts for the apparent, historic, and continuing disparity in educational achievement between the Eastern Naija and Western Naija states lies in certain enduring cultural values.

Oohay 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DU0PR08MB89564947AE348BE9B7B0F504AE6B2%40DU0PR08MB8956.eurprd08.prod.outlook.com.

[cornelius...@gmail.com]

Baba Kadiri :

I Roy : Straight to the Heart

Many thanks for this, your pointed rejoinder to Onwubiko Agozino. 

It’s sometimes sickening, the divide and rule, the ravages of inter - ethnic jingoism and the rest of the bad harvest and toxic air that are some of the spoils that colonialism has left to some of us; and in another former colony, in the United States these days, so much political rhetoric about workers, blue-collar workers, the working class, the Democrats and Republicans fighting over who is best going to promote the interests of “the Middle Class” etc, you would think that these are the early convulsion signs of a nation - the centre of gravity, ABORTION  -  suddenly in the grip of a roller-coaster Marxist Revolution….. All the classes, colours, genders, shapes and hues of Trump’s and Kamala’s America are eligible to cast their ballots , and it’s the kind of  rhetoric we don’t hear in Nigeria. Peter Obi is probably on the mission to revive his brewery - keep the masses slightly or fully inebriated and happy, beer as the opium in Anambra, but from the point of view of the kind of change that’s more desirable , the more interesting question : Where is Omoyele  Sowore ?  Has he stopped talking? If not, what is he saying ? Is he in prison?

Re - “Azikiwe's government expenditure on education was 43% of its total budget. The estimated £6 million budget for free primary education in 1958 was beyond the ability of the government of Eastern Region to provide. Therefore, Azikiwe's government re-introduced school fees from January 1958 for primary school education which it had abolished from January 1957”.

I don’t think that ZIK should be faulted for this. After all,  it was before oil  - Nigeria’s economic saviour could come to the rescue. Whilst I was in Nigeria (1981 - 84) during the oil boom years, undoubtedly an acolyte of Chief Obafemi Awolowo,  Bendel State’s Governor Ambrose Alli adopted AWO’s universal primary education scheme and devoted 50% of Bendel State’s budget to Education. It could be done. It was a stunning success. 

My response to you is actually being promoted by your braggadocio mode revelation that

“Dr Ògúntólú Sápara-Williams, a Yoruba man, was the first Nigerian medical doctor that graduated from Edinburg University in Britain, in 1896”

- ah - I thought -

here is Baba Kadiri displaying some Yoruba ethnic chauvinism once again , caught up in what’s the thrust of Stevie Wonder’s Black Man syndrome  ( “Who was the first man to set foot on the North Pole?” etc  - a long list of racial achievements) which caused me to ransack my memory ( still going strong) about the last public lecture I heard from the lips of Dr Davidson Nicol a lecture sponsored by Michael Crowder the then director of the Institute of African Studies in Sierra Leone, the subject of the lecture was our one and only  AFRICANUS HORTON - whose father, by the way was Igbo, and if my memory serves me right although I sat in the front row of the auditorium and remember dozing off intermittently during most of the lecture (those were hectic days and it had been a hectic night the previous nights ) but thank God, I somehow woke up on hearing Dr Nicol asking, “Any questions?” I almost asked him, “What time is it, Sir ?” However, I do remember this alright : Africanus Horton graduated as a medical doctor from Edinburgh University in 1859 - and this means that this our Igbo-man graduated with an MD from Edinburgh University  a good 37 years before our Yoruba man. But you do have a point. Africanus Horton was Sierra Leonean,  not a Nigerian. 

As we are all aware, comparatively speaking, ”In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king” and that’s how and why the one-upmanship theme continues as a recurring one in this forum  in which you once more aptly quote Chief Obafemi Jeremiah Oyeniyi Awolowo, that “The existence of a microscopic literary class would lead to exploitation of the great majority of illiterates by the intelligentsia." Those were prophetic words from THE GREAT AWO, and  are not a lesser perception than the later stages of privilege such as milk and apples for the brain workers in Orwell's Animal Farm (not to mention the milk and honey that some of the overeducated in the lootocracy believe to be their rightful entitlements and “fruits of office” 

 At this late state of affairs, it would seem that since the population of Nigeria has jumped from a mere 35 Million souls at Independence in 1960 - to over 230 Million souls in 2024, the still microscopic literary class of self-acclaimed and self-anointed companions of the  “intellectual Giants” is now even more dwarfed by the much greater majority of the illiterate, semi-literate, half-educated, miseducated and overeducated elites. I’m reading Richard Bradford’s TOUGH GUY  - The Life of Norman Mailer at the moment; May the Omniscient Almighty save us from contempt for certain types who are not beneficiaries of a liberal arts education that offers lots of poetry, English and American Literature, Greek and Roman Culture and a history of Western and other philosophies as their foundations. The Nobel Prize in Lit  will be announced five days from now. Hopefully, it will go to China.

In this free world where “everything goes” one ought not to be surprised about the tendency of some portions of the African Intelligentsia - especially those who are happily or unhappily striving to make ends meet in racial North America, and those who believe themselves to be so blessed - as explored in Ayi Kwei Armah’s “ Why Are We So Blest ?” the tendency towards arrogance ( sometimes to the point of monomaniacal omniscience - a PhD - leading to some feelings of dictatorship about the little home turf over which he (or she) becomes a veritable Papa Doc - of all kinds of other territories way beyond their ken…

Resting in the fields, far from the turbulent space

Half asleep near the stars with a small dog licking your face

The subject matter - Education - is one of such great concern and of course the serious application and implementation of sound education policy is the first step to the redemption of God’s Chosen African Nations. 

It’s always, all so very interesting, these ritual exchanges between people of the various ethnic and tribal identities  often laced with large doses of pride and prejudice along the lines of “ My tribe is more/ civilised/God-fearing/ educated / polished / liberated etc than yours “

How I love Professor Mobolaji Aluko’s  good natured, generosity of spirit,  so often concluding his political epistles and other commentaries and responses in this forum with the kind of good wishes - we - all of us could do well to emulate, when he says (more grease to you elbows, man to man, one man one vote, more political power  to you and yours and with that good intention ,unlike Hitler who wanted and still wants  to eliminate  and decimate, Mobolaji Aluko’s Parthian shot - Cornelius Ignoramus doesn’t know about you,  but I can visualise him smiling as he says to whomsoever it may be : “ May your tribe increase” 

Brother Africanus Horton, may your tribe increase !