Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

Except that I want us to end a culture that sees military men as the best (over civilians) even in a civilian dispensation (I stood against the candidature of OBJ to succeed Abubakir for the same reason) Umars past recommends him as a potential successor to Buhari with the following caveat: 

that he upholds the gentleman's agreement that like Mandela he will not rule for more than one term and that he finds a suitable  civilian candidate from the next zone to rule be adopted as his running mate and groomed to ensure the continuity of the programmes that brought Buhari to power iin the first instance which going by Umars past credentials he (Umar) is expected to pursue with relentless vigour originally expected from PMB.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>

Date: 27/01/2018 07:30 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer  of the Third Force

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Why Dangiwa Umar Should be the Standard-bearer of the Third Force

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

While there is a widening consensus that President Buhari, through his remarkable incompetence and bigotry, is inexorably leading Nigeria to infernal ruination, there isn’t a sufficiently robust discussion on who should replace him. Most politically unaffiliated people who have accepted that the presidency is above Buhari’s mental paygrade simply say the swashbucklers in PDP can’t be his replacement.

It’s time to move beyond that rhetoric. Who is a viable alternative to Buhari? Who has the capacity to steer us away from the path of perdition we’re headed under Buhari?  There is a curious reluctance to confront these questions forthrightly. This reluctance conduces to the flourishing of dishonest and exasperating bromides like “Well, we know Buhari is incompetent, but what is the alternative?” or “Although we agree that Buhari hasn’t lived up to expectation, there is really no alternative to him at this time."

It’s like being led to a pit of hell by a blind guide and saying, “Well, there is no alternative to this guide, so I have to come to terms with my earthly damnation.” That’s pointless, boneheaded self-immolation. Only people with a perverse taste for self-violence reason like that. There ARE several alternatives to Buhari.

In my December 16, 2017 column titled “There Must be an Alternative to Buhari and Atiku,” from which former President Olusegun Obasanjo quoted in his recent press statement, I suggested that we give a thought to Retired Colonel Abubakar Dangiwa Umar.

“How about we try someone else? Off the top of my head, I can think of retired Colonel Dangiwa Umar widely acknowledged as just, fair, principled, hardworking, cosmopolitan, widely traveled, and well-educated,” I Wrote. “I’m not suggesting that he is perfect. He is not. No one is. It is our imperfections that make us human, but we all know what sorts of imperfections ruin nations and its people. I don’t think anyone can accuse him of those sorts of imperfections—sloth, lethargy, corruption, clannishness, incompetence, indecisiveness, etc. He may decline to throw his hat in the ring. But there are many like him.”

I see that there is now a growing conversation around getting Col. Umar interested in a run for the office of president in 2019. But I am also aware that some people have raised concerns about the symbolic burden of his military background, particularly because of justified national anxieties about the domination of our politics by past military people. This is a legitimate concern.

Nevertheless, I believe Umar’s military background is incidental to his qualification for this job. It is the strength of his character, his urbaneness, his record of inclusivity, his contagiously genuine passion for pan-Nigerianism, his stubborn commitment to higher principles, his vast knowledge of the ways of the world, his intellectual curiosity, his unflappability in the face of stress and strain, and his broadmindedness that stand him out and that would potentially make him such a comforting departure from the blight we’re mired in now.

There are many others like him, but I am suggesting him for at least two reasons. One, the national mood appears to favor a northern presidential candidate, perhaps as a consequence of the internal power-sharing arrangements of most political parties. Second, the only northerner, in my estimation, who is “salable” outside his natal region based on his record is Umar.

His uncommonly principled stand against the cancellation of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, which caused him to voluntarily resign his commission from the Nigerian military, will resonate with many voters in the southwest. He fought General Sani Abacha with all his strength when it was extremely risky to do so—and at the cost of libelous smears and threats to his life.

His exemplary, even-handed management of the 1987 religious crisis in Kaduna is still a reference point. "If you win a religious war, you cannot win religious peace,” he famously said. “Since the killing started how many Christians have been converted to Islam? How many Muslims have been converted to Christianity? It is an exercise in futility."

He is one of only a few northern Muslim leaders that northern Christians trust and have confidence in. Although he is a direct descendant of Usman Dan Fodio (his father was Wazirin Gwandu), he is on record as being severely critical of religious bigotry by Muslims, a reason he isn’t popular in his immediate constituency.

He was also one of only a few northerners to recognize the legitimacy of IPOB’s angst and to caution against government’s strong-arm tactics against the group. “One of the swiftest ways of destroying a kingdom is to give preference to one particular tribe over another, or to show favour to one group of people rather than another, and to draw near those who should be kept away and keep away those that should be drawn near,” he wrote in a press statement on August 30, 2017. “Like Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, many Igbos genuinely feel marginalized since they belong to the category of those who gave Mr President only 5% of their votes and appeared to have fallen out of his favour.”

Whatever foibles Umar has, ethnic and religious bigotry aren’t one of them. Given the unprecedented dissension and acrimony that Buhari’s government has instigated in the nation, we need a clearheaded, mild-mannered, even-tempered nationalist to bring us together, to calm frayed nerves, and to inspire us to dream again. I see Umar fitting this role.

He will certainly lose in the northwest and in such northeastern states as Borno, Yobe, Bauchi, and Gombe. In these states, most—certainly not all—people would vote for Buhari even if he were to go on a murdering spree of people there. Those who survive the carnage would still vote for him. But remember that the votes of this bloc were never sufficient to make him president.

If he were to square off against Buhari in a free and fair election in 2019, Umar would handily win the deep south, the southeast, most of the southwest, and the northcentral, except, perhaps, Niger State. In essence, he would reduce Buhari to the ethno-regional champion he had always been, which was reversed because of the purchase his candidacy got in the southwest and the Christian north in 2015 as a consequence of Jonathan’s intolerable misgovernance.

But if Jonathan was clueless, Buhari embodies cluelessness on steroids. Buhari’s cliquishness, insouciance, and down-the-line incompetence are a clear and present danger to Nigeria’s continued existence. Reelecting him in 2019 would be the kiss of death for the nation.

 It's impossible for Nigeria to survive a 4-year extension of Buhari's misrule, which is characterized by rampant injustice, invidious selectivity, insecurity, unexampled nepotism, smartly dressed corruption, sloth, intellectual laziness, hardship, and directionlessness. You know a country is utterly leaderless when it has a president who proudly says “I am not in a hurry to do anything” while the country he supposedly governs burns.

Umar won’t be perfect. He would falter. The intoxication of power may alter him. And maybe not. But the beauty of democracy is that it imbues us with the power to change ineffective leaders. It is the incremental rectification of past electoral mistakes that aggregates to qualitative change in democratic societies. No society makes progress by reelecting transparently incompetent leaders.

Related Article:

There Must be an Alternative to Buhari and Atiku

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperog

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

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[segun ogungbemi]

This alternative choice you have proudly advertised is as deadly as Buhari in the circumstances in which Nigeria is under the yoke of the Fulani herdsmen. 

More importantly,  his genealogical background makes him extremely dangerous considering the jihad of his great ancestor, Othman dan Fodio who attempted to Islamize the country that became Nigeria. His destruction of indigenous cultural values which his followers still teach in the country has caused the under development of Nigeria. 

Furthermore  must we believe ex-sldiers are Nigerian political, economic and social Messiah?  Don't we have millions of credible fellow Nigerians in and outside the country that can save the country from your perceived end of the time,  if Buhari is reelected?  

Finally,  let us stop recycling the same ethinic leaders and look for others with impressive track records. The electorate can be of help if we ask them to make the  choice. 

Segun Ogungbemi 

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Thanks, Segun.

I wonder why this fixation on a particular ethnicity, and people without any or little track record of technocratic leadership.

de tin tire me

toyin

[Adeshina Afolayan]

I think the responses to Kperogi's article have failed to properly understand where he is coming from with his recommendation. I am surprised that, again, we are reading ethnicity into the genuine search for a genuine leader with the capacity to lead Nigeria out of the wood. The real question is: where do we get a good leader? The real answer ought to be: Anywhere! It doesn't matter whether the one we are looking for is Hausa, Fulani, Igbo or Yoruba. We simply need a good leader who can transcend his or her ethnicity and attend to Nigeria. It actually also does not matter if the person is military or civilian. There is nothing in the democratic tenets that forbids anyone from putting him or herself up or from being put up for the office. Indeed, there is nothing in democratic practice that guarantee epistemic certainty about the choice of who we want in the office. Buhari represents a present example of the uncertainty embedded in democracy. But then, isn't that the wonderful thing about it all: Our capacity to deliberate critically on who want to elect, the person's capacity (and not ethnicity), the person's antecedents (and not profession), etc. If Col. Umar has what it takes, do please let's elect him into office. To hell with where he came from! 

    

 

Adeshina Afolayan, PhD
Department of Philosophy
University of Ibadan

+23480-3928-8429

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[Chidi Anthony Opara]

I like Umar, he has progressive tendency, but pray, what solid public office antecedent recommends him to the highest office in the country?

We are making the same mistake we made with Buhari in 2014/2015.

Why do we always equate "integrity"(most times hyped)with ability to deliver in high public offices?

CAO.

[Farooq A. Kperogi]

Thanks, Adesina. It's sometimes hard to believe that this is a forum for academics. However hard I tried, I just couldn't bring myself to engage with the intellectual poverty and self-absorbed pedestrianism of Toyin's and Segun's responses. They ignored the substance of my article and instead allowed themselves to be held hostage by a vulgar, lowbrow obsession with ethnicity, religion, and occupational identity. It's hard not to give up on Nigeria.

Farooq

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperog

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

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[Rex Marinus]

The real question, Dr. Afolayan is, why do you need A  GOOD LEADER? This is the very problem. It is not A GOOD LEADER that is the problem. The problem is the mindset that you need this messianic superman who would like Moses, lead us through a wilderness. In the 21st century, you do not need A GOOD LEADER. You need a well established social system made up of conscious, active, and engaged citizens. You need a legislature of highly aware parliamentarians, who craft law for social good, and among whose assembly are the true representatives of the citizens, to whom they are made by law to account regularly. You need a court and judicial system indifferent to status, or the wiles of A GOOD LEADER. You need a well organized bureaucracy, a civil service selected by pure merit, and motivated to carry out the orders of a well-established government, and in which a duty officer could refuse to carry out illegal assignments, and defy anyone for as long as they are within their rights, and cannot be sanctioned by  A LEADER except by the laws of the establishment. You need a society governed by the rule of law, rather than by A GOOD LEADER. A good leader should never have the kind of power that makes the fortunes of any society depend on their sole "goodness" or not. Such societies that depend on  A GOOD LEADER belong more to the 18th century. We fought for democracy in order to make power diffuse, not to hand it o some "Kabiyesi." We created a republic in order to establish the EQUALITY OF ALL CITIZENS, each of whom should be A CONSCIENTIOUS CITIZEN wherever they stand. And that is what we need: CONSCIENTOUS CITIZENSHIP governed by law, not  A GOOD LEADER who directs the law. I think the political miseducation of the Nigerian intellectual, among them philosophers of all the categories, is the real problem with our society. We need a concert of invested people to drive the dream of a nation. Not  A GOOD LEADER. Stop looking for a messiah. Act from your own corner.

Obi Nwakanma

NB: Happy 65th birthday to Toyin Falola. The eagle feather of the Ozo na Nze - that ancient cult of the one they call Hermes - already stands high on your cap. There's not much more you can do but to keep pouring libation to you CHI. I salute you, Professor.

Obi Nwakanma

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From: 'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2018 9:27 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

[Klalli]

The key question is this. What has the man-Col Umar- done since his retirement from the army in 1993 at age 42-43 to show that he has the capacity for the job of President? And what did he do during his military career to show that he can be an effective president in modern day Nigeria.

-----Original Message-----
From: 'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Farooq has again chosen to entertain  us with a culture of insults while no one  insulted him.

How wise is it to divorce ethnicity from Nigerian politics, even in seeking leadership?

Is that genuine disinterested critique or unrealistic analysis?

Can we avoid the implications of  the current ethnic configuration of Nigerian politics?

Note that Farooq is not presenting Umar bcs he is the best candidate Farooq knows. Farooq is presenting him as a candidate from the Muslim North bcs he sees the current national mood as favouring a Northern Muslim candidate, note that Northern in this context invariably  means Northern Muslim on account of the Muslim dominance of that region, even though there are Northern Christians  too. Farooq also references arrangements among Nigerian political parties.

First, its not true that the national mood favours a Northern Muslim candidate. The Buhari experience, following on much blind hope,  has inspired much disillusionment with that demographic. Secondly, its this regional sharing arrangement that is the root of Boko Haram and the current terrorist crisis through either anger in believing onself to be cheated of the Presidency  or the resolve to maximise its ethnic empowerment potential. While its good to be pragmatic, should we not also seek something that will take us out of this  cycle?

It was the blind effort to ignore such considerations that gave us Buhari while anybody who studied him ought to know that he embodies a clannish mentality.

I am not pleased with what I see as the identification of leadership from the Muslim North  with non-technocratic figures like Buhari, in spite of all his political appointments in a career in which he is knot known for any achievement or even any occupation  outside such appointments, and even Col.Umar, whose quantification to lead Nigeria  as presented by Farooq  centre on  the military man's  integrity and do not include any track record beyond the military.

Integrity and the otyer values farooq ascribes to Umar are good but how far beyond baseline qualifications are they?

We need technocrats. We need to broaden our pool.

In such a large  pool why is it such a person with minimal  qualifications in managing an enterprise that is being invoked?

If he were Yoruba, Igbo or Ijaw would he have stood out?

Please lets not pretend that various Nigerian ethnicities are weighted differently in considering their leadership capacities, a situation that gave us such an educationally and professionally handicapped person as Buhari in the first place. 

Please lets raise our bar and also keep in mind  such issues as the Fulani herdsmen terrorist menace in which most Fulani are either silent or openly or tacitly supporting the terrorist  agenda.

Has Col. Umar  contributed anything on this crisis, for example?

toyin

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Toyin Adepoju,

That opening salvo, “Farooq has again chosen to entertain  us with a culture of insults while no one insulted him” is not necessary or helpful. I’m sure that it is never Farooq’s intention to undermine or insult a fellow Nigerian.

A nation of 192 Million people! Adeshina Afolayan the philosopher says,

“To hell with where he came from”

“It actually also does not matter if the person is military or civilian”

but when I first looked at Dangiwa Umar’s photograph, I involuntarily took offence, saw someone that I thought was surely from the North East of Nigeria, the Lake Chad area, the lack of colour blindness corrupting my reaction , made worse by the info that  he is an ex-military man, and indeed, so is Charles de Gaulle, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Colin Powell, Jerry Rawlings, Ehud Barak,

Also past Nigerian leaders with a military background;

Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi

Yakubu Gowon

Murtala Mohammed

Olusegun Obasanjo

Muhammadu Buhari

Ibrahim Babangida

Sani Abacha

Abdulsalami Abubakar

Muhammadu Buhari

is back  as we all know,

no wolf in sheep’s clothing is

and now Kperogi proposes one more, may be

Dangiwa Umar

The list could be interminable, and why not? “We simply need a good leader who can transcend his or her ethnicity and attend to Nigeria” (saith Adeshina Afolayan)

Otherwise,  I just want to say that I too am in complete accord with Professor Segun Ogungbemi in this thread and with this your latest deep preach for which you are to be congratulated.

Your persistence, perseverance ( consistency) is bearing fruit - paying dividends, this time perhaps because there’s nothing that smells of Islamophobia in this analysis and  that’s why you have got me (a neutralist) on board.  Let’s say we are all Pan-Africanists, from the conscientious North, South, East and West and that’s why we don’t have to be citizens of Nigeria in order to contribute to a discussion of even very sensitive national matters. I imagine that if we were citizens of a future United States of Africa and we were to listen to folks from North Africa forever informing or threatening the rest of us with “ the mood of the country favours a Northerner” even if the masses in East, Central, Western and Southern Africa were to be rock solid against that kind of domination - or imagine the despair if in little Sierra Leone where power is an everlasting tug of war between the North and the South where we have the two largest tribes, we were to hear for the next century, from folks like our Farooq Muhammadus that the everlasting current mood of the country favours a Northerner, preferably with a military background etc (although  we don’t have any religion problem in that country which is at least 60% Muslim and between Independence in 1961  to now  has only once head  Muslim head of State in the person of Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, the first  but not necessarily the last...

So, it’s only now that I understand what  the  Fulani leader means when he says, “no ethnic group can fight us ( the Fulani ) face to face. Any ethnic group that fights us will learn a bitter lesson” - he doesn’t mean that  the Fulani are the bravest, the most warhardy  have most  soldiers in the army etc but that the Fulani and allies are in power and in charge of the Naija military…

Gotta have freedom

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[Toyin Falola]

Obi:

Can you modify your proposal to merge both points? That is, merging good leadership with your notion of active citizenship, and the role of strong institutions.

As you put the foolish Trump into the equation, there is still a space for leadership, a combination of structuralism with realism.

T F

Sent from my iPhone

[Kenneth Harrow]

Obi, I have been wanting to read what you’ve said for years! The Good Leader is like Plato’s enlightened despot. If we depend on the enlightened despot, we then are the sheep.

In Africa, we can say we have the model for the enlightened despot in kagame. He crushes any opposition to his regime, telling the sheep, follow me and everything will be great. Don’t follow me, I will crush you.

The autocrat; the dictator, the powerful big man, all demand seig heil, and they rise like Mugabe, and we all fall in line, fall in place, fall away, until the next one comes along to pronounce, the king is dead, long live the king.

 

Rulers want to rule, but not all insist on obedience and single-mindedness. It is a hard thing for all of us to accept opposition, and the more power we obtain, the more we insist on obedience.

Father, children.

 

And we praise the father, flatter him with beautiful titles, oga, mwalimu (ok, that’s teacher), and so on. Who would be immune from the praises of the people, not believe in his greatness? Our great mwalimu nyerere, who could not admire and love him?

 

Ok, so maybe there are two sides to this coin. We want leaders good enough to be worthy of praise, and we want to be free, free to offer or withhold our praise. Without the freedom the words of praise are hollow. With it, they are the most wonderful songs our ears can hear.

 

In the end, you can believe in plato or not; believe as Bekolo has said, it was aristotle’s plot from the beginning, the plan of the white man from the start of colonialism when he said, be civilized like me. Follow me.

And never said,  you lead, I’ll follow.

If you want to read the latter, read the comaroffs’ book  Theory from the South. I don’t agree entirely, but it is long  been time that the agenda from the south needed to be heard and taught in the North. Who will take the lead in that??

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 06:20
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Obi:

Can you modify your proposal to merge both points? That is, merging good leadership with your notion of active citizenship, and the role of strong institutions.

As you put the foolish Trump into the equation, there is still a space for leadership, a combination of structuralism with realism.

T F

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 30, 2018, at 6:41 AM, Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com> wrote:

The real question, Dr. Afolayan is, why do you need A  GOOD LEADER? This is the very problem. It is not A GOOD LEADER that is the problem. The problem is the mindset that you need this messianic superman who would like Moses, lead us through a wilderness. In the 21st century, you do not need A GOOD LEADER. You need a well established social system made up of conscious, active, and engaged citizens. You need a legislature of highly aware parliamentarians, who craft law for social good, and among whose assembly are the true representatives of the citizens, to whom they are made by law to account regularly. You need a court and judicial system indifferent to status, or the wiles of A GOOD LEADER. You need a well organized bureaucracy, a civil service selected by pure merit, and motivated to carry out the orders of a well-established government, and in which a duty officer could refuse to carry out illegal assignments, and defy anyone for as long as they are within their rights, and cannot be sanctioned by  A LEADER except by the laws of the establishment. You need a society governed by the rule of law, rather than by A GOOD LEADER. A good leader should never have the kind of power that makes the fortunes of any society depend on their sole "goodness" or not. Such societies that depend on  A GOOD LEADER belong more to the 18th century. We fought for democracy in order to make power diffuse, not to hand it o some "Kabiyesi." We created a republic in order to establish the EQUALITY OF ALL CITIZENS, each of whom should be A CONSCIENTIOUS CITIZEN wherever they stand. And that is what we need: CONSCIENTOUS CITIZENSHIP governed by law, not  A GOOD LEADER who directs the law. I think the political miseducation of the Nigerian intellectual, among them philosophers of all the categories, is the real problem with our society. We need a concert of invested people to drive the dream of a nation. Not  A GOOD LEADER. Stop looking for a messiah. Act from your own corner.

Obi Nwakanma

 

NB: Happy 65th birthday to Toyin Falola. The eagle feather of the Ozo na Nze - that ancient cult of the one they call Hermes - already stands high on your cap. There's not much more you can do but to keep pouring libation to you CHI. I salute you, Professor.

Obi Nwakanma

 

From: 'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2018 9:27 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

I think the responses to Kperogi's article have failed to properly understand where he is coming from with his recommendation. I am surprised that, again, we are reading ethnicity into the genuine search for a genuine leader with the capacity to lead Nigeria out of the wood. The real question is: where do we get a good leader? The real answer ought to be: Anywhere! It doesn't matter whether the one we are looking for is Hausa, Fulani, Igbo or Yoruba. We simply need a good leader who can transcend his or her ethnicity and attend to Nigeria. It actually also does not matter if the person is military or civilian. There is nothing in the democratic tenets that forbids anyone from putting him or herself up or from being put up for the office. Indeed, there is nothing in democratic practice that guarantee epistemic certainty about the choice of who we want in the office. Buhari represents a present example of the uncertainty embedded in democracy. But then, isn't that the wonderful thing about it all: Our capacity to deliberate critically on who want to elect, the person's capacity (and not ethnicity), the person's antecedents (and not profession), etc. If Col. Umar has what it takes, do please let's elect him into office. To hell with where he came from! 

    

 

Adeshina Afolayan, PhD
Department of Philosophy
University of Ibadan

+23480-3928-8429

 

On Monday, January 29, 2018 7:33 AM, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:

 

Thanks, Segun.

 

I wonder why this fixation on a particular ethnicity, and people without any or little track record of technocratic leadership.

 

de tin tire me

 

toyin

On 29 January 2018 at 03:11, segun ogungbemi <segun...@gmail.com> wrote:

This alternative choice you have proudly advertised is as deadly as Buhari in the circumstances in which Nigeria is under the yoke of the Fulani herdsmen. 

More importantly,  his genealogical background makes him extremely dangerous considering the jihad of his great ancestor, Othman dan Fodio who attempted to Islamize the country that became Nigeria. His destruction of indigenous cultural values which his followers still teach in the country has caused the under development of Nigeria. 

Furthermore  must we believe ex-sldiers are Nigerian political, economic and social Messiah?  Don't we have millions of credible fellow Nigerians in and outside the country that can save the country from your perceived end of the time,  if Buhari is reelected?  

Finally,  let us stop recycling the same ethinic leaders and look for others with impressive track records. The electorate can be of help if we ask them to make the  choice. 

Segun Ogungbemi 

On Jan 28, 2018 19:15, "Olayinka Agbetuyi" <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Except that I want us to end a culture that sees military men as the best (over civilians) even in a civilian dispensation (I stood against the candidature of OBJ to succeed Abubakir for the same reason) Umars past recommends him as a potential successor to Buhari with the following caveat: 

 

that he upholds the gentleman's agreement that like Mandela he will not rule for more than one term and that he finds a suitable  civilian candidate from the next zone to rule be adopted as his running mate and groomed to ensure the continuity of the programmes that brought Buhari to power iin the first instance which going by Umars past credentials he (Umar) is expected to pursue with relentless vigour originally expected from PMB.

 

 

 

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>

Date: 27/01/2018 07:30 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups .com

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer  of the Third Force

 

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

Why Dangiwa Umar Should be the Standard-bearer of the Third Force

 

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

 

While there is a widening consensus that President Buhari, through his remarkable incompetence and bigotry, is inexorably leading Nigeria to infernal ruination, there isn’t a sufficiently robust discussion on who should replace him. Most politically unaffiliated people who have accepted that the presidency is above Buhari’s mental paygrade simply say the swashbucklers in PDP can’t be his replacement.

 

It’s time to move beyond that rhetoric. Who is a viable alternative to Buhari? Who has the capacity to steer us away from the path of perdition we’re headed under Buhari?  There is a curious reluctance to confront these questions forthrightly. This reluctance conduces to the flourishing of dishonest and exasperating bromides like “Well, we know Buhari is incompetent, but what is the alternative?” or “Although we agree that Buhari hasn’t lived up to expectation, there is really no alternative to him at this time."

[Rex Marinus]

Leadership is the product of the investment we make on process. It is not a form of ordination. The elected president of the Agbekoya farmers Union, or the school captain of the Government College Umuahia; or those appointed from kindergarten as class monitors, are selected, conditioned, trained, and positioned to carry out responsible duties. They are taught to be accountable. They are encouraged to be curious. They are put through all forms of disciplinary process from which they become attuned to their social roles. None of these would be possible if we do not (a) conceive and construct an institutional process, (b) if we do not have methods of transparent selection, (c) if there are no recognizable sanctions. A GOOD LEADER does not emerge from the clouds, or straight out of the wombs, or born to it. There will in fact be nothing to lead if there is no buy-in by the rest. In other words, the primary conditions of a society shapes the character of its highest servants. A good system of leadership is representative and diffuse; it does not concentrate power, agency, or energy in a single source. My argument therefore is quite plain: there is no such thing as "a good leader." Elect Yeshua the Christ president of Nigeria today, with the state of the public mind, and the state of our social institutions, he will fail. One of the reasons why he would fail is also because the structure of the system he would operate, which concentrates enormous powers on persons rather than the institution of public governance is designed from the get-go to corrupt him. There is where we have our greatest problems. Too much power; too little sanction. We have created the myth of the single leader from whom all sources of knowledge and authority; and all designs of our endeavors flow. This leader is expected to be omniscient and without blemish or complication. It is romantic, and really, more suitable to theatre than to reality.

Obi Nwakanma

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2018 11:20 AM

[Farooq A. Kperogi]

Functional systems that are enduring are always, always superior to a leader or leaders, but systems don't emerge magically out of thin air; they need far-sighted, transaction-oriented leaders who have the capacity to rise superior to the dysfunctions of the current system that produced them to bring them about. That is, of course, reformist thinking, which has its own limitations. But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

Farooq

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperog

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 11:12 AM, Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Leadership is the product of the investment we make on process. It is not a form of ordination. The elected president of the Agbekoya farmers Union, or the school captain of the Government College Umuahia; or those appointed from kindergarten as class monitors, are selected, conditioned, trained, and positioned to carry out responsible duties. They are taught to be accountable. They are encouraged to be curious. They are put through all forms of disciplinary process from which they become attuned to their social roles. None of these would be possible if we do not (a) conceive and construct an institutional process, (b) if we do not have methods of transparent selection, (c) if there are no recognizable sanctions. A GOOD LEADER does not emerge from the clouds, or straight out of the wombs, or born to it. There will in fact be nothing to lead if there is no buy-in by the rest. In other words, the primary conditions of a society shapes the character of its highest servants. A good system of leadership is representative and diffuse; it does not concentrate power, agency, or energy in a single source. My argument therefore is quite plain: there is no such thing as "a good leader." Elect Yeshua the Christ president of Nigeria today, with the state of the public mind, and the state of our social institutions, he will fail. One of the reasons why he would fail is also because the structure of the system he would operate, which concentrates enormous powers on persons rather than the institution of public governance is designed from the get-go to corrupt him. There is where we have our greatest problems. Too much power; too little sanction. We have created the myth of the single leader from whom all sources of knowledge and authority; and all designs of our endeavors flow. This leader is expected to be omniscient and without blemish or complication. It is romantic, and really, more suitable to theatre than to reality.

Obi Nwakanma

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>

Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2018 11:20 AM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

Obi:

Can you modify your proposal to merge both points? That is, merging good leadership with your notion of active citizenship, and the role of strong institutions.

As you put the foolish Trump into the equation, there is still a space for leadership, a combination of structuralism with realism.

T F

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 30, 2018, at 6:41 AM, Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com> wrote:

The real question, Dr. Afolayan is, why do you need A  GOOD LEADER? This is the very problem. It is not A GOOD LEADER that is the problem. The problem is the mindset that you need this messianic superman who would like Moses, lead us through a wilderness. In the 21st century, you do not need A GOOD LEADER. You need a well established social system made up of conscious, active, and engaged citizens. You need a legislature of highly aware parliamentarians, who craft law for social good, and among whose assembly are the true representatives of the citizens, to whom they are made by law to account regularly. You need a court and judicial system indifferent to status, or the wiles of A GOOD LEADER. You need a well organized bureaucracy, a civil service selected by pure merit, and motivated to carry out the orders of a well-established government, and in which a duty officer could refuse to carry out illegal assignments, and defy anyone for as long as they are within their rights, and cannot be sanctioned by  A LEADER except by the laws of the establishment. You need a society governed by the rule of law, rather than by A GOOD LEADER. A good leader should never have the kind of power that makes the fortunes of any society depend on their sole "goodness" or not. Such societies that depend on  A GOOD LEADER belong more to the 18th century. We fought for democracy in order to make power diffuse, not to hand it o some "Kabiyesi." We created a republic in order to establish the EQUALITY OF ALL CITIZENS, each of whom should be A CONSCIENTIOUS CITIZEN wherever they stand. And that is what we need: CONSCIENTOUS CITIZENSHIP governed by law, not  A GOOD LEADER who directs the law. I think the political miseducation of the Nigerian intellectual, among them philosophers of all the categories, is the real problem with our society. We need a concert of invested people to drive the dream of a nation. Not  A GOOD LEADER. Stop looking for a messiah. Act from your own corner.

Obi Nwakanma

NB: Happy 65th birthday to Toyin Falola. The eagle feather of the Ozo na Nze - that ancient cult of the one they call Hermes - already stands high on your cap. There's not much more you can do but to keep pouring libation to you CHI. I salute you, Professor.

Obi Nwakanma

---

From: 'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Monday, January 29, 2018 9:27 PM

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[Kenneth Harrow]

Well, vanguardism is one approach—lenin over Trotsky, or over the socialists. Me, I favour socialists, or better still the anarchists of the 30s.

I always took it that the vanguardism of the communists was their worst mistake.

Mistake under stalin

mistake under mao

mistake corrected over and over by Gramsci, by Raymond Williams, by some other notion of consciousness besides that of the elite few who claim to know what the masses don’t know

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

[Farooq A. Kperogi]

Even when I used to be a doctrinaire Marxist, I also struggled with the praxis and moral propriety of vanguardism. As you said, a select elite few can't possibly embody and give expression to the aspirations of the masses of the people. Nevertheless, the masses, who are often diffident and fatalistic, need to be prodded to shake up the system. And there lies the tension in Marxian epistemology: the notion of an inexorable, deterministic imperative that will propel the masses to take their destiny into their own hands and the reality that the masses need a vanguard to raise their consciousness and to help them extirpate an oppressive system. This tensile epistemological stress is at the core of Laclau and Mouffe's notion of the "double void" in Marxist thought.

But wherever one stands in this debate, it would be escapist to imagine that a leaderless, self-propelled change is possible.

Farooq 

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperog

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 4:37 PM, Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu> wrote:

Well, vanguardism is one approach—lenin over Trotsky, or over the socialists. Me, I favour socialists, or better still the anarchists of the 30s.

I always took it that the vanguardism of the communists was their worst mistake.

Mistake under stalin

mistake under mao

mistake corrected over and over by Gramsci, by Raymond Williams, by some other notion of consciousness besides that of the elite few who claim to know what the masses don’t know

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

--

[Rex Marinus]

Reformists will need a "talented tenth," and the revolutionary alternative will depend on a "revolutionary vanguard." Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, C.L.R. James - all the theorists of power and society were clear about it. The "single leader" was the Stalinist heresy that created the profound contradiction of the Russian revolution, and what Stalin did was to embark on a murderous terror campaign that destroyed the vanguard and moved for the kind of power that  concentrated authority on "the leader." CLR James in fact demonstrates the same contradiction in the Black Jacobins, in pointing out that the Haitian revolution was compromised with the rise of Toussaint as the single iconic, and symbolic leader, and subsequently, when the council of Generals chose Dessalines as "the leader." Leadership that regenerates the moral purpose of a society is driven by consillient force, not by "A  GOOD LEADER."

Obi Nwakanma

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Farooq A. Kperogi <farooq...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2018 11:20 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

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[Kenneth Harrow]

Dear Farooq

Wonderful argument. But the simple question, who will educate the educators, remains. Who decides what raising consciousness means? Who determines who knows what serves the interests of the masses?

And finally, are we really talking about where things stand in today’s world, are these the right questions?

I can contemplate a situation like that in Burkina where a popular revolt preventing a military regime from stealing the revolution. In Tunisia, where the arab spring began, a compromise between moderate brotherhood and democratic parties obtains. In Rwanda and Burundi, in two different ways, rule has come out of the barrel of the gun.

 

You can debate s Africa, or even Zimbabwe, which was debated so effectively on this list a year or two ago. Or Libya for that matter. I don’t see resolution of the tension between a people’s perception of their interest and the militant leadership of factions, or especially a govt w guns. The arab spring began as the ideal of a people’s movement, but was crushed by guns, in case after case, most recently Syria, where the people were decimated by the horrific guns and bombs of people willing to see everyone day in order to maintain power in this or that hand.

What has the world come to that the whole world has had to witness truly monstrous people destroy at such great lengths. Even in Iraq, the liberation of the isis controlled cities meant destroying them.

 

I don’t feel any hope that “vanguardism” is what mass movements need. And I hate to admit it, but I know what I oppose in all these cases, but have no hope in there being a solution available to people of good will.

Perhaps you could offer a glimmer of hope in suggesting where a more positive future might be created.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 18:20
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Even when I used to be a doctrinaire Marxist, I also struggled with the praxis and moral propriety of vanguardism. As you said, a select elite few can't possibly embody and give expression to the aspirations of the masses of the people. Nevertheless, the masses, who are often diffident and fatalistic, need to be prodded to shake up the system. And there lies the tension in Marxian epistemology: the notion of an inexorable, deterministic imperative that will propel the masses to take their destiny into their own hands and the reality that the masses need a vanguard to raise their consciousness and to help them extirpate an oppressive system. This tensile epistemological stress is at the core of Laclau and Mouffe's notion of the "double void" in Marxist thought.

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

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[Kenneth Harrow]

Who decides who is in the vanguard and who is out?

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 21:56
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Reformists will need a "talented tenth," and the revolutionary alternative will depend on a "revolutionary vanguard." Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, C.L.R. James - all the theorists of power and society were clear about it. The "single leader" was the Stalinist heresy that created the profound contradiction of the Russian revolution, and what Stalin did was to embark on a murderous terror campaign that destroyed the vanguard and moved for the kind of power that  concentrated authority on "the leader." CLR James in fact demonstrates the same contradiction in the Black Jacobins, in pointing out that the Haitian revolution was compromised with the rise of Toussaint as the single iconic, and symbolic leader, and subsequently, when the council of Generals chose Dessalines as "the leader." Leadership that regenerates the moral purpose of a society is driven by consillient force, not by "A  GOOD LEADER."

Obi Nwakanma

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

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[Kenneth Harrow]

Hi obi

Are you sure about what you are saying? Vanguardism was contested from the start in the arguments against bolshevism. I don’t want to pour over the literature. I started one quick search, and immediately got this. 3CLR James rejection of the vanguard is addressed here http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9781137284761_8#page-1

I bet you could come up with a broad list. I will simply say I am happier with anarchism, a la camus and the 1930s anarchists. I certainly endorse a socialist model, and take Hannah arendt as an ideal, especially in her critique of soviet totalitarianism in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Don’t you agree with her politics there?

And more recently mouffe and laclau also express political views I agree with.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 21:56
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Reformists will need a "talented tenth," and the revolutionary alternative will depend on a "revolutionary vanguard." Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, C.L.R. James - all the theorists of power and society were clear about it. The "single leader" was the Stalinist heresy that created the profound contradiction of the Russian revolution, and what Stalin did was to embark on a murderous terror campaign that destroyed the vanguard and moved for the kind of power that  concentrated authority on "the leader." CLR James in fact demonstrates the same contradiction in the Black Jacobins, in pointing out that the Haitian revolution was compromised with the rise of Toussaint as the single iconic, and symbolic leader, and subsequently, when the council of Generals chose Dessalines as "the leader." Leadership that regenerates the moral purpose of a society is driven by consillient force, not by "A  GOOD LEADER."

Obi Nwakanma

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

--

Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin

USAAfric...@googlegroups.com

[Kenneth Harrow]

One more for the good guys:

“Following his writings, it would seem entirely plausible to claim that Gramsci’s vision was not one of an ultra-centralised oligarchic vanguardist party (although he certainly advocated a high degree of ’’democratic centralism’’) but a broad-based mass socialist party consolidating the most combative and critical elements in society (particularly from the working class), ’’rooted in everyday social reality and linked to a broad network of popular structures (eg. the factory councils and soviets)’’. (8) This is a conception of a dialectical unity of politics and economics, a working thesis compatible with a democratic political strategy, although Gramsci was insufficiently consistent and clear on the question of the relation between the macro-structural prefigurative struggle and micro-level transformation of human relations – destruction of undemocratic authority structures, hierarchy and rigid division of labour, both inside the revolutionary party and the social and work processes. »http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1555

ken

 

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 21:56
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Reformists will need a "talented tenth," and the revolutionary alternative will depend on a "revolutionary vanguard." Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, C.L.R. James - all the theorists of power and society were clear about it. The "single leader" was the Stalinist heresy that created the profound contradiction of the Russian revolution, and what Stalin did was to embark on a murderous terror campaign that destroyed the vanguard and moved for the kind of power that  concentrated authority on "the leader." CLR James in fact demonstrates the same contradiction in the Black Jacobins, in pointing out that the Haitian revolution was compromised with the rise of Toussaint as the single iconic, and symbolic leader, and subsequently, when the council of Generals chose Dessalines as "the leader." Leadership that regenerates the moral purpose of a society is driven by consillient force, not by "A  GOOD LEADER."

Obi Nwakanma

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

--

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USAAfric...@googlegroups.com

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

I like the idea of the concert of invested people but that is not contradictory with the notion of good leadership.  Today the world over (and not just in Nigeria) the phrase good leadership is ubiquitous. Every now and often we read of the meeting of leaders of G7 etc.

The fact that elections are conducted for the post of the leadership of a country presupposes not all leaders are equally blessed with leadership qualities. Some are better than others. The leader who convinces the electorate that they are the best (superlative of 'good') at getting the job done given the available resources gets their nod.  A good leader knows the best way to make use of the talents of a concert of invested people to get the best out of them for the development of the country just in the same way a true concert of invested people knows how to identify a good from sham ones in a mutually self reinforcing paradigm.  This is why some say a people deserve the leader they get.   But A system may be flawed that it produces a not so good leader inadvertently.  Therein lies the answer to the question: why do you need a good leader?

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>

Date: 30/01/2018 06:10 (GMT+00:00)

To: 'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should betheStandard-bearer  of the Third Force

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The real question, Dr. Afolayan is, why do you need A  GOOD LEADER? This is the very problem. It is not A GOOD LEADER that is the problem. The problem is the mindset that you need this messianic superman who would like Moses, lead us through a wilderness. In the 21st century, you do not need A GOOD LEADER. You need a well established social system made up of conscious, active, and engaged citizens. You need a legislature of highly aware parliamentarians, who craft law for social good, and among whose assembly are the true representatives of the citizens, to whom they are made by law to account regularly. You need a court and judicial system indifferent to status, or the wiles of A GOOD LEADER. You need a well organized bureaucracy, a civil service selected by pure merit, and motivated to carry out the orders of a well-established government, and in which a duty officer could refuse to carry out illegal assignments, and defy anyone for as long as they are within their rights, and cannot be sanctioned by  A LEADER except by the laws of the establishment. You need a society governed by the rule of law, rather than by A GOOD LEADER. A good leader should never have the kind of power that makes the fortunes of any society depend on their sole "goodness" or not. Such societies that depend on  A GOOD LEADER belong more to the 18th century. We fought for democracy in order to make power diffuse, not to hand it o some "Kabiyesi." We created a republic in order to establish the EQUALITY OF ALL CITIZENS, each of whom should be A CONSCIENTIOUS CITIZEN wherever they stand. And that is what we need: CONSCIENTOUS CITIZENSHIP governed by law, not  A GOOD LEADER who directs the law. I think the political miseducation of the Nigerian intellectual, among them philosophers of all the categories, is the real problem with our society. We need a concert of invested people to drive the dream of a nation. Not  A GOOD LEADER. Stop looking for a messiah. Act from your own corner.

Obi Nwakanma

NB: Happy 65th birthday to Toyin Falola. The eagle feather of the Ozo na Nze - that ancient cult of the one they call Hermes - already stands high on your cap. There's not much more you can do but to keep pouring libation to you CHI. I salute you, Professor.

Obi Nwakanma

---

From: 'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2018 9:27 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

[Rex Marinus]

Ken, I do not subscribe to anarchism, and what Lenin calls its "politics of despair." As for the question of the "Vanguard," I used it in the broadest sense of the formation of structures of representation that would steer the mass of each society. And who decides the Vanguard? Each society already; through the means by which people organize themselves. Traditionally in my Igbo society, it was the society of first born sons and daughters; the guild groups; the age grades, etc. 

Obi Nwakanma

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2018 3:13 PM
To: usaafricadialogue

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

I don"t in particular subscribe to your own snide frequent references to professor of Buckingham Palace English either.  It demeans and trivializes debates when we use objections and disagreements in past debates to label participants in subsequent debates.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>

Date: 30/01/2018 11:12 (GMT+00:00)

To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should betheStandard-bearer  of the Third Force

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[Kenneth Harrow]

Dear obi, the anarchism I am alluding to was the political movement of the 30s, especially in the Spanish civil war; not anarchism in general. It is a leftist, non-vanguardist movement, embraced by camus.

It sounds as though your notion of the vanguard is a version of the elite? Not saying it is a bad thing, but I like more the ways movements gather together people to collectively move rather than being directed from above.

I know at the level of the nation the collectivity is too large, but there is still a large difference at play here.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday 31 January 2018 at 14:45
To: ken harrow <har...@msu.edu>, usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Ken, I do not subscribe to anarchism, and what Lenin calls its "politics of despair." As for the question of the "Vanguard," I used it in the broadest sense of the formation of structures of representation that would steer the mass of each society. And who decides the Vanguard? Each society already; through the means by which people organize themselves. Traditionally in my Igbo society, it was the society of first born sons and daughters; the guild groups; the age grades, etc. 

Obi Nwakanma

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2018 3:13 PM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

One more for the good guys:

“Following his writings, it would seem entirely plausible to claim that Gramsci’s vision was not one of an ultra-centralised oligarchic vanguardist party (although he certainly advocated a high degree of ’’democratic centralism’’) but a broad-based mass socialist party consolidating the most combative and critical elements in society (particularly from the working class), ’’rooted in everyday social reality and linked to a broad network of popular structures (eg. the factory councils and soviets)’’. (8) This is a conception of a dialectical unity of politics and economics, a working thesis compatible with a democratic political strategy, although Gramsci was insufficiently consistent and clear on the question of the relation between the macro-structural prefigurative struggle and micro-level transformation of human relations – destruction of undemocratic authority structures, hierarchy and rigid division of labour, both inside the revolutionary party and the social and work processes. »http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1555

ken

 

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 21:56
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Reformists will need a "talented tenth," and the revolutionary alternative will depend on a "revolutionary vanguard." Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, C.L.R. James - all the theorists of power and society were clear about it. The "single leader" was the Stalinist heresy that created the profound contradiction of the Russian revolution, and what Stalin did was to embark on a murderous terror campaign that destroyed the vanguard and moved for the kind of power that  concentrated authority on "the leader." CLR James in fact demonstrates the same contradiction in the Black Jacobins, in pointing out that the Haitian revolution was compromised with the rise of Toussaint as the single iconic, and symbolic leader, and subsequently, when the council of Generals chose Dessalines as "the leader." Leadership that regenerates the moral purpose of a society is driven by consillient force, not by "A  GOOD LEADER."

Obi Nwakanma

 

 

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

I'm backing Toy in and Oga Cornelious in saying that we should stick to not leaving the ball to kick the leg no matter what we think of the merits or demerits of opponents arguments. In Jubrins case I had wanted to say that before Moses timely intervention that he (Jubrin) had made an opposing argument elsewhere.  I had wanted to say he might be airing an opposing but dominant view from a part of Nigeria to which he is more connected so that he might not be accused of just k ow towing to the dominant thread in the forums discussion without presenting dissenting views.  It's enough to show merits and demerits of a particular argument without an attack on the person of the presenter or his group interests.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>

Date: 30/01/2018 07:19 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should betheStandard-bearer  of the Third Force

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Farooq has again chosen to entertain  us with a culture of insults while no one  insulted him.

How wise is it to divorce ethnicity from Nigerian politics, even in seeking leadership?

Is that genuine disinterested critique or unrealistic analysis?

Can we avoid the implications of  the current ethnic configuration of Nigerian politics?

Note that Farooq is not presenting Umar bcs he is the best candidate Farooq knows. Farooq is presenting him as a candidate from the Muslim North bcs he sees the current national mood as favouring a Northern Muslim candidate, note that Northern in this context invariably  means Northern Muslim on account of the Muslim dominance of that region, even though there are Northern Christians  too. Farooq also references arrangements among Nigerian political parties.

First, its not true that the national mood favours a Northern Muslim candidate. The Buhari experience, following on much blind hope,  has inspired much disillusionment with that demographic. Secondly, its this regional sharing arrangement that is the root of Boko Haram and the current terrorist crisis through either anger in believing onself to be cheated of the Presidency  or the resolve to maximise its ethnic empowerment potential. While its good to be pragmatic, should we not also seek something that will take us out of this  cycle?

It was the blind effort to ignore such considerations that gave us Buhari while anybody who studied him ought to know that he embodies a clannish mentality.

I am not pleased with what I see as the identification of leadership from the Muslim North  with non-technocratic figures like Buhari, in spite of all his political appointments in a career in which he is knot known for any achievement or even any occupation  outside such appointments, and even Col.Umar, whose quantification to lead Nigeria  as presented by Farooq  centre on  the military man's  integrity and do not include any track record beyond the military.

Integrity and the otyer values farooq ascribes to Umar are good but how far beyond baseline qualifications are they?

We need technocrats. We need to broaden our pool.

In such a large  pool why is it such a person with minimal  qualifications in managing an enterprise that is being invoked?

If he were Yoruba, Igbo or Ijaw would he have stood out?

Please lets not pretend that various Nigerian ethnicities are weighted differently in considering their leadership capacities, a situation that gave us such an educationally and professionally handicapped person as Buhari in the first place. 

Please lets raise our bar and also keep in mind  such issues as the Fulani herdsmen terrorist menace in which most Fulani are either silent or openly or tacitly supporting the terrorist  agenda.

Has Col. Umar  contributed anything on this crisis, for example?

toyin

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[Farooq A. Kperogi]

Ken,

I was going to write that. Anarchism has suffered what linguists call pejoration, that is, a semantic shift for the worse. It shares that fate with words such as "rhetoric" (which is now understood in popular usage as mere fluff), sophistry (which used to mean the art of persuading convincingly), obsequious (which went from "obedient"--with a tone of approval-- before the 16th century to "showing respect for the dead" in the 16th century, and now to servile), etc. The other day, I was talking to someone I thought had some familiarity with Marxist theory about anarcho-syndicalism and he thought the concept meant workers' lawlessness!

Farooq

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperog

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 4:01 PM, Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu> wrote:

Dear obi, the anarchism I am alluding to was the political movement of the 30s, especially in the Spanish civil war; not anarchism in general. It is a leftist, non-vanguardist movement, embraced by camus.

It sounds as though your notion of the vanguard is a version of the elite? Not saying it is a bad thing, but I like more the ways movements gather together people to collectively move rather than being directed from above.

I know at the level of the nation the collectivity is too large, but there is still a large difference at play here.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday 31 January 2018 at 14:45
To: ken harrow <har...@msu.edu>, usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Ken, I do not subscribe to anarchism, and what Lenin calls its "politics of despair." As for the question of the "Vanguard," I used it in the broadest sense of the formation of structures of representation that would steer the mass of each society. And who decides the Vanguard? Each society already; through the means by which people organize themselves. Traditionally in my Igbo society, it was the society of first born sons and daughters; the guild groups; the age grades, etc. 

Obi Nwakanma

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2018 3:13 PM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

One more for the good guys:

“Following his writings, it would seem entirely plausible to claim that Gramsci’s vision was not one of an ultra-centralised oligarchic vanguardist party (although he certainly advocated a high degree of ’’democratic centralism’’) but a broad-based mass socialist party consolidating the most combative and critical elements in society (particularly from the working class), ’’rooted in everyday social reality and linked to a broad network of popular structures (eg. the factory councils and soviets)’’. (8) This is a conception of a dialectical unity of politics and economics, a working thesis compatible with a democratic political strategy, although Gramsci was insufficiently consistent and clear on the question of the relation between the macro-structural prefigurative struggle and micro-level transformation of human relations – destruction of undemocratic authority structures, hierarchy and rigid division of labour, both inside the revolutionary party and the social and work processes. »http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1555

ken

 

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 21:56
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Reformists will need a "talented tenth," and the revolutionary alternative will depend on a "revolutionary vanguard." Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, C.L.R. James - all the theorists of power and society were clear about it. The "single leader" was the Stalinist heresy that created the profound contradiction of the Russian revolution, and what Stalin did was to embark on a murderous terror campaign that destroyed the vanguard and moved for the kind of power that  concentrated authority on "the leader." CLR James in fact demonstrates the same contradiction in the Black Jacobins, in pointing out that the Haitian revolution was compromised with the rise of Toussaint as the single iconic, and symbolic leader, and subsequently, when the council of Generals chose Dessalines as "the leader." Leadership that regenerates the moral purpose of a society is driven by consillient force, not by "A  GOOD LEADER."

Obi Nwakanma

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

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[Kenneth Harrow]

You’re right, Farooq. The appended word is syndicalists. Which in French means labor unions.

The labor unions are finished, as representatives of the working class, the proletariat.

I can’t say that my attachment to their ideals apply to this world any more. The ones I read, in the past, and loved for their political positions begin with mouffe and laclau, their book on socialism and hegemony. All the other best sellers since, which I’ve read about, etc., well, they don’t make me want to join their movement. Like everyone I’ve been totally taken by Agamben and his signature text on bare life. I align myself as a servant of derrida: he is my ideal, and politically as well as theoretically. His spectres of marx shows the ideal of marx. I share that with Judith butler’s work, also, on the holocaust, on dispossession etc.

Those are the theorists I most admire, and as you can see, their work is all getting old by now.

Whatever leadership I would want to imagine, well, it would be less important than the spirit of justice that animates these thinkers’ work. I’d have to include spivak among them as well, someone like derrida animated by the ideals of Marxism, but hardly adherents to strict ideologies that would use notions like vanguardism any more.

 

I agree with all those on this list who speak to the need to create systems, not to find the perfect leader. The systems that address the people’s needs in a just way will generate their own successful leaders. After all, as humans we aren’t particularly different; but we live under radically different ideological systems, from those like the American one where “justice and freedom for all” is a joke, a sad joke; and others where those notions have a chance of attaining some facsimile of hegemony. We always idealize those places too much, but everyone I know expects that in most respects the Canadians have a more just and humane society than we do; and for a long time the scandanavians were held up as ideal.

I measure the stature of a nation’s values by how well they accept refugees, and the u.s. today is very far down on the list—but so too is japan or most other wealthy Asian countries. Sweden, though not as beneficent as Germany, might be actually more beneficent when measured by the size of the population vs the total number of refugees. Cornelius can tell us.

Denmark qualifies as terrible.

 

And although the placement of refugees into camps is not the same as attempting to accept them as citizens, you have to consider the enormous size of the refugee populations in Tanzania, Uganda, kenya, and out of Africa in Jordan, Lebanon, and turkey.

 

There are 63 million refugees in the world today.

They are not sitting in their homes, typing into their computers, with the luxuries of those of us exchanging words about ideal political systems as theoretical constructs.

I hope all of you are well, and that whatever system we might imagine together as ideal will include taking care of them as much as taking care of our own.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday 31 January 2018 at 18:14
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Ken,

 

I was going to write that. Anarchism has suffered what linguists call pejoration, that is, a semantic shift for the worse. It shares that fate with words such as "rhetoric" (which is now understood in popular usage as mere fluff), sophistry (which used to mean the art of persuading convincingly), obsequious (which went from "obedient"--with a tone of approval-- before the 16th century to "showing respect for the dead" in the 16th century, and now to servile), etc. The other day, I was talking to someone I thought had some familiarity with Marxist theory about anarcho-syndicalism and he thought the concept meant workers' lawlessness!

 

Farooq

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday 31 January 2018 at 14:45
To: ken harrow <har...@msu.edu>, usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Ken, I do not subscribe to anarchism, and what Lenin calls its "politics of despair." As for the question of the "Vanguard," I used it in the broadest sense of the formation of structures of representation that would steer the mass of each society. And who decides the Vanguard? Each society already; through the means by which people organize themselves. Traditionally in my Igbo society, it was the society of first born sons and daughters; the guild groups; the age grades, etc. 

Obi Nwakanma

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2018 3:13 PM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

One more for the good guys:

“Following his writings, it would seem entirely plausible to claim that Gramsci’s vision was not one of an ultra-centralised oligarchic vanguardist party (although he certainly advocated a high degree of ’’democratic centralism’’) but a broad-based mass socialist party consolidating the most combative and critical elements in society (particularly from the working class), ’’rooted in everyday social reality and linked to a broad network of popular structures (eg. the factory councils and soviets)’’. (8) This is a conception of a dialectical unity of politics and economics, a working thesis compatible with a democratic political strategy, although Gramsci was insufficiently consistent and clear on the question of the relation between the macro-structural prefigurative struggle and micro-level transformation of human relations – destruction of undemocratic authority structures, hierarchy and rigid division of labour, both inside the revolutionary party and the social and work processes. »http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1555

ken

 

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 21:56
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Reformists will need a "talented tenth," and the revolutionary alternative will depend on a "revolutionary vanguard." Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, C.L.R. James - all the theorists of power and society were clear about it. The "single leader" was the Stalinist heresy that created the profound contradiction of the Russian revolution, and what Stalin did was to embark on a murderous terror campaign that destroyed the vanguard and moved for the kind of power that  concentrated authority on "the leader." CLR James in fact demonstrates the same contradiction in the Black Jacobins, in pointing out that the Haitian revolution was compromised with the rise of Toussaint as the single iconic, and symbolic leader, and subsequently, when the council of Generals chose Dessalines as "the leader." Leadership that regenerates the moral purpose of a society is driven by consillient force, not by "A  GOOD LEADER."

Obi Nwakanma

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

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[Salimonu Kadiri]

Farooq has not insulted anybody, he only followed the established politics of zoning Presidential candidate in Nigeria as laid down in 1999 by the PDP. At present, Muhammadu Buhari, a northern APC is the President whose body language indicates that he is going to seek re-election in 2019. PDP the major opposition party at moment has zoned its 2019 Presidential candidate to the North. http://punchng.com/2019-seast-pdp-endorses-zoning-of-presidency-to-north/ 

2019: S’East PDP endorses zoning of Presidency to North ... punchng.com Ihuoma Chiedozie, Enugu The Peoples Democratic Party in the South-East, on Monday, endorsed the party’s zoning arrangement, which zoned the office...

When zoning of Presidential candidate was introduced in 1999 by the PDP, the only person who opposed zoning, for being undemocratic, was the late Abubakar Rimi who, as a member of PDP in the 2003 presidential election, applied for nomination against Olusegun Obasanjo, but without success. It was PDP zoning arrangement between North and South that threw up Imoru Musa Yar'Adua as the President and Goodluck Ebele Jonathan as his vice after Obasanjo's eight years tenure in 2007. As fate had it, Yar'Adua died in 2010 and Jonathan succeeded him as substantive President to complete the four years presidential joint ticket with Yar'Adua. When the 2011 Presidential election was approaching, Northern members of the PDP averred that the PDP zoning arrangement did not permit Jonathan to contest the 2011 Presidential election, as he was only to complete the four years tenure on joint ticket with the late Yar'Adua and after which a Northerner would be President until 2015. The common consensus among Nigerians was that the PDP constitution was inferior to the Nigerian Constitution and that Jonathan was entitled to contest the 2011 Presidential election. He contested and won only to be incompetent and inefficient in office. Despite that, he sought re-election in 2015 against the will of most members of the PDP in the North who were clamouring for power to return to the North. On the other hand supporters of Jonathan, such as Oluwatoyin Adepoju, did not object to power returning to the North on zoning principle rather, they demanded that Jonathan, as a Southerner, should be allowed the constitutional concession of a four-year two terms tenure as president before returning power to the North. The advocates of zoning in that wise had assumed that any Presidential candidate fielded by the PDP would always win and did not envisage that any political party could pick a candidate from any part of the country and win. However, Jonathan contested and lost the 2015 Presidential election to Buhari. Farooq, like most Nigerian intellectuals, has never seen zoning, on which he based his suggestion that Dangiwa Umar should be the Presidential candidate of the third force in 2019, as undemocratic. Although Benue, Kogi, Kwara and Plateau States are normally grouped into the North, having been part of the defunct Northern Region, Farooq picked his Presidential candidate among the grade 1 Northerners (a Fulani). In 1960s, during the time of Ahmadu Bello, northerners were divided into three different grades, of which the Fulani were grade 1, Hausa were grade II and the rest especially people from nowadays Benue, Kogi, Kwara and Plateau States were grade III. That the choice of Farooq's Presidential candidate is a grade I Northerner is not surprising but that he is  a former military Colonel. 

Our experience about Nigerian military rulers is not good. The Nigerian military is supposed to contain the most disciplined people in Nigeria but our presumed disciplined military rulers of Nigeria have demonstrated the highest level of indiscipline and have perpetrated the greatest economic plunder ever Nigeria. Out of 57 years of Nigeria's independence (?) the military or former military men have governed Nigeria for 46 years. With the exception of Yakubu Gowon, who fought three years war without incurring debt for Nigeria and whose standard of living today is obviously within his legitimate income, all our military rulers plundered Nigeria's treasury and are today stupendously rich. Since all Nigerian military men are foxy, they should not be trusted to rule Nigeria anymore. We have had too many military rulers in Nigeria that is why the country is where we are all complaining bitterly about today. Thus, Colonel Dangiwa Umar is disqualified as an ex-military man to lead the government of Nigeria.

Nigeria does not need a Santa Cruz as a leader but someone who accepts to be a servant and not a master of the people. The country is not in need of good and kind leaders. A servant leader treats all citizens alike but a good and kind leader discriminates and distributes favours among citizens. A servant leader is a competent person that obeys the laws and the constitution of the country. Section 15(4) of the current Nigerian Constitution says, "The state shall foster a feeling of belonging and involvement among the various people of the Federation to the extent that loyalty to the nation shall override sectional loyalties." Section 15 (4) is augmented by Section 15 (5) thus, "The State shall abolish all corrupt practices and abuse of power." The implication of Section 15 (4) & (5) is that it does not matter which part of the country a Nigerian leader comes from or which ethnic language a Nigerian government leader speaks, all citizens shall feel sense of belonging to the country by the competent manner in which the leader governs the country. We concentrate so much on the tribe and religion of Nigerian leaders and officials instead of focussing on their competence in fulfilling the obligations assigned to, and required of, their offices. For instance, during the eight years tenure of Olusegun Obasanjo as President of Nigeria, he and his officials spent $16 billion to generate and distribute electricity to Nigerians but the result we have is that he generated and distributed darkness to all Nigerians. That negative result should not be blamed on the tribe or religious affiliation of Obasanjo and his officials but to their incompetence. It is primitive to decide in advance that the President should come from a particular part of the country regardless of if more competent people are available elsewhere in the country. By zoning the Presidency and appointing government officials on ethnic quotas, Nigeria is governed by position seeking tribalists and academic harlots in lieu of competent people. We cannot, on the principal of zoning and quota system, wear a fingerless leper with boxing gloves to go and fight for world heavy weight championship!

S. Kadiri      

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Till: usaafricadialogue
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

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[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

Interesting analysis.  Shall we then substitute good leaders for competent leaders since some of us thing in this context they are interchangeable?

Second although competence should be the overriding factor does the zoning system not assume that if carefully searched there is no zone without competent people if the competence of rivals to leadership positions is only marginally above such others?

As much as the doctrine of competence is unassailable, in the case of such marginal excellence what is to prevent a group tinkering with the electoral system to ensure only one of its own is continuously returned?

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

The idea of leadership by consillient force is ok in theory on paper but leadership to undertake collective projects(which essentially is what a nation is about) entails division of labour into camps and someone has to take responsibility for the work of each camp and answer for its successes and failures.  The nearest I got to the collective leadership in a pluralistic polity is my suggestion of collective presidency of geo-political interests in which there is a rotational transient coordinating figure.  As sioon as the term of office of this group expires another group succeeds them

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

Date: 31/01/2018 16:08 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should betheStandard-bearer  of the Third Force

Hi obi

Are you sure about what you are saying? Vanguardism was contested from the start in the arguments against bolshevism. I don’t want to pour over the literature. I started one quick search, and immediately got this. 3CLR James rejection of the vanguard is addressed here http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9781137284761_8#page-1

I bet you could come up with a broad list. I will simply say I am happier with anarchism, a la camus and the 1930s anarchists. I certainly endorse a socialist model, and take Hannah arendt as an ideal, especially in her critique of soviet totalitarianism in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Don’t you agree with her politics there?

And more recently mouffe and laclau also express political views I agree with.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 21:56
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Reformists will need a "talented tenth," and the revolutionary alternative will depend on a "revolutionary vanguard." Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, C.L.R. James - all the theorists of power and society were clear about it. The "single leader" was the Stalinist heresy that created the profound contradiction of the Russian revolution, and what Stalin did was to embark on a murderous terror campaign that destroyed the vanguard and moved for the kind of power that  concentrated authority on "the leader." CLR James in fact demonstrates the same contradiction in the Black Jacobins, in pointing out that the Haitian revolution was compromised with the rise of Toussaint as the single iconic, and symbolic leader, and subsequently, when the council of Generals chose Dessalines as "the leader." Leadership that regenerates the moral purpose of a society is driven by consillient force, not by "A  GOOD LEADER."

Obi Nwakanma

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

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[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

I agree with most of what you say here. This in part was what I meant by the quotation "the cyst'in the system.  Would Nigerians cooperate to exounge the cyst?  I spoke in a separate vein of the UK Royal family in which Her Majesty now has a prospective black daughter-in-law who is  already being attacked by another racist member of the public.  That is leadership by example.  That is one of the qualities of a good leader in imperfect human societies

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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From: Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>

Date: 30/01/2018 17:22 (GMT+00:00)

To: Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>, usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should betheStandard-bearer  of the Third Force

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Leadership is the product of the investment we make on process. It is not a form of ordination. The elected president of the Agbekoya farmers Union, or the school captain of the Government College Umuahia; or those appointed from kindergarten as class monitors, are selected, conditioned, trained, and positioned to carry out responsible duties. They are taught to be accountable. They are encouraged to be curious. They are put through all forms of disciplinary process from which they become attuned to their social roles. None of these would be possible if we do not (a) conceive and construct an institutional process, (b) if we do not have methods of transparent selection, (c) if there are no recognizable sanctions. A GOOD LEADER does not emerge from the clouds, or straight out of the wombs, or born to it. There will in fact be nothing to lead if there is no buy-in by the rest. In other words, the primary conditions of a society shapes the character of its highest servants. A good system of leadership is representative and diffuse; it does not concentrate power, agency, or energy in a single source. My argument therefore is quite plain: there is no such thing as "a good leader." Elect Yeshua the Christ president of Nigeria today, with the state of the public mind, and the state of our social institutions, he will fail. One of the reasons why he would fail is also because the structure of the system he would operate, which concentrates enormous powers on persons rather than the institution of public governance is designed from the get-go to corrupt him. There is where we have our greatest problems. Too much power; too little sanction. We have created the myth of the single leader from whom all sources of knowledge and authority; and all designs of our endeavors flow. This leader is expected to be omniscient and without blemish or complication. It is romantic, and really, more suitable to theatre than to reality.

Obi Nwakanma

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2018 11:20 AM

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

Agreed!

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>

Date: 30/01/2018 19:48 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should betheStandard-bearer  of the Third Force

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

Functional systems that are enduring are always, always superior to a leader or leaders, but systems don't emerge magically out of thin air; they need far-sighted, transaction-oriented leaders who have the capacity to rise superior to the dysfunctions of the current system that produced them to bring them about. That is, of course, reformist thinking, which has its own limitations. But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

Farooq

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperog

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 11:12 AM, Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Leadership is the product of the investment we make on process. It is not a form of ordination. The elected president of the Agbekoya farmers Union, or the school captain of the Government College Umuahia; or those appointed from kindergarten as class monitors, are selected, conditioned, trained, and positioned to carry out responsible duties. They are taught to be accountable. They are encouraged to be curious. They are put through all forms of disciplinary process from which they become attuned to their social roles. None of these would be possible if we do not (a) conceive and construct an institutional process, (b) if we do not have methods of transparent selection, (c) if there are no recognizable sanctions. A GOOD LEADER does not emerge from the clouds, or straight out of the wombs, or born to it. There will in fact be nothing to lead if there is no buy-in by the rest. In other words, the primary conditions of a society shapes the character of its highest servants. A good system of leadership is representative and diffuse; it does not concentrate power, agency, or energy in a single source. My argument therefore is quite plain: there is no such thing as "a good leader." Elect Yeshua the Christ president of Nigeria today, with the state of the public mind, and the state of our social institutions, he will fail. One of the reasons why he would fail is also because the structure of the system he would operate, which concentrates enormous powers on persons rather than the institution of public governance is designed from the get-go to corrupt him. There is where we have our greatest problems. Too much power; too little sanction. We have created the myth of the single leader from whom all sources of knowledge and authority; and all designs of our endeavors flow. This leader is expected to be omniscient and without blemish or complication. It is romantic, and really, more suitable to theatre than to reality.

Obi Nwakanma

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>

Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2018 11:20 AM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

Obi:

Can you modify your proposal to merge both points? That is, merging good leadership with your notion of active citizenship, and the role of strong institutions.

As you put the foolish Trump into the equation, there is still a space for leadership, a combination of structuralism with realism.

T F

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 30, 2018, at 6:41 AM, Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com> wrote:

The real question, Dr. Afolayan is, why do you need A  GOOD LEADER? This is the very problem. It is not A GOOD LEADER that is the problem. The problem is the mindset that you need this messianic superman who would like Moses, lead us through a wilderness. In the 21st century, you do not need A GOOD LEADER. You need a well established social system made up of conscious, active, and engaged citizens. You need a legislature of highly aware parliamentarians, who craft law for social good, and among whose assembly are the true representatives of the citizens, to whom they are made by law to account regularly. You need a court and judicial system indifferent to status, or the wiles of A GOOD LEADER. You need a well organized bureaucracy, a civil service selected by pure merit, and motivated to carry out the orders of a well-established government, and in which a duty officer could refuse to carry out illegal assignments, and defy anyone for as long as they are within their rights, and cannot be sanctioned by  A LEADER except by the laws of the establishment. You need a society governed by the rule of law, rather than by A GOOD LEADER. A good leader should never have the kind of power that makes the fortunes of any society depend on their sole "goodness" or not. Such societies that depend on  A GOOD LEADER belong more to the 18th century. We fought for democracy in order to make power diffuse, not to hand it o some "Kabiyesi." We created a republic in order to establish the EQUALITY OF ALL CITIZENS, each of whom should be A CONSCIENTIOUS CITIZEN wherever they stand. And that is what we need: CONSCIENTOUS CITIZENSHIP governed by law, not  A GOOD LEADER who directs the law. I think the political miseducation of the Nigerian intellectual, among them philosophers of all the categories, is the real problem with our society. We need a concert of invested people to drive the dream of a nation. Not  A GOOD LEADER. Stop looking for a messiah. Act from your own corner.

Obi Nwakanma

NB: Happy 65th birthday to Toyin Falola. The eagle feather of the Ozo na Nze - that ancient cult of the one they call Hermes - already stands high on your cap. There's not much more you can do but to keep pouring libation to you CHI. I salute you, Professor.

Obi Nwakanma

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[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

I remember WS used similar arguments in the 70s when being pilloried by the Campus socialists for not lending his art to the cause of the proletarian struggle.  He first asked what his detractors were doing while waiting for the revolution by the masses and then asked whether the intellectuals were actually part of the masses.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>

Date: 31/01/2018 00:45 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should betheStandard-bearer  of the Third Force

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

Even when I used to be a doctrinaire Marxist, I also struggled with the praxis and moral propriety of vanguardism. As you said, a select elite few can't possibly embody and give expression to the aspirations of the masses of the people. Nevertheless, the masses, who are often diffident and fatalistic, need to be prodded to shake up the system. And there lies the tension in Marxian epistemology: the notion of an inexorable, deterministic imperative that will propel the masses to take their destiny into their own hands and the reality that the masses need a vanguard to raise their consciousness and to help them extirpate an oppressive system. This tensile epistemological stress is at the core of Laclau and Mouffe's notion of the "double void" in Marxist thought.

But wherever one stands in this debate, it would be escapist to imagine that a leaderless, self-propelled change is possible.

Farooq 

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperog

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 4:37 PM, Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu> wrote:

Well, vanguardism is one approach—lenin over Trotsky, or over the socialists. Me, I favour socialists, or better still the anarchists of the 30s.

I always took it that the vanguardism of the communists was their worst mistake.

Mistake under stalin

mistake under mao

mistake corrected over and over by Gramsci, by Raymond Williams, by some other notion of consciousness besides that of the elite few who claim to know what the masses don’t know

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

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[Kenneth Harrow]

I can think of modified forms of group leadership. Modified. The u.s. supreme court is one. The house and senate are others. The leaders in all these institutions are essentially managers that organize the presentation of business to the bodies, not bosses. The president is the boss, but even he or she has councils in all important areas, like the army, which is another example.

I wonder, ola, if the reality is that no one rules alone; that in almost every case in African leadership there is an accompanying set of figures in power who participate in the actual function of governing.

There are autocrats, but even Mugabe ruled through important bodies of officials, mostly in the army.

In the end, when the army seizes power, the risks of autocracy are increased.

I’d like to know if there is consensus among the members of this list on which Nigerian leaders since independent they most admire.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

[Mobolaji Aluko]

Olayinka Agbetuyi:

Yes, intentional collective leadership, not the magical emergence of a Messiahnic leader from a revolutionary vanguard movement is what we need in Nigeria.  It is indeed the best we can hope for, otherwise we will continue unhappily for a long time along this rickety bridge to erwhon. 

Nigeria has to be restructured along federal geopolitical state-grouped  zones with equal status relative to a strategically - devolved center -  if we are to escape from our present morass. 

A unicameral Parliamentary system at all levels, with a Prime Minister at the Federal level, Premiers at the zonal levels, Governors at the state level and Chairmen at the LG levels should be considered.  At the Center, a National  Presidium should be considered working alongside the partisan Prime Minister.  The Presidium should be  composed of one person per zone, elected from among the  elected Governors of each zone.  Each person so elected to the Presidium shall then renounce partisan politics immediately, and be replaced by his or her deputy at the state level.   The Parliament shall always act in consultation with the Presidium. 

The Federal Government should be vested with no more than 10% outright ownership (eminent domain) of land on each state, with states owning the rest.  The federal and state levels should be fully empowered to fully exploit the land, sea and water properly designated under their control. The Federal Government should have taxation rights and redistributive responsibilities  on the Zones only, and the Zones  similar rights and responsibilities on the states and local governments. 

To elevate local government input and reduce cost of governsnce, the state executives should be composed only of local council elected officials.  The Governor may be obtained through a second election among those who won local council Chairmanship elections, for example. 

Reduction of cost of governance,  local control of resources and governance as close as possible to the People should be constant watchword. 

Systems development, collective leadership and timely accountability in governance,  not Messiahs, are what will guarantee national development in Nigeria. 

And there you have it. 

Bolaji Aluko

On Thursday, February 1, 2018, Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

The idea of leadership by consillient force is ok in theory on paper but leadership to undertake collective projects(which essentially is what a nation is about) entails division of labour into camps and someone has to take responsibility for the work of each camp and answer for its successes and failures.  The nearest I got to the collective leadership in a pluralistic polity is my suggestion of collective presidency of geo-political interests in which there is a rotational transient coordinating figure.  As sioon as the term of office of this group expires another group succeeds them

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

Date: 31/01/2018 16:08 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should betheStandard-bearer  of the Third Force

Hi obi

Are you sure about what you are saying? Vanguardism was contested from the start in the arguments against bolshevism. I don’t want to pour over the literature. I started one quick search, and immediately got this. 3CLR James rejection of the vanguard is addressed here http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9781137284761_8#page-1

I bet you could come up with a broad list. I will simply say I am happier with anarchism, a la camus and the 1930s anarchists. I certainly endorse a socialist model, and take Hannah arendt as an ideal, especially in her critique of soviet totalitarianism in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Don’t you agree with her politics there?

And more recently mouffe and laclau also express political views I agree with.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 21:56
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Reformists will need a "talented tenth," and the revolutionary alternative will depend on a "revolutionary vanguard." Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, C.L.R. James - all the theorists of power and society were clear about it. The "single leader" was the Stalinist heresy that created the profound contradiction of the Russian revolution, and what Stalin did was to embark on a murderous terror campaign that destroyed the vanguard and moved for the kind of power that  concentrated authority on "the leader." CLR James in fact demonstrates the same contradiction in the Black Jacobins, in pointing out that the Haitian revolution was compromised with the rise of Toussaint as the single iconic, and symbolic leader, and subsequently, when the council of Generals chose Dessalines as "the leader." Leadership that regenerates the moral purpose of a society is driven by consillient force, not by "A  GOOD LEADER."

Obi Nwakanma

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

--

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[Segun Ogungbemi]

What is the minimum education of those to be elected to perform the leadership role of the country? 

Sent from my iPhone 

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[Kenneth Harrow]

Bolaji’s ideas are great.

As for educational requirements, I am not convinced that they signify much of anything. the American example is clear proof that an advanced degree doesn’t mean anything.

We should vote for people because they advance ideas we agree with. And as they do not govern alone, any decent ruler will have counsellors of merit in all departments.

Knowing how to rely on others who are expert in their fields is what matters.

Consider jfk who brought in the brightest and the best

Also consider, why is it that military men have become rulers so often? What is their education? Learning how to wage war, and wrap around it the flag of patriotism—a catastrophe in the long run. Maybe we should have a rule that military cannot serve except as advisors for national security.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Segun Ogungbemi <segun...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Friday 2 February 2018 at 03:41
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be the Standard-bearer of the Third Force

 

What is the minimum education of those to be elected to perform the leadership role of the country? 

Sent from my iPhone 

On Feb 2, 2018, at 5:36 AM, Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

Olayinka Agbetuyi:

 

Yes, intentional collective leadership, not the magical emergence of a Messiahnic leader from a revolutionary vanguard movement is what we need in Nigeria.  It is indeed the best we can hope for, otherwise we will continue unhappily for a long time along this rickety bridge to erwhon. 

 

Nigeria has to be restructured along federal geopolitical state-grouped  zones with equal status relative to a strategically - devolved center -  if we are to escape from our present morass. 

 

A unicameral Parliamentary system at all levels, with a Prime Minister at the Federal level, Premiers at the zonal levels, Governors at the state level and Chairmen at the LG levels should be considered.  At the Center, a National  Presidium should be considered working alongside the partisan Prime Minister.  The Presidium should be  composed of one person per zone, elected from among the  elected Governors of each zone.  Each person so elected to the Presidium shall then renounce partisan politics immediately, and be replaced by his or her deputy at the state level.   The Parliament shall always act in consultation with the Presidium. 

 

The Federal Government should be vested with no more than 10% outright ownership (eminent domain) of land on each state, with states owning the rest.  The federal and state levels should be fully empowered to fully exploit the land, sea and water properly designated under their control. The Federal Government should have taxation rights and redistributive responsibilities  on the Zones only, and the Zones  similar rights and responsibilities on the states and local governments. 

 

To elevate local government input and reduce cost of governsnce, the state executives should be composed only of local council elected officials.  The Governor may be obtained through a second election among those who won local council Chairmanship elections, for example. 

 

Reduction of cost of governance,  local control of resources and governance as close as possible to the People should be constant watchword. 

 

Systems development, collective leadership and timely accountability in governance,  not Messiahs, are what will guarantee national development in Nigeria. 

 

And there you have it. 

 

 

Bolaji Aluko

On Thursday, February 1, 2018, Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

The idea of leadership by consillient force is ok in theory on paper but leadership to undertake collective projects(which essentially is what a nation is about) entails division of labour into camps and someone has to take responsibility for the work of each camp and answer for its successes and failures.  The nearest I got to the collective leadership in a pluralistic polity is my suggestion of collective presidency of geo-political interests in which there is a rotational transient coordinating figure.  As sioon as the term of office of this group expires another group succeeds them

 

 

 

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

Date: 31/01/2018 16:08 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should betheStandard-bearer  of the Third Force

 

Hi obi

Are you sure about what you are saying? Vanguardism was contested from the start in the arguments against bolshevism. I don’t want to pour over the literature. I started one quick search, and immediately got this. 3CLR James rejection of the vanguard is addressed here http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9781137284761_8#page-1

I bet you could come up with a broad list. I will simply say I am happier with anarchism, a la camus and the 1930s anarchists. I certainly endorse a socialist model, and take Hannah arendt as an ideal, especially in her critique of soviet totalitarianism in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Don’t you agree with her politics there?

And more recently mouffe and laclau also express political views I agree with.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 21:56
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Reformists will need a "talented tenth," and the revolutionary alternative will depend on a "revolutionary vanguard." Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, C.L.R. James - all the theorists of power and society were clear about it. The "single leader" was the Stalinist heresy that created the profound contradiction of the Russian revolution, and what Stalin did was to embark on a murderous terror campaign that destroyed the vanguard and moved for the kind of power that  concentrated authority on "the leader." CLR James in fact demonstrates the same contradiction in the Black Jacobins, in pointing out that the Haitian revolution was compromised with the rise of Toussaint as the single iconic, and symbolic leader, and subsequently, when the council of Generals chose Dessalines as "the leader." Leadership that regenerates the moral purpose of a society is driven by consillient force, not by "A  GOOD LEADER."

Obi Nwakanma

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

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[Mobolaji Aluko]

Segun:

There should be no minimum requirement of educational qualification.  

However, they must demonstrate minimum competency in reading, writing and comprehension-  unassisted- communications in the official language  ( or languages)  of the Nigerian Constitution, from filling their election forms to understanding laws of the land to participating in debates to being able to understand simple  financial statements.  Clearly completely stark illiterates will not qualify, but self taught people without degrees like thermometers could. 

And there you have it

Bolaji Aluko 

[Salimonu Kadiri]

Besides being competent, the leader should be honest. The vast majority of Nigerian electorates are illiterates and not fluent in spoken or written English which is the official language of governance. A competent but dishonest leader will only exploit the ignorance of the illiterate masses to enrich himself. A competent but dishonest leader will declare his assets and keep it secrete from his citizens.

Zoning is a means of satisfying an individual infantile hunger for power and wealth without responsibility. When the PDP zoned their Presidential candidate to the South, and in reality to the Southwest, in 1999, the power brokers of that party were not looking for the most competent person from the South or Southwest. Olusegun Obasanjo was imposed as a Presidential candidate of the PDP. Even though he eventually won the presidential election, he lost not only in his own ward but in the entire South West where his opponent, Olu Falae, of the ANPP won. The people of the Southwest did not consider Obasanjo competent to be President of Nigeria despite zoning and they have been proved right. The electorates shall always decide who is a competent leader where the level of literacy and political consciousness is high.

The electoral system in Nigeria is a farce. In 2000, the sum of $240 million was appropriated to procure Identity cards to Nigerians. It was intended that the ID-cards would be used in the Presidential elections of 2003. However, the money budgeted for the ID-Cards was shared between Nigerian officials and the French company's personel that got the contract to produce and issue ID-cards to Nigerians. In France, the company officials that partook in the sharing of the $240 million were tried and jailed while their Nigerian collaborators were never tried. While it is assumed that PVC and Card Readers would finally settle the problems of over-voting, ghost voters and rigging of elections, the Supreme Court of Nigeria in the case of Rivers State declared the substitution of manual voters register with Permanent Voter Card and Card readers illegal and unconstitutional. That is why Nigeria is governed by the most cynical leaders for whom the lives  of citizens do not matter at all.

S.Kadiri  

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Ämne: Re: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

[Salimonu Kadiri]

Bolaji,

In support of yours underneath, this is what the constitution says about the qualification required to contest for the office of President in Nigeria. Section 131 (d) He must have been educated up to at least School Certificate level or its equivalent. What Section 131(d) means is clarified in Part IV, article 318(1) of the Constitution thus : (a) a Secondary School Certificate or its equivalent, or Grade II Teacher's Certificate, the City and Guilds Certificate; or (b) Education up to Secondary Certificate level; or (c) Primary Six School Leaving Certificate or its equivalent and (i) Service in the public or private sector in the Federation in any capacity acceptable to the Independent National Electoral Commission for a minimum of ten years, and (ii) Attendance at courses and training in such institutions as may be acceptable to the Independent National Electoral Commission for periods totalling up to a minimum of one year, and (iii) the ability to read, write, understand and communicate in the English language to the satisfaction of the Independent National Electoral Commission; and (d) any other qualification acceptable by the Independent National Electoral Commission.

S. Kadiri 

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[Mobolaji Aluko]

SK:

Reading these sections more closely, it is clear that the minimum qualification is INEC's determination of a candidate's competency that is equivalent to attendance/education (but not necessarily passing) Primary Six certificate.  When we couple those sections with age requirement, only my stark illiterate would be excluded by INEC.  Section 131(d) should be replaced by Section 318c(iii) and d, and Section 318 deleted.

Bolaji Aluko

On Friday, February 2, 2018, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Bolaji,

In support of yours underneath, this is what the constitution says about the qualification required to contest for the office of President in Nigeria. Section 131 (d) He must have been educated up to at least School Certificate level or its equivalent. What Section 131(d) means is clarified in Part IV, article 318(1) of the Constitution thus : (a) a Secondary School Certificate or its equivalent, or Grade II Teacher's Certificate, the City and Guilds Certificate; or (b) Education up to Secondary Certificate level; or (c) Primary Six School Leaving Certificate or its equivalent and (i) Service in the public or private sector in the Federation in any capacity acceptable to the Independent National Electoral Commission for a minimum of ten years, and (ii) Attendance at courses and training in such institutions as may be acceptable to the Independent National Electoral Commission for periods totalling up to a minimum of one year, and (iii) the ability to read, write, understand and communicate in the English language to the satisfaction of the Independent National Electoral Commission; and (d) any other qualification acceptable by the Independent National Electoral Commission.

S. Kadiri 

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Low level formal education for a politician, particularly in a national leader, is dangerous.

With all due respect to Ken, I cant see what justification he has for his view on the unnecessity of higher education in a national leader, using the US as an example.

What is his point of reference? Trump? Trump is US  President largely bcs of the dismay of those who are appalled that   those who were once slaves have now become US President.

That is the only factor that can explain how such a social misfit, a person still living in pre-modern, pre-civil rights, pre-women's rights, Jim Crow America can be US President, a profile which if cultivated by a Hillary or by its equivalent by a Black person , such a one would not even approach the party's primaries as candidate bcs their candidacy would have long exploded.

As for those Nigerians who are arguing that there should be no minimum educational criteria to become a President of Nigeria, I wonder what their motivation is.

This approach is being presented by a man with a PhD in his field, a professor and former vice-chancellor.

He is being supported by another person who makes a great show of scholarship while engaging in debates on social media.

In observing such aberrations, I become afraid.

Does this mean that these people think the years they spent in formal education were a waste of time?

Don't they understand that formal education is the primary means by which the fruits of civilization are passed on to succeeding generations?

Has Bolaji Aluko not learnt his lessons from  his endorsement of the disaster that is Buhari, a person, who, till tomorrow, evidence of his acquisition of the most basic educational qualifications remains in doubt, the same Buhari whom Aluko triumphantly informed readers when the controversy broke out pre-2015 elections that there are those who will vote for Buhari even if he presents only a NEPA [ electricity] bill?

Are we not seeing the fruition of a  NEPA bill Presidency?

The constitution that Salimonu invokes in support of such ideas, Salimonu being a person  whose effort at a scholarly style of debate demonstrates a commitment to Western education even as he tries to denigrate that system on account of a confused understanding of the relationship between education and development , is a constitution understood by some, me included, as created by a particular group in Nigeria's ruling class at the time it was written, the little educated Northern Muslim military rulers in the time of Abdulsalami Abubakar,  a group, who, through the massacre their predecessors instituted in the July 1966 counter coup had eliminated the well educated Southern Nigerian officers in the higher ranks of the army and placed themselves in the forcefully vacated positions. Anyone who wants better education on the restructuring of the hierarchy of the Nigerian army through the counter coup may see Max Siollun's  day by day account of the coup in Oil, Politics and Violence: Nigeria's Military Cup Culture 1966-1976. 

Nigeria's Muslim North is facing a crisis of identity between the radical Islam imported by the conquest of the region by Usman dan Fodio's jihad and the contemporary global dominance of Western education, a crisis faced by Islamic civilization generally particularly since the vacuum created by the sharp decline of the once globally leading intellectual achievements of that civilization has not been filled, the power centres of the civilization preferring to focus on restrictive religious policies that help sustain their elite in power rather than  contribute to crafting  new modes of religio-intellectual consensus that will galvanize the creativity of their people. Identification with policies demonstrating the disjunctions of such a conflicted and confused environment whose leaders mask their failures in developing their people through desperate hunger for political power is a recipe for continuous failure   while the rest of the world is metaphorically and literally  heading for the moon.

The mindset that denigrates formal education, particularly on account of the dysfunctionality of Nigeria, is one we must grow out of. It is possible to be self educated. Most of my education is self education and I once fought not to enter the university bcs I wanted to focus on self education.Most people, however, do not know how to educate themselves.  The low level of knowledge penetration in Nigeria, knowledge penetration being the readiness of access to knowledge, as different from information-knowledge being the  selection,  distillation, interpretation and reframing of  information-on account of a very poor public library culture, depression in presence of bookshops on account of economic constraints, the dominance of public space by questionable religious propaganda and low level of disposable income among other poor economic indices,  makes self education particularly challenging in contemporary Nigeria.

If the APC coalition had had Tinubu or another Yoruba leader of similar capacity as President and someone without the crude mindset of a Buhari as vice president, we wont have the horrors we are having today. Tinubu and his AC group belong to what is known in Yoruba as the culture of  'laju', to have one's eyes open, one's perceptions expanded to embrace new developments in society and work with them for one's advancement, in other words, a commitment to modernity. 

Tinubu is castigated in the belief that he amasses wealth for himself through  cornering Lagos State contracts, but people are not saying the projects in question are not functional, whether its bridges and their toll gates or refuse disposal. People criticise the inadequacies in Ambode's artistic projects in Lagos but no one can deny the potency of the impact of the entire project. Some claim Fayemi lost in Ekiti bcs his policies were not grassroots oriented, but such critics begin from the understanding that he instituted and executed some lofty policies. Critics claim that Aregbesola's opon imo educational strategy in Osun did not achieve much bcs of the corrupt mode of its execution, but the concept itself remains a model to be examined for ease of access to educational materials in a depressed economy like Nigeria.

I am yet to read anyone from the Muslim North demonstrating an appreciative response to the GEJ govt's initiative on almajiri schools in that region, an initiative meant to educate the socially disenfranchised almajiri, the best I have read from the region being a newspaper's comprehensive survey based on visiting the schools across the region but concluding in a belittling  assertion that contradicts their own investigations. 

Ken states that  "We should vote for people because they advance ideas we agree with. And as they do not govern alone, any decent ruler will have counsellors of merit in all departments.  Knowing how to rely on others who are expert in their fields is what matters".

How 

​does one reach the level of appreciating one's mental limitations, leading to relying on others who know better than one?​ How does one become a person who can cultivate and appreciate ideas?

We have a NEPA bill/tissue paper [another paradigm used to describe the Buhari scenario] secondary school leaving certificate national ruler, ​whose is not known for any efforts at self advancement outside govt appointments, whose default mode is to resort to military strategy after being handed a historic opportunity on the backs of the hopes of numerous people across the nation, signalling his primary orientation by loading the security agencies and the electoral body with his ethno/religious kins, delaying  appointments of ministers for six months, claiming  ministers are are 'noise makers', 

and

​eventually making ​

himself minister of petroleum, 

​appointing a journalist ethno-religious kinsman  with a masters in journalism as minister of education who then proceeds to sack the vice chancellors of the universities created by the GEJ govt, replacing them mostly with ethno-religious figures, most of them from one state, Kano, while the greatest achievement of the national ruler is that of trying to create a national empire for his Fulani ethnicity by backing a nation wide  terrorist initiative  using nomadic Fulani cattle herders as a launching pad.

That is what you get from a NEPA bill President, a banana republic. 

Aluko and Salimonu might think they are in the same world with Ken Harrow whose  "As for educational requirements, I am not convinced that they signify much of anything" is of little significance, apologies to Ken,  in an environment in which the default education for a Presidential candidate seems to have become  an Ivy League education, a educational sector with perhaps the world's most selective admissions rates, and sporting stupendous facilities, in a general national environment rich in possibilities for education, from libraries to museums to bookshops, to free courses from various quarters,  an environment in which the Presidents from Trump  to Bush snr are Ivy League graduates. Not only is self education much more a likelihood in the US, the system is so strong it can compensate for the inadequacies of leaders, as the struggles of the Trump era indicate, much better than in Nigeria, where politicians are like gods.

In a world more complex and more dynamic than ever, its vital to emphasize significant education in how to deal with the dynamics of such a world.

​thanks

toyin​

 ​

[Mobolaji Aluko]

My People:

I had an omission in my earlier submission.  In addition to no minimum educational qualification - I am yet to see one in any Constitution in the world - I would add that psychological and mental stability tests be applied to all political candidates.   Had it not been impractical, I would have have added a  test of  how many lies, black and white,  the candidate has told in his or her life prior to the candidacy. 

As a PhD and former VC, I prefer a stable-minded low-education-certified honest fellow - yes, who can properly discern a NEPA bill - to a mad and dishonest PhD, more degreed than a thermometer.  

And there you have it. 

Bolaji Aluko 

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

In 2008, the NEPA bill certificate character declared at the Abacha memorial in Kano that Sani Abacha, known as Nigeria's most kleptocratic ruler, ex-Nigerian military dictator and employer of the NEPA bill ex-soldier from a related ethno-religious enclave, had not stolen Nigeria's money, even as the ex-dictator's loot was being returned to Nigeria by Switzerland. The same NEPA bill character, in the company of another ex-military dictator from the same enclave, Ibrahim Babangida, also declared that former military leaders, namely themselves and the departed Abacha, should not be probed by subsequent administrations.

The most robust challenge to this confetti of lies and espirit de corps among past rulers of questionable character came from the AC, then led by Bola Tinubu, in a response delivered by the party's spokesman Lai Mohammed, who called out them out in their self serving anti-nation rhetoric.

Come 2013-2015.  A group badly wanted to unseat then President Jonathan and needed a platform through which to do so. One of the major platforms employed by that group was the merger of Tinubu's AC and the CPC run by the NEPA bill holder. The same Lai Mohammed who had earlier been used to castigate the NEPA bill man now became the spokesman of the group and remains so till today.

The ACN's earlier critique of Buhari was swallowed up in the effort to position Buhari agst GEJ by presenting Buhari as a corruption free anti-corruption crusader. How can a person who has denied a blatant case of corruption at the highest levels and has never revised his earlier declaration even in the face of a constant stream of new revelations over the years on the same subject, a case made more ignominious by the fact that the Obasanjo led govt described itself, according to the head of state, as caving in to the enormous financial powers the Abacha family had amassed from Nigeria's  money  by cutting a deal with them in which they were allowed to keep a good part of the loot since the head of state claimed the govt could not compete with the family's financial muscle in fighting the case in court, yet the same character who denied this massive theft by Abacha was  being positioned in 2013-2015  as an anti-corruption crusader with the spirited assistance of his former critics, Bola Tinubu and his AC, using as spokesman the same Lai Mohammed who had been used to deliver the rebuttal of 2008.

Close to the 2015 election, the NEPA bill man is described as denying his own earlier assertions in a tv interview.

Some years into the regime of the NEPA bill man, the fictions unravelled decisively to the point that 'Lai Muhammed' now became known on social media as 'Lie Muhammed', the 'one whose name is most apt'.

Why are people at times so ready to work with political soldiers of fortune or are so easily taken in  by them?

thanks

toyin

--

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

Well said.  I find the proposed method of electing governors quite novel and more accountable to the people and the system architectonically more integrated

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

--

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[Samuel Zalanga]

A major concern that I have is what Hamza Alavi calls "The overdeveloped postcolonial state." I am amaze at the level of uneven development in Nigeria. across communities and social groups. If anyone interacts with people at the grassroots level, one conclusion one will arrive at is we have the form of the modern state, but we have not truly cultivated the ethos and the cultural orientation and processes that are supposed to back it up. Modern institutions do not exist in vacuum. Of course it is the choice of Nigerians whether they want modern institutions. 

For instance, the average Nigeria on the street knows that Nigeria has a constitution and that maybe knows that he or she has fundamental human rights or rights as a citizen, but this is not deeply rooted in his or her consciousness. Indeed many state elites only feel constrained by the constitution on special occasions but otherwise they behave has members of the nobility. One cannot based on my travel by road across Nigeria say that the police officer on the road is immediately or consciously restrained by the sense of constitutional and citizenship rights. On our way to Olabisi Onabanjo University last week where Professor Falola was conferred an honorary doctorate degree, the police officer told our drive that he should be careful otherwise he will do him "Shege" on the sport. Shege is a Hausa word meaning bastard but he meant just showing the guy that he has power in my view.

If African countries decide to have the modern state, they can probably craft their own modern state or decide to adopt any western modern with some adaptation. I am pragmatic about this. But as Charles Tilly makes it clear in "Coercion, State and Capital" we need to be careful about the historical process through which the modern state came into existence in the West, shaping the nature and functioning of the institution, and not just import the form and ignore what made the state work in the West in spite of still existing problems. This reminds me about the Melian Dialogue in Thucydides' "Justice and Power." Power mediate the construction and functioning of institutions. How this works in practice is an open -ended question.

Finally, in whatever discussion about restructuring Nigeria, I would want to see justice included as a central part of that discussion. Nigerians rarely talk about justice openly. Decentralization from historical experience is not an automatic solution for uplifting the common person's life without justice. In development studies, there are many cases where local elites are dubious and oppressive and on the surface they may request for decentralization because it allows them have their fiefdom. One sees this in the implementation of New Deal policies in the United States, where because the implementation is in the hands of local authorities, racist county officials in the South made sure that it was implemented in such a way as to marginalized Blacks even though the wording of the New Deal was race neutral. 

After reading "When Affirmative Action Was White" I became skeptical about assuming the automatic working of decentralized institutions for the benefit of ordinary people. I do not see any reason to assume that looking at local institutions in Nigeria whether at the state or local government levels, the elites are passionate about justice for the common person. Tradition alone not seriously interrogated can be a basis of shutting up a segment of people at the local level. 

Thus I conclude if Nigerians do not confront the justice question, difficult and complex and it is, they can restructure the country anyway they want and still have a situation where the common human being is ignored.  And this will be so even if every family has a state of its own, if the justice question is not addressed. I remember John Mero producing a documentary about curriculums that work in American public schools. At the end he found out that you can have an excellent curriculum but if the teachers are not committed, it will fail. On the other hand, you can have a curriculum that is poorly designed but because of the commitment and determination of the teachers, they will make it work better than the school that has an excellently designed curriculum. 

One of the reasons why neoliberal reforms in Malaysia worked better than in Nigeria is because then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad concluded that economic reforms will not work without appropriate changes in socio-cultural values and ways of thinking. His scolding of his people would sound for some as racist but he was firm that one cannot adopt western type institutions and technology without making appropriate socio-cultural adjustments. This is a very sensitive issue but westerners too did not find it easy to make the transition from medieval culture to modern society if one reads their history carefully. I must note also that in spite of saying that, Prime Minister Mohamad is a proud leader of the developing world, affirming what he thought was useful from non-Western heritage, eg, learning from East Asia. He was pragmatic.  Interestingly Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India made this interesting observation very early in India's post independence struggle for development. He argues that what developing countries need is cultivating: 

“a scientific and technological society."

He adds, what such a society needs to understand is that when: " It employs new techniques whether it is in the farm, in the factory or in transport. Modern technique is not a matter of just getting a tool and using it. Modern technique follows modern thinking. You can’t get hold of a modern tool and have an ancient mindset”

Institutions too are like techniques or processes for mediating human affairs to increase efficiency and depending on the complexity and level of development of a society, new institutions may be needed. Whether African countries in the name of nationalism return to their precolonial roots or culture or adopt modern institutions pragmatically, in my assessment, the challenge is not easy either way. There are no short cuts to progress according to one scholar.

For Tilly, institutions are shaped by balance of power and not necessarily the whims of a political messiah, which is consistent with an earlier analysis or point someone made in this thread. But building state institutions from the bottom-up is not easy and time consuming. We need political education such as the type late Professor  Wangari Mathai started in Kenya which made the government felt threatened. The political education classes she initiated really started making an impact on ordinary people and while she did not claim to be Freireian in terms of using the "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" as an educational method, there are elements of such an approach as one can see that the people through dialog figured out the truth about their social reality instead of being just lectured about important issues. There is a PBS documentary film on this.

Samuel

Samuel Zalanga, Ph.D.

Bethel University

Department of Anthropology, Sociology and Reconciliation Studies,

Bethel University, 3900 Bethel Drive, #24, Saint Paul, MN 55112.

Office Phone: 651-638-6023

[Salimonu Kadiri]

Generally, a high level of education which is disconnected from applied science, engineering, industry and economics is useless and dangerous as we have seen in all spectra of governance in Nigeria.

Talking about educational qualification of the head of government of a nation, it is only in Nigeria that the constitution states the minimum qualification required to be a President. This is because the framer of the constitution is aware that the imposed language of governance, English, is a second language to all the ethnic groups in Nigeria and which majority of Nigerians are excluded/prevented from learning. In the US constitution, no stipulated educational qualification is required to become the President of the country because the language of governance, English, is the first language to the citizens in every spectrum of life. Fluency in spoken and written English language, that we in Nigeria regard as being educated, is not considered as such in the US. Let us look at the example of Andrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States from 1865-1869. He was a tailor's apprentice and an illiterate when he got married at the age of 18 to the 16 year old Eliza Mc Cardle, a daughter of a local shoemaker, in 1827. Andrew Johnson's wife taught him how to read and write. He was elected a mayor, member of Tennessee House of Representatives, member of the US Congress where he served for ten years from 1843 to 1853. He was Tennessee governor from 1853-1857, US senator 1857-1862, and military governor of his occupied Tennessee during the civil war between 1862 and 1865. On 4th March 1865, he became Vice President to Abraham Lincoln in his second term and became the substantive President 42 days later when Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865. This illustrates the fact that innate intelligence is the only required qualification for any person to be a leader of a government.

As for those Nigerians who are arguing that there should be no minimum educational criteria to become a President of Nigeria, I wonder what their motivation is - Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju.  

The minimum education required to be a President of Nigeria has already been stated in the Nigerian constitution and it is you, Mr. Adepoju, who considers it too low without telling us which minimum qualification you think an aspiring Nigerian President should possess and in which subject(s) or profession. Debunking the 1999 Constitution as amended, you wrote, "The Constitution that Salimonu invokes in support of such ideas, ....... is a constitution understood by some, me included, as created by a particular group in Nigeria's ruling class at the time it was written, the little educated Northern Muslim military rulers in the time of Abdulsalami Abubakar, a group, who, through the massacre of their predecessors instituted in the July 1966 counter coup had eliminated the well educated Southern Nigerian Officers in the high ranks of the army and placed themselves in the forcefully vacated positions."  

The 1999 Constitution did not arise as a consequence of the July 1966 coup. It was Olusegun Obasanjo, a southerner that handed over power, with a new constitution, to the civilian regim of  Shehu Shagari and Alex Ekwueme as President and Vice President respectively in 1979. The military seized power again in 1983 and by 1999 Abdulsalami Abubakar handed over power, with a new constitution, to a civilian regim of Olusegun Obasanjo and Atiku Abubakar as President and vice President respectively. Of almost 19 years of civilian rule since 1999, Southerners have governed Nigeria under the 1999 Constitution for 14 years. During the fourteen years rule of Presidents Obasanjo and Jonathan, the constitution has been amended several times and I am not aware of any initiated bill from both Obasanjo and Jonathan to the National Assembly requesting for the amendment of the 1999 constitution to the effect of raising the required minimum educational qualification to be President of Nigeria. In fact, many Southerners contributed to the emergence of the 1999 constitution which, of course, is not perfect but will still serve the basic needs of Nigerians if it is followed. Section 16 (2c) of the 1999 Constitution says, "The State shall direct its policy towards ensuring: that suitable and adequate shelter, suitable and adequate food, reasonable national minimum living wage, old-age care and pensions, and unemployment, sick benefits and welfare of the disabled are provided for all citizens." Section 18(3) of the 1999 Constitution states : Government shall provide free, compulsory and universal primary education; free secondary and University Education, and free adult literary programme, as and when practicable. Nineteen years after the 1999 constitution became operational the above provisions of the constitution are still not practicable to accomplish while those Western educated officials that are assigned the duties of fulfilling the aims of the Constitution have become billionaires by swindling the funds meant for various projects. The UN Millenium Development Goal, adopted by Obasanjo's government in 2000 planned that by year 2015, every child of school age in Nigeria should have access to primary school education. According to recent UNESCO information, 10.6 million Nigerian children of school age are, as of date, out of school.

You accused me wrongly of denigrating Western Education, whereas what I have questioned is, why our over-remunerated  Western educated officials in the MDAs of Nigeria have not been as productive as their counterparts in the West. The government of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, for instance, contained more academic degree holders than any government in the world during his tenure. He, himself the leader of the government, is a PhD holder. Jonathan's Minister of Power was Bath Nnaji, a Professor of Robotics Engineering from the US. The Chief Executive Officer Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission was Dr. Sam Amadi. We all know that the technological invention of electricity and power generation were completed by Robert Boyle, Benjamin Franklin, Michael Faraday and a host of others a long time ago. None of the aforementioned inventors was a PhD holder or a Professor. However, Nigeria's Professor and Doctor of power generation could not generate and distribute electricity to Nigerians. Their efforts were concentrated on converting the national grid into their private property. The infighting between the gluttonous hyenas over how to share the national asset in the power sector led to the sack of Professor Bath Nnaji towards the end of 2012. In his place came another Professor, Chinedu Ositadinma Ndubuisi Nebo, who during his screening told the Senate that God who helped him to drive away demons when he was VC at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. would help him drive away the demons at the then Power Holding Corporation of Nigeria (PHCN). The Professor generated and distributed darkness before the end of his tenure at which he presided over the slaughter of PHCN into many acronyms, such as TCN, GENCO, DISCO and privatised them into the hands of government officials and their cronies. What the Professor received as severance package when he left office has not been made public but Sam Amadi, the Chairman of NERC, gave himself Four-hundred million naira severance allowance for regulating darkness. As you know every household in Nigeria generates its own electricity through noisy and poison fuming generators imported privately by the western educated managers and saboteurs of our national grid. This is what our Western educated officials in all Nigeria's MDAs do. Our Western educated and thieves of public funds have publicly been identified, arraigned and granted bail by western educated corrupt judges who adjourn cases indefinitely. In some cases, Nigeria's western educated thieving class with their conspiring dreg of hustling lawyers and judges get permanent court's injunctions forbidding prosecutorial agencies from arresting, detaining, interrogating and prosecuting them. In view of the above, I am not the one denigrating western education but it is the western educated Nigerian officials that are denigrating themselves by their actions and behaviours in office.

S. Kadiri

 

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[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

Oga Aluko & Oga Kadiri! 

 I beg you both o. Please  don't break my ribs with western educated generators of darkness and dishonest candidates with more degress than a thermometer jare....

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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Date: 03/02/2018 21:14 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer  of the Third Force

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My People:

I had an omission in my earlier submission.  In addition to no minimum educational qualification - I am yet to see one in any Constitution in the world - I would add that psychological and mental stability tests be applied to all political candidates.   Had it not been impractical, I would have have added a  test of  how many lies, black and white,  the candidate has told in his or her life prior to the candidacy. 

As a PhD and former VC, I prefer a stable-minded low-education-certified honest fellow - yes, who can properly discern a NEPA bill - to a mad and dishonest PhD, more degreed than a thermometer.  

And there you have it. 

Bolaji Aluko 

On Saturday, February 3, 2018, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:

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[O O]

Your “panacea” in principle makes much sense but lacks at least one double ingredient: “cultural” PROBITY/CULTURAL consciousness, which crucially Involves HOW one wholesomely connects with one’s culture or with any culture (national or local) of one’s interests. Furthermore, leadership in general and political leadership in particular need not be defined in terms of JUST the top in the official hierarchy (such as the president or a president). For example, Alexander Hamilton (a non-president). Moreover, don’t you find the term “innate” somewhat problematic or implicatively counterproductive in the context of leadership definition? Lastly, don’t you think that your Andrew Johnson example weakens your otherwise strong “education” point? Why not Abraham Lincoln himself (a mostly self-educated man)? An example that would have made your point (instead of a mostly unsuccessful president). 

Bolaji Aluko

<image001.png>

[Salimonu Kadiri]

For the sake of posterity, I wish to point out that the level at which the subject under discussion has reached is, what minimum qualification is required by law (the constitution) for a person in Nigeria to contest to be President and not whether a Presidential candidate had once proclaimed a known looter innocent of looting.

Your evidence that Muhammadu Buhari actually exonerated General Sani Abacha from the crime of looting Nigeria's treasury is premised on indirect report from : allafrica.com/stories/200806090008.html, culled from This Day Nigerian newspaper of 9 June 2008, with the title - Nigeria: Abacha Never Stole, say Buhari, Babangida, By Ibrahim Shuaibu, from Kano. Mr. Shuaibu, the reporter wrote, "The late military Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha, did not loot the national treasury contrary to the general impression, two military former heads of State have said. General Muhammadu Buhari, who ruled Nigeria between 1983 and 1985, and his successor, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, gave Abacha the clean bill in Kano yesterday after the remembrance prayers marking 10 years of the death of Abacha, who ruled between 1993 and 1998." If Buhari and Babangida had said that Abacha did not loot the national treasury, they could not have added the phrase, contrary to the general impression. This indicates that the report was an invented story by the reporter, Shuaibu. Abacha's treasury looting was not conceived out of general impression since General Abdulsalami Abubakar, who took over after Abacha's death instituted a commission of enquiry at which Abacha's National Security Adviser, Ismaila Gwarzo, disclosed how he was using security van to collect dollars and pound sterling from the CBN on behalf, and on the instruction, of Abacha. However, it was not until December 1999 after Obasanjo had taken over as civilian President that dozens of Abacha's accounts in Europe, especially in Switzerland, were traced and repatriation of parts of the stolen funds to Nigeria began in July 2000. Buhari has denied several times to uttering the statement attributed to him about Abacha's loot. If alleged statement of exonerating Abacha from treasury looting was enough to disqualify Buhari from contesting for presidency in 2015, let us find out if Goodluck Jonathan was qualified to contest as vice President already in 2007.

The Joint Task Force on fighting corruption in Nigeria in 2007 was composed of ICPC, EFCC, The Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), DSS and Police Special Fraud Unit (PSFU) of the Nigerian Police. It was chaired by the then Chairman of the EFCC, Nuhu Ribadu. JTF, in 2007, discovered that the outgoing Governor of Bayelsa State, Dr. Goodluck Ebelle Jonathan, had declared his assets falsely as follows, (i) Lexus Jeep worth N18 million claimed to have been acquired through savings in 2004; JTF verification revealed that the jeep was a gift (bribe) collected in contravention of the CCB Act of 1990. Same for BMV 7351 series bought in 2005 worth N5.5 million. (ii) Acquisition of properties outside legitimate income : Seven Bedroom Duplex acquired in 2001 worth N18 million at Otuke Ogbia LGA. Four Bedroom Duplex acquired in 2003 worth N15 million at Goodluck Jonathan Street, Yenegoa. Five Bedroom Duplex acquired in 2003 worth N25 million at Citec Villas, Gwarimpa 11, Abuja.  As a Governor, Jonathan had immunity from prosecution while in office, and the immunity continued when he became Vice President to President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua in 2007 and his false declaration of assets has since remained in coma.

In August 2006, the EFCC arrested one Mrs Nancy Ebere Nwosu for possessing sacks of one-hundred and four million naira. Consequently, a case with a suit number FHC/ABJ/M/340/06 was filed on August 21, 2006 at the Federal High Court, Abuja. The EFCC prosecuting officer, Mr. Ofem Uket told the court that investigations had revealed that Mrs. Patience Jonathan, wife of the Governor of Bayelsa State, was the person who had requested one Hanner Offor, the proprietor of Nansolyvan Public Relations Limited with bank account at First Bank of Nigeria, Niger House, Marina Lagos, to help her launder N104 million into its account number 3292010060711 with First Bank. On August 22, 2006, Justice Anwuli Chikere of the Federal High Court, Abuja decided that the account in which the money was deposited should be frozen by the EFCC until the case was concluded. Yes, the wife of Governor Jonathan was in possession of N104 million in 2006, Where did she get it?

In 2015, a Rivers State-based civil society organisation, Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law invoked Sections 2 & 4 of the FOI Act 2011 to request for information concerning President Jonathan's doctorate degree records from University of Port Harcourt. The requested information were as follows : (i) The title of President Jonathan's doctorate dissertation. (ii) Year of registration as a doctorate candidate (iii) Name of his doctorate supervisor(s). (iv) Name of his external examiner (s). (v) Comments/reports of the external examiner of the dissertation / thesis (vi) Photocopy of the dissertation/thesis. (vii) Date of graduation from the University. The legal officer of the University of Port Harcourt, Eric Loveday Osuo Abonemi, replied that FOI Act did not embrace Goodluck Jonathan's doctorate degree records. Releasing his doctorate degree records voluntarily to the public by himself would not have caused any damage to Dr. Jonathan, instead, it would have boosted his integrity in confirming that his acclaimed doctorate degree is real. Whether Goodluck Ebele Jonathan is a PhD holder or not, his government was so bad that majority of Nigerians preferred a NEPA Bill certificate holder to him in 2015 regardless of what fanatic lovers of Jonathan think and want. 

S. Kadiri 

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Alagba Baba Lord Olayinka Agbetuyi,

 

My apologies for getting back to you so late. It was only yesterday  afternoon  during our walk and talk in downtown Stockholm that Baba Kadiri smilingly remarked on this your well-meant but I’m afraid to say slightly errant observation which I had quite missed. I had also missed Funmilayo Arike Tofowomo Okelola’s  28^th October posting until I enquired of her ( exactly four days ago)  “How are you, where are you and why don’t we see you at USA AFRICA DIALOGUE ?”- why we have not been seeing her in our midst for several months now at which point she asked me if I had not read her posting of 28^th of October 2017. I hadn’t, and after she told me that that had been her last posting, I pleaded with her to please come back to us. I hope that you too, Sir Olayinka Agbetuyi will help me plead with her, after all she is an enormous asset and we are worse off without her many diverse contributions in the best areas, literature, art, music, other existential life issues….

 

We Saro people are fond of awarding, sometimes conferring extra-ordinary titles on those we like and some of those we almost adore. Of course, there’s no title to rival the Almighty’s for He is King of Kings of Kings and not even if e.g. Oga Falola is awarded  triple Nobel prizes or the Right Livelihood Award , is he going to be accorded a kind of kings of kings of kings title by his faithful  disciple, yours truly.

 

Needless to say, V-C Bolaji Aloko almost split my sides in two (like the Almighty splitting the Red Sea) when he talked about somebody being as degree-d as a thermometer.  This week too after meeting an Indian gentleman who averred that the word Aluk (his name) means light - I told him that I must inform one of the Nigerians that I most admire (Baba Bolaji Aluko) that it’s no surprise that his name comes from such a pure source….

 

I  should like to further assure you that there’s nothing snide about my directly honouring Baba Kperogi with the title first awarded by Baba Kadiri: “Professor of Buckingham Palace English”  - in fact earlier this evening I was on the brink of sending him this : How Americans preserved British English – until I realized I was writing from my Better Half’s computer and would have to log in to my e-mail account in order to post to our Professor of Her Majey’s English and it’s various Nigerian diaspora dialects.

 

Having said all of the above ( sincere intentionality) and whilst I applaud the Governor of Lagos honouring his mother tongue  I promise to never again use the term  “ Professor of Buckingham Palace English”  or even “ Professor of Buckingham Palace Swenglish “  lovingly or mischievously , so as to avoid causing offence anywhere.  

 

I must also dement  , I wish forcefully, the frequent use and misuse of the term “ Fulani Herdsmen “ the providers of beef to Naija’s waiting bellies,  as being synonymous with marauding  gangs of Ak-47 armed terrorists gunning down innocent fellow Nigerians when you know that this is not the case. Nor should the words Arab or Afghan or Palestinian conjure for you or those who use such terms intentionally the spectre of TERRORISM…

 

Haidara

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 23:52:22 UTC+1, Olayinka Agbetuyi wrote:

I don"t in particular subscribe to your own snide frequent references to professor of Buckingham Palace English either.  It demeans and trivializes debates when we use objections and disagreements in past debates to label participants in subsequent debates.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>

Date: 30/01/2018 11:12 (GMT+00:00)

To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should betheStandard-bearer  of the Third Force

Toyin Adepoju,

That opening salvo, “Farooq has again chosen to entertain  us with a culture of insults while no one insulted him” is not necessary or helpful. I’m sure that it is never Farooq’s intention to undermine or insult a fellow Nigerian.

A nation of 192 Million people! Adeshina Afolayan the philosopher says,

“To hell with where he came from”

“It actually also does not matter if the person is military or civilian”

but when I first looked at Dangiwa Umar’s photograph, I involuntarily took offence, saw someone that I thought was surely from the North East of Nigeria, the Lake Chad area, the lack of colour blindness corrupting my reaction , made worse by the info that  he is an ex-military man, and indeed, so is Charles de Gaulle, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Colin Powell, Jerry Rawlings, Ehud Barak,

Also past Nigerian leaders with a military background;

Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi

Yakubu Gowon

Murtala Mohammed

Olusegun Obasanjo

Muhammadu Buhari

Ibrahim Babangida

Sani Abacha

Abdulsalami Abubakar

Muhammadu Buhari

is back  as we all know,

no wolf in sheep’s clothing is

and now Kperogi proposes one more, may be

Dangiwa Umar

The list could be interminable, and why not? “We simply need a good leader who can transcend his or her ethnicity and attend to Nigeria” (saith Adeshina Afolayan)

Otherwise,  I just want to say that I too am in complete accord with Professor Segun Ogungbemi in this thread and with this your latest deep preach for which you are to be congratulated.

Your persistence, perseverance ( consistency) is bearing fruit - paying dividends, this time perhaps because there’s nothing that smells of Islamophobia in this analysis and  that’s why you have got me (a neutralist) on board.  Let’s say we are all Pan-Africanists, from the conscientious North, South, East and West and that’s why we don’t have to be citizens of Nigeria in order to contribute to a discussion of even very sensitive national matters. I imagine that if we were citizens of a future United States of Africa and we were to listen to folks from North Africa forever informing or threatening the rest of us with “ the mood of the country favours a Northerner” even if the masses in East, Central, Western and Southern Africa were to be rock solid against that kind of domination - or imagine the despair if in little Sierra Leone where power is an everlasting tug of war between the North and the South where we have the two largest tribes, we were to hear for the next century, from folks like our Farooq Muhammadus that the everlasting current mood of the country favours a Northerner, preferably with a military background etc (although  we don’t have any religion problem in that country which is at least 60% Muslim and between Independence in 1961  to now  has only once head  Muslim head of State in the person of Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, the first  but not necessarily the last...

So, it’s only now that I understand what  the  Fulani leader means when he says, “no ethnic group can fight us ( the Fulani ) face to face. Any ethnic group that fights us will learn a bitter lesson” - he doesn’t mean that  the Fulani are the bravest, the most warhardy  have most  soldiers in the army etc but that the Fulani and allies are in power and in charge of the Naija military…

Gotta have freedom

On Tuesday, 30 January 2018 06:41:20 UTC+1, kasim Alli wrote:

The key question is this. What has the man-Col Umar- done since his retirement from the army in 1993 at age 42-43 to show that he has the capacity for the job of President? And what did he do during his military career to show that he can be an effective president in modern day Nigeria.

-----Original Message-----
From: 'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Mon, Jan 29, 2018 6:26 pm

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

I think the responses to Kperogi's article have failed to properly understand where he is coming from with his recommendation. I am surprised that, again, we are reading ethnicity into the genuine search for a genuine leader with the capacity to lead Nigeria out of the wood. The real question is: where do we get a good leader? The real answer ought to be: Anywhere! It doesn't matter whether the one we are looking for is Hausa, Fulani, Igbo or Yoruba. We simply need a good leader who can transcend his or her ethnicity and attend to Nigeria. It actually also does not matter if the person is military or civilian. There is nothing in the democratic tenets that forbids anyone from putting him or herself up or from being put up for the office. Indeed, there is nothing in democratic practice that guarantee epistemic certainty about the choice of who we want in the office. Buhari represents a present example of the uncertainty embedded in democracy. But then, isn't that the wonderful thing about it all: Our capacity to deliberate critically on who want to elect, the person's capacity (and not ethnicity), the person's antecedents (and not profession), etc. If Col. Umar has what it takes, do please let's elect him into office. To hell with where he came from! 

    

 

Adeshina Afolayan, PhD
Department of Philosophy
University of Ibadan

+23480-3928-8429

On Monday, January 29, 2018 7:33 AM, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, Segun.

I wonder why this fixation on a particular ethnicity, and people without any or little track record of technocratic leadership.

de tin tire me

toyin

On 29 January 2018 at 03:11, segun ogungbemi <segun...@gmail.com> wrote:

This alternative choice you have proudly advertised is as deadly as Buhari in the circumstances in which Nigeria is under the yoke of the Fulani herdsmen. 

More importantly,  his genealogical background makes him extremely dangerous considering the jihad of his great ancestor, Othman dan Fodio who attempted to Islamize the country that became Nigeria. His destruction of indigenous cultural values which his followers still teach in the country has caused the under development of Nigeria. 

Furthermore  must we believe ex-sldiers are Nigerian political, economic and social Messiah?  Don't we have millions of credible fellow Nigerians in and outside the country that can save the country from your perceived end of the time,  if Buhari is reelected?  

Finally,  let us stop recycling the same ethinic leaders and look for others with impressive track records. The electorate can be of help if we ask them to make the  choice. 

Segun Ogungbemi 

On Jan 28, 2018 19:15, "Olayinka Agbetuyi" <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Except that I want us to end a culture that sees military men as the best (over civilians) even in a civilian dispensation (I stood against the candidature of OBJ to succeed Abubakir for the same reason) Umars past recommends him as a potential successor to Buhari with the following caveat: 

that he upholds the gentleman's agreement that like Mandela he will not rule for more than one term and that he finds a suitable  civilian candidate from the next zone to rule be adopted as his running mate and groomed to ensure the continuity of the programmes that brought Buhari to power iin the first instance which going by Umars past credentials he (Umar) is expected to pursue with relentless vigour originally expected from PMB.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>

Date: 27/01/2018 07:30 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups .com

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer  of the Third Force

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Why Dangiwa Umar Should be the Standard-bearer of the Third Force

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

While there is a widening consensus that President Buhari, through his remarkable incompetence and bigotry, is inexorably leading Nigeria to infernal ruination, there isn’t a sufficiently robust discussion on who should replace him. Most politically unaffiliated people who have accepted that the presidency is above Buhari’s mental paygrade simply say the swashbucklers in PDP can’t be his replacement.

It’s time to move beyond that rhetoric. Who is a viable alternative to Buhari? Who has the capacity to steer us away from the path of perdition we’re headed under Buhari?  There is a curious reluctance to confront these questions forthrightly. This reluctance conduces to the flourishing of dishonest and exasperating bromides like “Well, we know Buhari is incompetent, but what is the alternative?” or “Although we agree that Buhari hasn’t lived up to expectation, there is really no alternative to him at this time."

It’s like being led to a pit of hell by a blind guide and saying, “Well, there is no alternative to this guide, so I have to come to terms with my earthly damnation.” That’s pointless, boneheaded self-immolation. Only people with a perverse taste for self-violence reason like that. There ARE several alternatives to Buhari.

In my December 16, 2017 column titled “There Must be an Alternative to Buhari and Atiku,” from which former President Olusegun Obasanjo quoted in his recent press statement, I suggested that we give a thought to Retired Colonel Abubakar Dangiwa Umar.

“How about we try someone else? Off the top of my head, I can think of retired Colonel Dangiwa Umar widely acknowledged as just, fair, principled, hardworking, cosmopolitan, widely traveled, and well-educated,” I Wrote. “I’m not suggesting that he is perfect. He is not. No one is. It is our imperfections that make us human, but we all know what sorts of imperfections ruin nations and its people. I don’t think anyone can accuse him of those sorts of imperfections—sloth, lethargy, corruption, clannishness, incompetence, indecisiveness, etc. He may decline to throw his hat in the ring. But there are many like him.”

I see that there is now a growing conversation around getting Col. Umar interested in a run for the office of president in 2019. But I am also aware that some people have raised concerns about the symbolic burden of his military background, particularly because of justified national anxieties about the domination of our politics by past military people. This is a legitimate concern.

Nevertheless, I believe Umar’s military background is incidental to his qualification for this job. It is the strength of his character, his urbaneness, his record of inclusivity, his contagiously genuine passion for pan-Nigerianism, his stubborn commitment to higher principles, his vast knowledge of the ways of the world, his intellectual curiosity, his unflappability in the face of stress and strain, and his broadmindedness that stand him out and that would potentially make him such a comforting departure from the blight we’re mired in now.

There are many others like him, but I am suggesting him for at least two reasons. One, the national mood appears to favor a northern presidential candidate, perhaps as a consequence of the internal power-sharing arrangements of most political parties. Second, the only northerner, in my estimation, who is “salable” outside his natal region based on his record is Umar.

His uncommonly principled stand against the cancellation of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, which caused him to voluntarily resign his commission from the Nigerian military, will resonate with many voters in the southwest. He fought General Sani Abacha with all his strength when it was extremely risky to do so—and at the cost of libelous smears and threats to his life.

His exemplary, even-handed management of the 1987 religious crisis in Kaduna is still a reference point. "If you win a religious war, you cannot win religious peace,” he famously said. “Since the killing started how many Christians have been converted to Islam? How many Muslims have been converted to Christianity? It is an exercise in futility."

He is one of only a few northern Muslim leaders that northern Christians trust and have confidence in. Although he is a direct descendant of Usman Dan Fodio (his father was Wazirin Gwandu), he is on record as being severely critical of religious bigotry by Muslims, a reason he isn’t popular in his immediate constituency.

He was also one of only a few northerners to recognize the legitimacy of IPOB’s angst and to caution against government’s strong-arm tactics against the group. “One of the swiftest ways of destroying a kingdom is to give preference to one particular tribe over another, or to show favour to one group of people rather than another, and to draw near those who should be kept away and keep away those that should be drawn near,” he wrote in a press statement on August 30, 2017. “Like Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, many Igbos genuinely feel marginalized since they belong to the category of those who gave Mr President only 5% of their votes and appeared to have fallen out of his favour.”

Whatever foibles Umar has, ethnic and religious bigotry aren’t one of them. Given the unprecedented dissension and acrimony that Buhari’s government has instigated in the nation, we need a clearheaded, mild-mannered, even-tempered nationalist to bring us together, to calm frayed nerves, and to inspire us to dream again. I see Umar fitting this role.

He will certainly lose in the northwest and in such northeastern states as Borno, Yobe, Bauchi, and Gombe. In these states, most—certainly not all—people would vote for Buhari even if he were to go on a murdering spree of people there. Those who survive the carnage would still vote for him. But remember that the votes of this bloc were never sufficient to make him president.

If he were to square off against Buhari in a free and fair election in 2019, Umar would handily win the deep south, the southeast, most of the southwest, and the northcentral, except, perhaps, Niger State. In essence, he would reduce Buhari to the ethno-regional champion he had always been, which was reversed because of the purchase his candidacy got in the southwest and the Christian north in 2015 as a consequence of Jonathan’s intolerable misgovernance.

But if Jonathan was clueless, Buhari embodies cluelessness on steroids. Buhari’s cliquishness, insouciance, and down-the-line incompetence are a clear and present danger to Nigeria’s continued existence. Reelecting him in 2019 would be the kiss of death for the nation.

 It's impossible for Nigeria to survive a 4-year extension of Buhari's misrule, which is characterized by rampant injustice, invidious selectivity, insecurity, unexampled nepotism, smartly dressed corruption, sloth, intellectual laziness, hardship, and directionlessness. You know a country is utterly leaderless when it has a president who proudly says “I am not in a hurry to do anything” while the country he supposedly governs burns.

Umar won’t be perfect. He would falter. The intoxication of power may alter him. And maybe not. But the beauty of democracy is that it imbues us with the power to change ineffective leaders. It is the incremental rectification of past electoral mistakes that aggregates to qualitative change in democratic societies. No society makes progress by reelecting transparently incompetent leaders.

Related Article:

There Must be an Alternative to Buhari and Atiku

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperog

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

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[Samuel Zalanga]

In the past few weeks there have been a lot of discussion about Dangiwa Umar, following Obasanjo’s reference to Farooq’s suggestion in his regularly published column. I have been following the discussion though I will not claim to have read all the postings on that. Having been in Nigeria for quite some time now, in theory and principle, I think Dangiwa Umar can make a huge difference, but in terms of the way the political institutions and political culture of Nigeria is today, I have serious concerns and reservations for focusing on just a particular individual. We definitely need leaders to lead Africa and transform those societies, but the transformation of societies is a result of the intersection of complementarity of factors and when I look at the situation on the ground, I develop serious reservations about the existence of such complementary factors.

My memory of Dangiwa Umar goes back to when I a youth in Bauchi, Bauchi State Nigeria. Apart from being very vocal as governor of Kaduna Sate and military officer, during his time in Bauchi, he took two public actions that made him come across as a very resolute person. First,  was when we woke up one day and there was Major Gideon Orka’s coup, which attempted to sever the far northern region from the rest of the country, and there was no immediate response nationally. Dangiwa Umar as the commandant of the School of Armor in Bauchi went to the radio station and read a speech discrediting the coup. Note that there was a military governor in the state and the governor was from the northern region too. People were very impressed by the clarity he gave to the situation because of his courage. People highly commended him for that.

Then secondly, there was a time when we had religious killings in Bauchi town. Some religious killings took place in Tafawa Balewa  (Bauchi State) and when the corpse were brought to Bauchi Specialists Hospital, it led to serious killings of Christians in the city because the victims of the killings in Tafawa Balewa were said to be Muslims. For days, we could not sleep well because we were afraid someone will come and kill us as there were cases of people being killed at night. The military governor took no serious action. When people started rushing to the military barracks for safety, Dangiwa Umar decided to deploy the military with tanks into the city to intimidate and arrest anyone who was found harassing others. I remember how people felt he should have been the governor.  His intervention brought great respect to him.

A third example was when General Babangida annulled the June 12 elections, and Dangiwa Umar came out openly in Bauchi saying that he is not willing and ready to deploy the military under his command to maintain law and order, should people come out to protest the annulment of the election. We must recall that this is a man from a royal lineage somewhere in the northwestern region of Nigeria, but defending elections won by late Chief Moshood Abiola. I remember getting into debates with some people who hated him for taking such a public position about the annulment. It probably was one of the factors that encouraged him to retire early or so it seems like.

I also remember him doing something that was unusual. While he was governor of Kaduna state, he was so frustrated with what was happening in the state that prevented him from effectively doing what he thought was right to the extent where he decided or was approved to leave the seat of the governor. But he decided to read a speech before he left office. He was frustrated by the citizens of a nation that only get united when the country is playing an international football match.

I believe there are a good number of individual Nigerians like him who are persons of high integrity and care for the nation and would be willing to sacrifice to turn it around. My only concern is once they get into Aso Rock, the Nigerian equivalent of the “White House,” will the political culture of Nigeria and the decay in the social structure allow such persons to implement their vision for transforming Nigeria under a civilian regime assuming they have been working with others on such a plan? A military leader can get away with many things, but a civilian president will be constrained in many respects. And if as a military governor, Dangiwa Umar was very frustrated, I wonder how he will feel now that the decay in the Nigerian political culture and institutions is much higher than the situation those days.

 In the first place, given the way Nigeria is today, it will be hard to win national election as president without getting into some bargain with the devil. Even President Buhari had to do that. The political culture will not allow even a visionary person to do so many things that are ideal for the country because the political system in Nigeria currently is like a vertical political machine based on patron client relationship. The elites at various levels governance would not be committed and visionary and even if they are, the transition time from a patrimonial and patron-client system to that of a developmental state can be painful. Those caught in the transition will feel the pain most and in some cases even cheated given the political culture. Some of Buhari’s policies are laudable but there are groups that are paying a price for that. For instance, there is no reason why Nigeria should be importing rice, but by instituting policies that incentivized and stimulated local production, many who used to benefit from the old system felt the pain. And in Nigeria as is the case even in the U.S., people may use democratic arguments to justify undemocratic or selfish goals. One just needs to pay attention to the logic of their arguments and its practical consequences.

We should not just be concerned about the modern state and its various institutions in terms of their forms. We must equally be concerned about other complementarities such as the social-cultural aspects and dimensions of the inner workings of such institutions. This I know is a sensitive issue but when one imagines that the university system is supposed to be the most modern and rational system setting the pace for desirable change in the country, but yet, internally, the mindset and cultural orientation of many in the institution do not fit the image of the modern university, one realizes that the country is in trouble.

The literature is very clear that unless people reach a certain level of material comfort, they will have less leisure time and without much leisure time owing to increased productivity and relatively higher standard of living, people will spend most of their time struggling to earn livelihood and therefore have little or no time for political participation or engaging in serious political dialog and organizing. And even among those that have the leisure time, many do not care about the polity except for their immediate interest.  This situation is a major constraint to the effort to make the masses participate actively in politics.

Ideally, for the leader that is progressive to be effective, he or she should not rely primarily or only on the powerful elites in Abuja, the state and local government capitals. Many of such persons will try to frustrate any leader that will prevent them from getting rich or keeping themselves in power at all cost. Merely voting the right president does not guarantee others voted into office will be of the same vision or commitment because the political culture is still there intact. Thus, the leader needs a broad-based progressive social movement that cuts across all regions of the country and ethnic groups to protect his or her vision for the country. When he or she starts implementing the ideal vision the progressive social movement supported him for, even when the elites oppose him or her, he or she can mobilize the broad-based progressive movement to show up his power against the elites frustrating his or her effort. But I am not sure such a broad-based progressive social movement can be created. Many people are too preoccupied with survival struggles. And even if they are not, elites at different levels may use law enforcement agencies to intimidate such progressive movements. Of even more concern is the low level of political education of the ordinary masses. The political consciousness of many educated people is still ethnic or regional, let alone the masses.

I remember also based on my experience in Malaysia that such reform-oriented leaders probably need more than eight years even though the most that the Nigerian president can stay in office is eight years. And even when Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia started serious reforms in his country, his own ruling party UMNO got divided into two factions after a Supreme Court decision. He was only lucky to win reelection after that incident else the reform effort would have ended. Furthermore, many have recognized Malaysia’s progress compared to say African countries, but one distinctive thing that Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad did in implementing neoliberal economic reforms or what is known by many in Africa as Structural Adjustment Programs was that he combined economic reforms with social-cultural reorientation and reforms to fit the new institutions or reforms. A key reform emphasis was efficiency of the public service and different programs were introduced to reform the bureaucracy under Ahmad Sarji, who was the head of service. Even the World Bank commended the reforms and very complementary to the neoliberal reforms. Under the Client Charter reform orientation, every government organization had to write and post what their clients are entitled to and if they do not get what they are entitled to within the officially specified time, the place or procedure to hold the system accountable was provided. Interestingly once the reforms took off, it became difficult to stop because people enjoyed the efficiency of their government institutions and international investors appreciated that as well i.e., virtuous circle. Promotion in the civil service was not just based on years of services or seniority but achievement and performance also. Every evening in their national news on television, Malaysia then devoted about 5 to 10 minutes for a segment on how modern technology was created or used somewhere to improve people’s lives.  

Mahathir Mohamad also became initially popular by publishing a book after he was expelled from UMNO for his radical views, radical in the sense he wanted urgent reforms. Unlike some Nigerians who are always critical of the west, Mohamad is nuanced. He is very familiar with the Western tradition and will commend anything good from the West while condemning something he saw as bad and he will explain why he thought so. His book the “Malay Dilemma” initially brought him to limelight. The Malays will be like the equivalent of Nigeria’s Hausa Fulani. Some of the critique he made of his people would be considered racist if it was made by a white person. He criticized even the concept of predestination as just encouraging laziness in many cases and a refusal to logically interrogate and master a process.

As an African, he is one leader of the developing world that in spite of mistakes he made gave me hope that with a broad-based support and courage, a leader can significantly help in transforming his or her country. But even he himself, had to bargain with the devil in some respects. I wish we will see such exemplary leadership in universities, but I know even if there are leaders committed to doing so, the political culture and socio-cultural orientation will frustrate them. Thus even if we have a committed leader at the national level, the transition time will be painful as it was in Malaysia. And the challenge is what happens during this period of transition? Whoever wins the next presidential elections or whoever wants to reform Nigeria will have to be prepared that there will be pain in the transition period before the country reaches a new equilibrium. As one philosopher said, there is no growth without death. For something to grow, some or all aspects of its past will have to die. Nigeria cannot proceed to a new equilibrium without some of its past dying, and like it or hate it, no matter the new form of the state after restructuring, no matter the leader at the top, and irrespective of economic reforms, without complementing it with social-cultural reforms, value and attitudinal reorientation to fit the new social vision and institutions, the discrepancy will lead to inefficiency and perpetuation of the status quo. With all that is happening in Nigeria, what represents authentic capitalism in the sense of production is little. Much of what is happening is commercial exchange of imported goods, which highly increases the pressure and chances for state capture.

Samuel

 

Samuel Zalanga, Ph.D.

Bethel University

Department of Anthropology, Sociology and Reconciliation Studies,

Bethel University, 3900 Bethel Drive, #24, Saint Paul, MN 55112.

Office Phone: 651-638-6023

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[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

Oga Cornelius.

You may not ascribe too much meaning to your light hearted usage (provided the target approves of it) but to a third party listener it may sound condescending with repeated usage.  Why did esteemed contributor Okelola leave?  Do you know?

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Slightly A-MENED

Sir,

 

I don’t know exactly what you’re trying to tell me.

 

 I’m not easily impressed. I checked out the meaning of my Indian friend’s name “Aluk” (other meanings.) Bolaji Aluko? I am impressed. I can’t help it and this forum has helped to reinforce my earlier impressions of him from DAWODU.com

 

I was taught, especially by my blessed and beloved mother and my (Yoruba) grandmother, to show respect to everyone (all tribes) and almost to the point of veneration for some of our distinguished elders of whom there were and are quite a few. But I was not afraid of any of them. I assure you.

 

Since then I have learned and know all about Lashon Hara . Now  it seems that I’m being regarded by some as one of their elders, at least my barber who  treated me as such today, and I’m about to compose an ode to  - at long last, my first gray hairs ( thanks to Chinweizu  - and there are many creative ways of insulting someone, but for fear of being labelled an “uncle tom” I am side-stepping the word  “white” because strictly speaking none of the aforementioned hairs is exactly that yet,  although a few  are just in between black and white and a fewer still of a still darker, somber gray hue at the sides of my temple.

 

Respect begets respect. If he (whoever he is or believes himself to be) regards me as one of his legally certified idiots, then, the tables turned I award myself the right to put him in his place as an illiterate walking on two legs… a little parsing here, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more, an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing…

 

I have already told you : “I  promise to never again use the term  “ Professor of Buckingham Palace English”  or even “ Professor of Buckingham Palace Swenglish “  lovingly or mischievously , so as to avoid causing offence anywhere.” Now, what more do you want from me?

 

I’m aware that “ a little learning is a dangerous thing” (double-edged sarcasm) and I know from here to infinity, fact is that my own less than little learning is next to nothing in spite of which I should hope that I am not “dangerous”, not even to those thick skins or  those with a lack thereof that prefer adoration to self-criticism or humility, some soul-searching or scrutiny. It cannot or maybe should not always be braggadocio of the type in which

 

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst  

Are full of passionate intensity.”

 

I’m also fully aware that what’s good for the goose should also be good for the gander – except that thank GOD, I’m not running for public office as I personally do not have the thermometric degree of indifference to being battered and bruised as was “clueless” Jonathan by the whips and arrows of outrageous fortune and the unending buffeting of Brother Buhari by one Farooq Kperogi. Of course if I were Buhari, Kperogi would have heard a word or two from me which would have caused the ink in his pen to dry up immediately, and the grease to his elbow too, but not as in “My Last Duchess”:

 

“I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

As if alive…”

 

From a very early age, my own humility or lack thereof was coterminous or coexistent with an awareness of excellence, the existence of some premier universities and other teaching institutions in the UK, the USA, Sweden, the Swedish Academy etc. and some of their leading products not least of all in fields such as literary criticism, music, opera, jazz, in short the performing arts.

 

Please read this paragraph from Gunnel Bergström’s doctoral dissertation “ In Search of Meaning in Opera” for the Department of Theater Studies, University of Stockholm ( Something in Funmilayo’s ken)  :  the beginning of Chapter 2 : Myth, Opera and Tragedy

 

“In the seventies, the Egyptians drama Aida was mounted at the Scandinavium, an enormous sports arena in Gothenburg, and everything was pomp and splendor, with choruses in beautiful costumes marching in and out. But all these soldiers, prisoners and dancers faded into nothing every time a simply dressed, coloured girl took the stage and started to sing. She was plain but radiated an energy that overshadowed everything else.”

 

I don’t know why your “esteemed contributor Okelola” left or if he did indeed leave and to where. I suppose that the reason could be that he did or does whatever he wants because he wants to, except at gunpoint or a pistol, metaphorical or otherwise pointed at his ego, his life-center his own personal C.I.A., not mine. The last time I noticed him in this forum was after his few words on the BBC which I watch daily (on the Sabbath too) - programs such as BBC Hardtalk. No big deal. I was a fan of the late Lemuel A. Johnson.  

 

Also disappeared from here into thin air, Pius Adesanmi, Ogugua Anunoby, Pablo Idahosa (sometime after he told Sheikh Abdul Bangura to stop being “a nuisance” - and that was a pretty ultimate response to Bangura’s interminable stream of news updates about the Ivory Coast’s Gbagbo – Ouattara imbroglio, his umpteenth, grand-totaling over 450 posts), and at that point I believed that Pablo was speaking for all of us and if not at least it was in synchronicity with yours truly. ( BTW, Bangura once told me that he had talked with Gbagbo “ face to face”  - I should have told him that my then girlfriend’s most well-dressed beautiful  sister , bangles, beads, necklaces,  jewelry sister was Houphouet-Boigny’s mistress.)

 

2000 backs got to be free

 

On March 7^th 2018 they will be holding elections in Sierra Leone.

You may follow some of it here  - and I pray that you too do not disappear too soon, from here.

This afternoon I read Professor Porter’s somber reminder that our days are numbered.

 

We can’t be here forever.

 

Yours sin-cerely and affectionately,

 

Love

 

Cornelius