The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order
Toyin Falola
This handbook fills a large gap in the current knowledge about the critical role of Africa in the changing global order. By connecting the past, present, and future in a continuum that shows the paradox of existence for over one billion people, the Handbook underlines the centrality of the African continent to global knowledge production, the global economy, global security, and global creativity. Bringing together perspectives from top Africa scholars, it actively dispels myths of the continent as just a passive recipient of external influences, presenting instead an image of an active global agent that astutely projects soft power. Unlike previous handbooks, this book offers an eclectic mix of historical, contemporary, and interdisciplinary approaches that allow for a more holistic view of the many aspects of Africa’s relations with the world.
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
My chapter in this book is titled "Spatial Navigation as a Hermeneutic Paradigm: Ifa, Heidegger and Calvino".
Great thanks to Samuel Oloruntoba, one of the editors, for his role in alerting me to the possibility of publishing in this book.
The essay was actually written in 2004, at a time of my first experience with the near absolute freedom of postgraduate study in England after the more constricted character of studying in my university in Nigeria.
Unifying all my interests, I was at last able to integrate philosophy, literature, spirituality and the visual arts, bringing my explorations in Nigeria into dialogue with my discoveries in England, within a learning culture that prized multidisciplinary self education across disciplines.
The essay is actually inspired by a subject perhaps not mentioned within it, perhaps bcs that influence is subliminal rather than immediate- my experiences exploring Benin-City and it's surrounding landscapes and villages, on foot, motivated by the culture of sacred trees that marks the landscape, trees of great epistemic and metaphysical significance, a subject awaiting adequate exploration.
This experience sensitised me to the
hermeneutics of landscape, it's interpretive potential, it's embedding of
physical, philosophical, spiritual, historical and other values, an
interpretive zone in relation to the Benin landscape and the work of it's landscape
designers still awaiting the study it deserves, to the best of my knowledge,
but foreshadowed by the Benin expression, "aghase se Edo, Edo ree",
"When you arrive in Edo, Edo is distant," indicating the discrepancy between physical
presence in a location and adequate understanding of the levels of meaning
represented by that location, a cognitive distance even more striking in relation to the cultural density of Benin.
At the time I wrote the essay in question, even that striking piece of knowledge about Benin spatial and cultural theory still lay in my future, being encountered by chance in a news publication, and on which I wrote a short essay, self published online, and a longer one, yet unpublished, from what I recall, along with other work awaiting publication, inspired by the evocative powers of the Benin landscape.
The essay published in the handbook develops in terms of the topography and dynamism of the London Underground, the sensitivities to the intersection of physical and social space first cultivated in me by the Benin landscape.
At the time, I was doing two concurrent MA degrees in comparative literature at the University of Kent and another at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, funded by my family in Nigeria, eager to do anything legitimate to help their creatively restless brother find himself, using my experience in both programs in feeding each other, adapting the theoretical scope of the SOAS program, Tania Tribe's class on art theory I audited and the research program of humanities public lectures run by SOAS and nearby UCL in enriching the multi-disciplinary flexibility of the Kent program, the latter integrating broad studies in literature, along with being open to other disciplines, with the MA in the Study of Mysticism and Religious Experience, the religion study program a magnificent stimulant to my yearning to synthesise various spiritualities and philosophies.
What could the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge possibly have to do with the London Underground, Eshu, the Yoruba deity, with Martin Heidegger and all these with the Italian writer Italo Calvin's Invisible Cities, which creates a relationship between physical and imagined metropolises?
Spatial intersections within Yoruba and other African cosmologies as points of unification of possibilities, physical and spiritual?
The Underground as a network of intersections represented by various stations, where unanticipated encounters may emerge?
Heidegger's metaphorisation of philosophical exploration in terms of paths of enquiry in ceaselessly unfolding spaces?
Shapes of experience and imagination rising from motion within physical spaces and their possibilities for interpersonal encounter, Calvino's take on city space?
Goegraphy as personal and communal cosmos?
thanks
toyin
--
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
My chapter in this book is titled "Spatial Navigation as a Hermeneutic Paradigm: Ifa, Heidegger and Calvino".
Great thanks to Samuel Oloruntoba, one of the editors, for his role in alerting me to the possibility of publishing in this book.
The essay was actually written in 2004, at a time of my first experience with the near absolute freedom of postgraduate study in England after the more constricted character of studying in my university in Nigeria.
Unifying all my interests, I was at last able to integrate philosophy, literature, spirituality and the visual arts, bringing my explorations in Nigeria into dialogue with my discoveries in England, within a learning culture that prized multidisciplinary self education across disciplines.
The essay is actually inspired by a subject perhaps not mentioned within it, perhaps bcs that influence is subliminal rather than immediate-my experiences exploring Benin-City and it's surrounding landscapes and villages, on foot, motivated by the culture of sacred trees that marks the landscape, trees of great epistemic and metaphysical significance, a subject awaiting adequate exploration.
This experience sensitised me to the hermeneutics of landscape, it's interpretive potential, it's embedding of physical, philosophical, spiritual, historical and other values, an interpretive zone in relation to the Benin landscape and the work of it's classical landscape designers still awaiting the scope of study it deserves, to the best of my knowledge, but foreshadowed by the Benin expression, "aghase se Edo, Edo ree", "When you arrive in Edo, Edo is distant," indicating the discrepancy between physical presence in a location and adequate understanding of the levels of meaning represented by that location, a cognitive distance even more striking in relation to the cultural density of Benin.
At the time I wrote the essay in question, even that pregnant piece of knowledge about Benin spatial and cultural theory still lay in my future, being encountered by chance in a news publication, and on which I wrote a short essay, self published online, and a longer one, yet unpublished, from what I recall, along with other work awaiting publication, inspired by the evocative powers of the Benin landscape.
The essay published in the handbook develops in terms of the topography and dynamism of the London Underground, the sensitivities to the intersection of physical and social space first cultivated in me by the Benin landscape.
At the time, I was doing two concurrent MA degrees in comparative literature at the University of Kent and another at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, funded by my family in Nigeria, determined to do anything legitimate to help their creatively restless brother find himself, using my experience in both programs in feeding each other, adapting the theoretical scope of the SOAS program, Tania Tribe's class on art theory I audited and the research program of humanities public lectures run by SOAS and nearby UCL in enriching the multi-disciplinary flexibility of the Kent program, the latter integrating broad studies in literature, along with being open to other disciplines, with the MA in the Study of Mysticism and Religious Experience, the religion study program a magnificent stimulant to my yearning to synthesise various spiritualities and philosophies.
What could the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge possibly have to do with the London Underground, Eshu, the Yoruba deity, with Martin Heidegger and all these with the Italian writer Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, which creates a relationship between physical and imagined metropolises?
Spatial intersections within Yoruba and other African cosmologies as points of unification of possibilities, physical and spiritual?
The Underground as a network of convergences and divergences represented by various stations, where unanticipated encounters may emerge?
Heidegger's metaphorization of philosophical exploration in terms of paths of enquiry in ceaselessly unfolding spaces?
Eshu as fundamental hermeneute, eyes overlooking the circle of exploration of possibilities at the intersection of matter and spirit, of past, present and future that is the opon ifa, the Ifa divination tray, his crossroads location evocative of the intersection of what is, what was and what may be, guide to the flight of the mind across these constellations of possibility?
Shapes of experience and imagination rising from motion within physical spaces and their possibilities for interpersonal encounter, Calvino's take on city space?
Geography as personal and communal cosmos?
thanks
toyin
Cornelius Hamelberg
On a much more mundane plane, one can’t help musing on Africa’s impact on contemporary music throughout the world
African Herbs, thinking of Nauclea Latifolia, also thinking about on the one hand what is the main Herb for the Rastafari, and on the other hand what Father Spyridon says about Cannabis and Christianity.
It should be interesting to see how Brother Biko Agozino would set about reconciling these two views. in the context of the ongoing globalisation of Marijuana...
Black Inventors and their inventions
Michael Afolayan
Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Sent: Monday, January 3, 2022 2:09 PM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Yoruba Affairs <yoruba...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Thanks for that superb Eshu characterisation, Michael. Striking and memorable, suggesting Eshu as one of the richest fruits of the complexity and subtlety of the Yoruba imagination, correlative with the harmony of contraries in Igbo thought highlighted by Achebe and scholarship on his work and embodied perhaps by the deity Agwu.
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Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Sent: Monday, January 3, 2022 7:52 PM
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Cc: Yoruba Affairs <yoruba...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Cornelius Hamelberg
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,
It must have been a tremendous task putting it all together.
Mighty Congratulations to the Editors Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba, Toyin Falola and all the contributors to
The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, a necessary reference book for the Africaphile people...
Mighty congratulations to you too , personally, for Spatial Navigation as a Hermeneutic Paradigm Ifa, Heidegger and Calvino as your contribution.
You must have also had some fun writing it to illuminates Ifa, but lo and behold, you have been keeping this under your hat all this time. Kudos. I’m impressed. Some other kind of fellow would have let the cat out of the bag a along time ago and been boasting about it full-time. I daresay the title of your contribution sounds sufficiently complicated / sophisticated / forbidding to scare something out of a humble soul like yours truly and I suppose other non-specialists who may be interested in African Spirituality/African spiritual realms too , but at the same time, to whet our interest to learn something new, because most humble folks have scarcely heard of Heidegger or Calvino and as for me , I remain a total ignoramus about all three ( Ifa, Heidegger , and Calvino). However, the 54 contributions have a general, broad appeal - a little something for everyone. I notice that the contributions about music and the export of culture, etc., all come under the “Africa and Global Religions and Creativity” section of the book. Kudos everybody! During this on-going changing of the Global order - with all the politics and economic that undergirds these changes, this handbook latest is surely a landmark in the American Publishing world for the year 2022.
The book is quite expensive. No nice price, special concessions for the poverty stricken? I know that we should be forced to pay through the nose for real quality, eh ?
Even as an independent scholar, don't you think that it's time for your appointment as Adjunct Professor or researcher -in-residence - more money for your electricity generator, more money from the royalties
More music:
Nyboma : Zatcha ( 1982)
Nyboma: Malcolm X ( 1995)
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
I bought the Calvino book as a battered second hand copy at the Oba Market in Benin, possibly having had to step through muddy paths after rain, bypassing the tomato, pepper and other food sellers to reach the book stalls where I bought some of my very best books ever, including a pristine copy of Ulli Beier's book on Yoruba cosmology through the art and thought of Susanne Wenger, The Return of the Gods: The Sacred Art of Susanne Wenger, one of the best books on Yoruba thought, a book part of which I copied out by hand when I first encountered it at the then Bendel Library in Benin when it had no photocopiers and which I saw again eventually locked behind glass as a special book at Oxfam's bookshop in Cambridge.
On sighting the book on that day in Oba Market, I composed myself stealthily and asked its price in a nonchalant manner, so that my burning desire would not lead to a price hike. Having eventually paid for it a price that I understood as practically nothing in relation to the value of the book, I took it home, leaving the bookseller happy with what he understood as a good sale, careful to avoid any untoward interaction on the way that would negatively affect the new child I had acquired.
Calvino's Invisible Cities is a fantastic re-imagining of Marco Polo's accounts of his travels in marvellous places around the world. Calvino uses the motif of the city as a means of reflecting on human communities in cities, the possibilities they generate, the interactions and imaginings they enable. Stories told in small, poetic chapters.
I did not publish the essay earlier beceause I had little clue about the kind of scholar I wanted to be besides being simply happy to research and write.
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Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order
Toyin Falola
Ken:
This problem has been with us forever. Until we all worry about the impact of our scholarship on development, liberation, etc., what we do may be of marginal value.
TF
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju: Thank you.
Pope wrote
his An
Essay
on Criticism when he was 23 years old, Alexander the Great
passed away at 32 years of age, Purcell was through with
composing by the time he was 36, Buber’s I
and Thou was published in 1923 when he was a mature 45, and last
night, I was listening in on your
man who never left town, nevertheless arriving in the space-time
dimension known as the Hereafter at a ripe 79...
From the point of view of all of the above, it’s really amazing that your contribution to this monumental 2022 publication was written as far back as 2004 when you were a slightly different kind of person, perhaps, less cerebrally advanced and cosmologically speaking, with all that modern science and philosophy since then , less well-informed than you are today. If any of the other contributions on the political and economic issues had been written that far back in time, they would probably be outdated by now – however, when it comes to Ifa, Heidegger , and Calvino, I suppose insights may change about the still evolving Ifa, and whereas Calvino is gone, God willing, the ghost of Heidegger and the sins of his Nazi past will never be laid to rest, will continue to be exhumed for re-examination for many generations to come. Talking about “Nazi past”, Pope Benedict’s is also there to haunt him.
I suppose that as underdog, there’s no other way but to use comparative philosophy/comparative mythology / comparative religion to explain the mysteries in something as uniquely indigenous as Ifa.
I have looked through all of the chapter titles/ topics , they are all very interesting indeed, and I’m intrigued that Malami Buba who I associate with language and literature has a chapter entitled “Look East” and Look Back: Lessons for Africa in the Changing Global Order “ - a very topical issue indeed, with China on the march in Africa.
(By the way, have you looked at his ( Malami Buba’s) The legacies of the Sokoto Caliphate in contemporary Nigeria and if you haven’t, you know that you ought to, needless to say, in conjunction with Moses Ochonu’s Colonialism by Proxy: Hausa Imperial Agents and Middle Belt Consciousness in Nigeria – since you are forever going on about “Northern Hegemony “ Miyetti Allah, dear President Buhari, and our dearest Fulani Herdsmen
You and Chidi have been singing the praises of blogging, online self-publishing , that you are both plentifully available on the WWW., but I suspect that it should be a little more satisfying/ fulfilling to refer to your books. We ( Better Half and I ) were handed one ( a book) on new year’s eve by our guest, the author, Karl-Gunnar Norén – the book “ Polarfararnas kläder” – På liv och död” and I could see the glint of satisfaction in his eyes as he autographed it and handed it over. Factor in what Ken Harrow says in this thread, about the profit motive in publishing ; among other things, it means that Nigeria is potentiality a huge market, once the soon to be 300 million strong nation re-incarnates as a reading generation (sadly, for now, even in this digital age, more than a hundred million Naira souls belong to the non-reading generation….
Your walk in your then favourite haunt , the Benin City Market was not very different from my prowls in the Mile One Market in Port Harcourt and the market places in Aba where to my great surprise you’d always find stalls with the Seal of Solomon, all kinds of magical pentagrams and assorted magical talismans, the so called sixth and seventh books of Moses on display , which means that there’s a profitable market for that kind of paraphernalia that feed the great appetite for the hocus-pocus, the rank superstition, the supernatural, the practitioners of witchcraft, namely the witches and wizards , and some of the other supernatural beings such as mami wata that I have never seen in Sweden - but there’s at least one in Denmark.
As for book stores - in a Cairo bookshop, intuition moved my eyes one shelf up and lo and behold there was Ghana an Diplomacy - Ghana's Foreign Policy, 1957-1966: Diplomacy, Ideology and the New State by W. Scott Thompson – a book that I had been searching for , for years…
BTW , when I returned to Sweden from Nigeria, it was my dream to start a bookshop ( to be known as “ Sunshine House” . The world has changed so much since then . Today, such an enterprise couldn’t possibly thrive, talk less of survive , thanks to the www, the cell phone, the tablet
Some Congolese style Ghanaian Highlife : Nyboma : Amba
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
ill check out the Buba and Ochonu essays to help me broaden my perspective.
why would your bookshop not thrive? Are there not still physical book shops everywhere, although their existence is riskier than before?
the MAs were like refresher courses, well after my BA and after years as an academic. such reinvigoration should be a regular part of a scholarly career.
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,
You are an incorrigible optimist and maybe not a great economist with a good nose for market possibilities and impossibilities.
About my proposed Bookshop, "Sunshine House" - way back in 1985 not surviving to see daylight in 2021, speak less of thriving, you should know that even successes like the once upon a time great little Stockholm bookshop known as "Agora" folded up a long time ago and some of its personnel moved to Hedengrens , the best bookshop in town, along with Akademibokhandeln. Nota bene: Amazon has moved in on Sweden, to muscle in on the book trade, which means that it should be easier - maybe a little cheaper to order some Ta-Nehisi Coates from them than from anyone else in Sweden. When that excellent little fortnightly West Africa Magazine also folded up by 2005, it was time to lose heart , since for the specialist book-store I had in mind, the most guaranteed sales would have been African and African - diaspora music, newspapers, magazines, political & literary journals, and of course crème de la crème in third world literature , and that includes a big chunk of first literary world India , Black Britain, the Caribbean, some Sweden, Canada, and of course, Mighty top dog, the Mighty Mastiff United States, in real or surreal English.
They say that our Shakespeare knew "small Latin and less Greek." In that respect, I guess he was just like some of us ( a little Latin, and less Greek)
And you yourself, where to place you? Are you a postmodernist / a postmodern philosopher or do you elude definition?
At least Ojogbon and some of the most eminent scholars in this forum recognise and identify as one of them, swimming in the same ocean of inquiry. And this very good thing : You don't start putting on airs about it. As you know, you evince a strong attraction and such a great passion for the world of the academe. Indeed, you are swimming in its waters as a part of it, although you sometimes when self-effacing ( a good quality) give the impression - appear to be a little hesitant and apprehensive like the Sadhu before plunging into the ocean against his own will, afraid of being swallowed up entirely, swept away by some really swift, strong, powerful, overwhelming current, into the vast ocean of consciousness and like Sri Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj becoming at-one-ment with it ?
In that case, on the existential level you probably harbour the kind of fear captured by Khalil Gibran in this poem - Fear
Sometimes, what's done can't be undone - for instance should one be swayed by some conspiracy theory or other about not taking the vaccine , it could be - too late - if you have already taken the vaccine you cannot intake it, one cannot " vaccinate" - we ( all of us ) can only hope on The Resurrection
To Ken, you say, “ I speak from a history of struggle”... jihad !
According to Wole Soyinka,“ a tiger does not proclaim his tigritude he pounces" , so that if Ifa had been a woman/ big booty, I imagine you would have pounced on her (the little tigress, Queen of the Slipstream ) long ago and she would have surely surrendered and by now would have been writing some sublime poetry in her dairy, unlike Anais Nin, about the ecstasy of submission, and singing the kinds of songs you find in Court and Spark. I can't help imagining this
Of course, no one else is capable of standing in your shoes for you , artistically speaking, even if equipped with the necessary negative capability. I daresay it’s no coincidence that your middle name is Vincent or that you were conscious of this when you chose to write about your namesake Vincent Van Gogh…
And, of course, there’s sometimes the fear of rejection even amongst the bravest of us all. Perhaps, only a gifted few are exempt or distant from that kind of fear. I’m thinking here of e.g. Kwame Anthony Appiah who as the new kid on the block I’m sure entertained no fear of rejection when he submitted his manuscript for that his early 1992 publication "In My Father's House - Africa in the Philosophy of Culture "
Now here’s the nitty-gritty : When you talk about, " At the beginning of my journeys in Ifa studies..." - those imprecise years of so long ago when I suppose you were initiated into the Ifa cult, it's not unreasonable to expect that by now you have undergone more than the fifteen years of understudy/ rigorous discipleship/ apprenticeship to have qualified as a bona fide Babalawo , so that you are equipped to speak more authoritatively from the inside and in speaking more authoritatively from the inside you'll find that adherents of that faith( cult and your fellow academics who are practitioners of that faith ( cult, and others who merely teach but do not practice or are not authorised to practice those mysteries, begin to take you much more seriously.
"I don't think I've advanced in Ifa Studies, beyond the level of that 2004 essay" ( Humility is really my first name, hello, that was our Oluwatoyin Vincent Adejoju the most humble speaking) although the fact is we don't get that impression from his recent altercations with Lord Olayinka Agbetuyi his forum interlocutor. Furthermore , if Oluwatoyin hasn't advanced beyond the level of that 2004 essay, we are to assume that he has voluntarily, chosen not to do so, since we all know and so does he, that he have more than the required capacity/ brain power and sense of righteousness to become a fully fledged Babalawo
About that type of capacity, the list is long. when you add Susan Wenger ( an initiate) and her husband Ulli Beier...
You could be to Ifa what Sir Richard Francis Burton is to so called "Muhammadan studies" ( I read most his Personal Narrative Of A Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Mecca, on the 17th of June 1981, my first night in Ahoada, Rivers State , Nigeria - prior to which I knew zilch about al-Islam) . You could be to Ifa that too , shining the light of Ifa in both the East and the West - like what Sir John Woodroffe is to Hindu Tantra, what Agehananda Bharati is to Hindu Sadhana, you could be a garlanded cult leader in the West, like Adi Da with his awesome library which is free, or what Henry Corbin is to Shia Mysticism, what Idries Shah was to Sufism generally, in the West, at a popular level ( he converted Robert Graves - Oxford Professor of poetry to Sufism!) and so you too could be what Laurence Galian is recently, contemporaneously with Peter Lambourn Wilson. I know that you could easily attain to some of these, but the question remains: What about JESUS? As the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, I wonder how Jesus would have about "Atrocities/war crimes condoned in the Bible" if his disciples or the Pharisees had asked him that sort of question. I'm in a bad mood -feeling a little shattered after watching Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch's "A History of Christianity" , last night. If only you could research for me the claim that "Salvation cannot be found outside of the Catholic Church"
I've got it all mapped out for you ( shmile).
Take heart. The Prophet Moses, Jesus the Redeemer, the Prophet Muhammad salallahu alaihi wa salaam were not PhD students either, nor was Baruch Spinoza or the great Moshe Chaim Luzzatto
The only criticism I've heard from fellow ignoramuses here and there is that Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju seems incapable of saying anything about Ifa and allied Nigerian phenomena without reaching out to explain everything in terms of Western categories of philosophy, metaphysics, etc. I guess that if you were writing in Yoruba, for a traditional Yoruba audience/ readership you would dispense with ranting on about Kant, Heidegger, Dion Fortune, the Dalai Lama, etc.
By the way, it was on Swedish text TV just the other day that 200 villagers in Zamfara had been massacred , getting everyone shivering and wondering, when is the carnage going to stop? My take is that this is a very bad omen, considering that Zamfara was the first state in Nigeria to adopt Sharia Law and meanwhile their governor and special constabulary seem to be sitting on their hands and doing nothing to bring the agents of Shaitan to justice. For some time now Brother Buhari has been saying that he's going to do something about the mayhem. The question is WHEN? Failing to do something about it my prediction is that the military will soon declare a state of emergency in the North East and the North West , which means that the next de facto military coup - a logical consequence of what's going on, is on the horizon - at which time Mr President will be on the sidelines until the next elections which of course will have to be postponed indefinitely, especially if free and fair elections cannot possibly be held in the Northern citadels of terror, mayhem, ransom kidnappings and mass murder. It's not an atmosphere conducive to free and fair elections. Should the chaos and anarchy escalate, you shouldn't have too long to wait, before the no-nonsense military takes over completely, to establish some law and order in the country. The genie is out of the bottle. Time will tell. Martial law is coming. Pray that the mayhem doesn't move down South to where you are at the moment, and if it does , maybe it's time to be relocating to a safe haven in the United States , the alternative being , " To take up arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them ?"
One of the last things that Obadiah Mailafia said in his last major interview was that nobody knows how much the current administration has been borrowing , from China, among others. But to all intents and purposes, the Nigerian economy is doing very well. Otherwise, the old proven formula going back to the days of Shehu Shagari is that when the treasury is empty , the military usually takes over , and by dispensing with the expensive senate & senators, a military administration is at least the most cost-effective way of administrating the country and establishing at least a semblance of law and order.
Since I'm a great fan of the African Oral Tradition, my New Year's Wish is that this year you will be interviewed/ participate in a meaningful discussion with relevant persons such as Nimi Wariboko or Ojogbon himself, in an appropriate forum and book press where you can disseminate your ideas.
Pepe Ndombe & Madilu System : Santa ( 2021 Album
Nimi Wariboko
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Correction.
Should read : At least Ojogbon and some of the most eminent scholars in this forum recognise and identify you ( Toyin Adepoju) as one of them, swimming in the same ocean of inquiry.
Correction of bad nonsense.
If only we could unhang each and everyone of all those who been wrongfully hanged,
unlynch those who had been lynched, liberate all those who are currently enslaved
I meant to say that unfortunately, sometimes, what's done can't be undone. For instance should you be swayed by some conspiracy theory or other about not taking the vaccine and - too late - you have already taken the vaccine, you cannot then un-take it, one cannot " un-vaccinate". Just like the most corrupt Oyibo, the Negro also wants to ascend to Heaven but doesn't want to die, even if he has a strong guarantee that's where he will actually be going - to heaven and not to Siberia or to jahannam. Should the worse come to the worst then we ( all of us ) can only hope on The Resurrection and life everlasting in God's most Holy Name, (someone please say Amen
Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2022 8:27 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Future Military Coups in Nigeria
Emmanuel Udogu
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
An Opinion from the Archives on the Matter of Professor Wariboko's Fascinating Post against the Backdrop of Nigerian History
E. Ike Udogu, “In Search of Political Stability and Survival: Toward Nigeria’s Third Republic,” Scandinavian Journal of Development Alternatives and Area Studies, Vol. XI, No. 2 & 3 (September-December 1992), pp. 5-28
A PARAPHRASED EXCERPT
In his New Year speech to the nation following the overthrow of the Second Republic [on December 31, 1983], General Buhari stated the reasons for the military coup as follows:
While corruption and indiscipline had been associated with our state of underdevelopment, these twin evils in our politics have attained unprecedented height over the past four years. The corrupt, inept and insensitive leadership in the last four years has been the source of immorality and impropriety in our society, since what happens in any society is largely a reflection of the leadership of that society (p. 12).
When Buhari's major assertions are juxtaposed against those of Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu, the leader of the January 1966 coup, one sees some parallels as to the causes of both coups. For instance, Nzeogwu said after the coup:
Our enemies are the political profiteers, swindlers, the men in high and low places who seek bribes and demand ten percent, those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as minister and VIPs of waste, the tribalists, the nepotists [et cetera] (p.12).
What does this comparison suggest? It suggests that [poor leadership] and corruption have become endemic in society and politics.
Having condemned the vices that have led to democratic setbacks in Nigeria as a General and Head of State, I hope that President Buhari will recall his January 1, 1984 address to the nation and tackle the issues he raised as the country marches gingerly toward 2023.
Folks, to sustain the Fourth Republic considering the recent developments in the nation-state, it is my judgment that we MUST confront the contemporary political, economic, and social dilemmas!
Ike Udogu
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Dear Sir,
Tobrah ?
Me? Ibim!
This analysis of Nigeria's security situation is interesting
All that you say makes absolute sense to me, however, at the same time there are the powerful external and internal/ domestic actors who would like to see the disintegration of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. and the fulfilment of their own dire predictions. Some of the very premonitions that the late Obadiah Mailafia , the outspoken Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, and last but not least, the disintegration that John Campbell the USA's former Ambassador to Nigeria predicted. based on the presumption that one of the functions of any embassy in that country, is to collect , analyse , interpret and assess relevant information about that country, according to their own strategic interests
They - whoever they are, know that they can best foster and foment this disintegration/ implosion not so much by remote control but certainly, most successfully as they are doing right now through their agents already stationed on the ground - and therefore, not accidentally, on a daily basis, the last several years that's what we have been seeing unfolding right in front of our eyes: the destabilisation of Nigeria along its well known fault lines - the North -South, East-West, Islam vs Christianity axis , the evidence of all this in the ongoing Boko Haram terrorism ( who are they and where are the weapons coming from?), the daily murders, wanton ransom kidnappings, church arsons etc. etc. that is being reported by the Nigerian mass media and that is still being discussed ad nauseam in this forum since the good old days of Yaradua, Goodluck Jonathan, right up to the present dispensation of two termer Muhammadu Buhari.
I have seen and know about eight military coups in Africa.
It seems to me that a successful coup that would be capable of imposing law and order over the whole Federation would prevent the disintegration of the country into its constituent fragments, ethnic enclaves that are agitating for their freedom, separate from what is known today, as Nigeria.
This seems to mean that a coup does not have to be successful - on the contrary, the coup has to be unsuccessful in order to ignite the various separatist movements and their seemingly dormant ambitions which are being barley suppressed at the moment , because they fear what could be the outcome of a military confrontation with the Federal Military - but in the eventuality of an botched coup attempt, should the secessionists secede simultaneously, in the absence of a unified Federal military to curb that tendency, it would be a fait accompli. How long the ensuing chaos would last , until the dust of battle finally died down, is quite another matter. For the time being, at least right now, Nigeria's Federal Army doesn't seem to be so successful at quelling the ragtag terrorists known as Boko Haram; who knows, at a future date when the chips are down Boko Haram and some units of the Federal Army may well unite ( unity of purpose)
Let us pray
Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM
--
Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, IIM Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Founder/Publisher of, www.publicinformationprojects.org)
Cornelius Hamelberg
Right now, things are happening in Sudan, Ethiopia, Guinea Conakry, Mali, and even over here in Sweden nobody wants to scare the general populace, but the military is on a high alert because of Russia’s potential future relations with Ukraine & NATO and just in case Sweden wants to butt in , maybe a new phase in Russia’s future relations with Sweden… there should be the possibility of more shalom in Russia-Sweden relations so that Baba Kadiri and I can continue to live in peace and harmony. instead of having to serve at the warfront
When nothing had been posted on this forum for two whole days, I was apprehensive that something was terribly amiss and that perhaps egotism and ignoramus's little i was the main cause, possibly because i had averred , “who knows, at a future date when the chips are down Boko Haram and some units of the Federal Army may well unite ( unity of purpose)” and had thereby offended a some Nigerian nationalists. Well, it didn’t take long before I got this from a Caribbean Bro ( Barbados) : Dr. Obadiah Mailafia speaking here.
I sent him this in return : Dr. Obadiah Mailafia’s last article
Only a born and bred Nigerian could reserve the right to be that harsh in judgement...
Cornelius Hamelberg
There’s also the Oral Tradition
How do you intend to contribute to keeping it alive, in Africa?
I suppose you could explore Spoken Word possibilities - live performances supported by some jungle drums and the creative effects of some Shango thunder & lightning , lighting up Chidi on stage, performing wonders of the word….
Your Spoken Word recordings should give you and us more than just a little satisfaction.
Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM
--
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