Re- “a society where everyone is a political scientist, not least because they have read newspapers
Cornelius Hamelberg
Re- “In a society where everyone is a political scientist, not least because they have read newspapers...” I haven't read much further in Anthony A. Akinola's short analysis “NURTURING EMERGING NIGERIAN TWO-PARTY SYSTEM” and not being a political scientist by either birth, grooming, education, inclination, or ambition, I resist joining in on the discussion that is sure will follow in that thread, fearing that “ fools rush in where angels fear to tread” ; But we have every reason to look forward to some salient viewpoints in that thread, apart from some humble bragging and the usual chest-beating about the efficacy of the American two party Presidential System that has produced America's most talked about presidents Abraham Lincoln and Donald J. Trump or the British Parliamentary System that produced Margaret Thatcher and her sister Theresa May In Sweden we have the Swedish System with which most of you are not familiar. Suffice it to say that after the September 9 elections we are witnessing an impasse a very complicated deadlock which means that we may have to be another election, very soon and there's no guarantee that they won't produce the same results. There are of course other systems of government and possible home-grown role models in Africa, Europe, Asia, South and Central America, the Caribbean, New Zealand & Australia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East
The next Nigerian presidential elections promise to be infinitely more exciting, I just pray that the military doesn't come stepping in and pray even more fervently that the country doesn't explode into another civil war
In a moment of idleness, this short meditation.
A good place to begin : David Byrne : In the future
It's a cliché: N.E.P.A ( the old National Electric Power Authority) is the acronym, the symbol and the symptomatic reality when it comes to Nigeria as an under-developed country with vast natural resources (including oil) and tremendous manpower potential, a country still known as the sleeping giant and yet , when it comes to simple electricity the motto is: NEPA : Never-Expect- Power-Always.
Of course, only the political class expects power always, knowing that they will always have “the power” whether you like it or you like it not, and there's nothing that you can do about it, although it's mostly you and not the devil that put them there to serve the country and to deliver on all of their promises. So, what happens with all the prayers and the sacrifices, the burnt offerings going up like holy smoke, an aroma pleasing unto the Lord ? If I've read my J. Omosade Awolalu correctly, one answer could be that they don't sacrifice that much any more...
We understand the lion has to sleep sometime, c'mon, and they vote for change as if they expect the sleeping sickness syndrome to change by magic or merely because some politician hustling your vote promises that the day he is elected – on day one - change will come. You can dream on and wait until Jesus finally re-appears with some of the divine electricity power, some Ogun thunder and bolts of lightning to build your country for you.
In the meantime, some of the scholars who ought to know better, sometimes say, “Rome wasn't built in a day” and yet still complain about a lack of continuous electricity in their part of Lagos. We know that Maiduguri is under siege, but what about Abuja?
Like Mulla Nasrudin, some of the more realistic among the scholars and academics emigrate to where the light is, to faithfully serve their most populous country from afar, in exile whereby they are not forced to do most of their research or their reading and writing and studying by candlelight. Although if they strategised their disposal of available time just a little differently...( heck, Moses didn't have any electricity, nor did Jesus or Rasulullah ( s.a.w.) , their legacy is not built on electricity – for that we have to go back to the Almighty blessing Sir Isaac Newton – as it was written,
“Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light “
and now saying our favourite words of hope, “God dae” still praying for Justice, and while still waiting for some modern Nigerian electrical scientist – electricity's Messiah to harness the political will and the budgetary allocation that should achieve the miracle, the liberal arts scholars and political scientists could continue to do all their research in daylight and do the romancing by the light of the moon. As for some of the other things that some of these people do at night, I'm sure that the professors of electricity who produce darkness only don't need any light to do all that generating of the future generations, for endless sex, ceaseless birth, the beat goes on and we're not talking about the kind of complainers who complain like losers,
“Sometimes I wonder
Why you can't treat me right
You do good all day
Then you do wrong all night “
As the songster sang to Susan , his mistress-to-be,
“Well it's just that sometimes
By midnight light
I'm frightened by my fears
But if you could just hold me,
Warm me, girl
The way you did today
And tenderly anoint my eyes
Then I may see the way”
See where I'm going.
Whither Nigeria?
Gone are those days of Fela Kuti 's Power Show (1981) from the LP Original Sufferhead )Nigeria vs Biafra, the North-South divide remains the same , even if political power constellations are changed - have changed somewhat, with the military permanently in the background out of sight in the barracks, but not out of mind, ever on the ready to rear their ugly heads again, to tote their machine-guns and load their ammunition for live fire – the fire direct whether it be the massacre of what they consider potentially insurgent Shia or Operation Python Dance 11 to knock down any upstart or re-restart of something feared to be Biafra, so that outsiders shake their heads and ask, “What's happening in Nigeria?”
It takes a nation of millions to hold us back ?
It's also happening in Cameroon where 85 year old Biya has been in power since 1982 and is still planning to win a presidential life-extension when the nation goes to the polls on 7th October, 2018
Verily, “In a society where everyone is a political scientist, not least because they have read newspapers” , the man and woman in the street, ignoramus I and I wish that we were political scientists who could hear our own poverty-stricken thoughts reflected and have our interests represented in the structures in which we are trapped in the lootocracies, plutocracies, kleptocracies, aristocracies and corrupt elites that share power over us and either ignore us or look down on us with contempt , on we the people who put them where they are and we the people who - technically - should have the power to remove them when we find - as we do now and have mostly done, when we find that their way of governing us is far from satisfactory - we say so, not because we are not learned but because we feel the pain and are tired of Shuffering and Shmiling instead of singing Can't get enough of your love Babe …In some other place Burning Spear's call is “ So we rise up!”
A two-party system would go hand in hand with the Labour -Conservative, Democrat- Republican schisms that divide those countries . In Nigeria, technically we can remove whoever is seated but what choice do we have between the two main parties, the APC and the PDP who unlike Mallam Aminu Kano of revered¨memory , have no ideological base to which we should gravitate ?
Without being too messianic or visionary - just the political climate reality dictates our awareness that our political societies divided as they are , are divided and often disunited by ethnicity – they are united at the top at the top, united by class and privilege and mired in poverty at the very bottom of the league of suffering , also united by class . According to the Marxist paradigm. Perhaps with that in focus, our political scientists could devise , design and fine-tune a system of post-colonial self-government that would evolve from the exigencies of our shared history, our indigenous traditions of local government, the Oyo Empire etc looking towards the fulfilment of a better common destiny...
Cornelius Hamelberg
Apologies to the Almighty and anyone else I may have offended by unintentionally conflating Yoruba sacrificial rites with what we find in Bamidbar 29 : Korbanot /Judaism's sacrifices and offerings as was done in ancient Israel and even more recently, until the destruction of the Second Temple seventy years after the Roman conquest of Jerusalem; in the absence of which temple ( cf. The Temple Institute) so many commandments can no longer be observed , not even in the land of Israel the only country in which all the Torah commandments can be observed....
It's the first word of Quranic revelation : Iqra (Read!)
Re - “ In a society where everyone is a political scientist, not least because they have read newspapers”, I should just like to add, blessed are those who can read and at least find out a little about what's happening by reading newspapers, even if some of the so called political scientists and professors of political science are no better than the professors of electricity who produce darkness only” or are like regurgitating parrots,mostly pontificating to the assemblies of uneducated masses who can't read or write and in a language that we do not understand, either. Some of them are no better than quack scientists and some of our hack journalists who don't even understand legalese...
We all want to be served by a government that gets things done. It's not just the system or a change of the system , it's also about the people we elect a change of the quality of personnel in government – not always about their educational level, in some cabinets in the past, in various African countries PhD claimants have been overrepresented, but that has not produced the required electricity or produced much of the much needed goods that we want to be spouting out of Ajaokuta Steel
Government of the people by the people for the people, in the UK parliamentary system MP s can be held accountable by the constituencies that elected them. We would like to see more of that, so that they don't take us a s fore-granted whether in Nigeria or Sweden.
Anthony Akinola
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Assensoh, Akwasi B.
Brother 'Tony:
Well, sometimes ignorance becomes a bliss for some people, hence some of them think the way they do. In fact, in the early 1980s, I spent my much-needed train fare to go to JFK Airport to welcome from Africa a friend's father, a wealthy African businessman;
he curiously asked me what I was studying in my NYU doctoral program. When I said 'History', he opened his mouth widely to ask me: "Ah, why History, young man? You couldn't study any science subject in scientific America? For me, there are three subjects
you need not come overseas from Africa to study. They are History, Political Science and Economics, subjects you can easily pick up in Africa when you read our many newspapers. Also, studying Economics is like learning how to become a miser, and that can
be learned better in Africa, where we have limited resources."
As I still recall today, my own legendary mentor, Baba Ijebu, lamented to me one day when we were enjoying a delicious Yoruba meal (including amala
enveloped in egusi and fish soup) at his Palmgrove residence, near Yaba: "Baba Ghana, did you say your uncle just received his DDS in Australia to become a dentist? Ah, when we went to school, we used to be caned mercilessly at home if we
brought any marks or grades from school that included 'D' or 'F'. Today, young people are smiling and dancing when they get 'DDS', 'MD', EDD, and DSc." Mind you, D.Sc., is Doctor of Science!
A.B. Assensoh.
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2018 4:08 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Re- “a society where everyone is a political scientist, not least because they have read newspapers