Is Something Wrong With Me?

[Toyin Falola]

Reading some items on this site as well as others, as in the case of appointments in Nigeria, I have come to the conclusion that something is wrong with me as a person and with my emotion. When there are bigger issues, as in the ongoing protests, the devastations by COVID-19, the behavior of President Trump, declining economies in Africa, I become obsessed with those issues. I forfeit sleep and food. I will hold a cup of coffee and won’t be able to raise it to my sleep. I feel betrayed.

 

I wonder how some of you are able to leave the bigger issues and focus on the smaller ones, sometimes totally irrelevant to the concerns of our civilization and collective humanity. How are you able to disconnect and live your normal life?

 

At 3AM this morning, I came to the conclusion that you are the ones who are doing the right thing and that something must be wrong with me.

Moderator

[Anthony Akinola]

 Nothing is wrong with you, my eminent Prof. These things happen almost daily.

It is impossible to say discussions should finish about one issue before we jump on another.

We are all emotionally involved.

Please do not joke with your rest, you are doing great for posterity.

Anthony Akinola

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[Okechukwu Ukaga]

Prof,

No one is doing the wrong thing  --- not you and not the folks talking about what you consider less important. Take the issue of appointments, for example, it matters for many reasons. Here are a couple. First, you cannot prevent/solve any of the critical problems without the right (effective, competent, qualified, compassionate, selfless, etc, etc) people in-charge. Garbage in, garbage out (GIGO). Notably, all the things you find worrisome (the ongoing protests, the devastations by COVID-19, the behavior of President Trump, declining economies in Africa) are caused/exacerbated by or represent bad leadership. So learsdip and who is appointed or hired to do what cannot and should not be considered trivial or less important. It is the key factor as Chinua Achebe reminded us in his book The Trouble with Nigeria. Second, representation, fairness, equity, diversity, inclusion, and participation are essential ingredients of sustainable development. Hence, being nepostistic and concentrating key positions in the hands of a section invariable results in worse (rather than better) outcomes for all. The worsening security situation in Nigeria illustrates this point. It is therefore dubious to suggest (as at least one has done on this list) that it doesn't matter who is in charge of what because all are Nigerians. It matters a lot, especially as those in-charge have been ineffective. In a country of over 200 million people you can and should certainly find more effective hands if we are not blinded by favoritism, neposition, tribalism, and other myopic/nefarious interests. Solving societal problems is like making a good soup. You need a good recipe, good ingredients, good chef and good equipment like pots, cookers etc with human resources being the most important. If you have a bad or incompetent chef (cook) the other things cannot be effectively utilized to achieve he desired goal. So it is with all "concerns of our civilization and collective humanity". 

Regards,

Okey    

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--

Okechukwu Ukaga, MBA, PhD
Executive Director and Extension Professor

University of Minnesota Extension Southeast Regional Sustainable Development Partnership

Website: www.rsdp.umn.edu  Office: 507-536-6313; Cell: 218-341-6029  

Book Review Editor, Environment, Development and Sustainability (www.springer.com/10668),

"Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach" -- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

[Harrow, Kenneth]

dear all

please join me in applauding our renowned, respected moderator. his work on behalf of ALL of US, in postings about everything to do with africa, from politics, to religion, to current events, to covid... all this indeed is demanding, stressful, and difficult for him, but informative, healing, community building for us. what do the people do about all those nurses and doctors and grocery store clerks, who are out there risking their lives so that we might be able to live and go on with our lives? they take out a few minutes, maybe thursday at noon, go to their windows, balconies, and applaud. why? not just to show appreciation, but really to say, we are all one.

toyin falola, you are never alone. we all appreciate you much more than you will ever know.

👍❤️🙌😁

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 2, 2020 8:04 AM
To: dialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Is Something Wrong With Me?

 

--

[Julius Eto]

Dear Prof Falola,

I profusely thank you for your selfless labour for the African race.

There is nothing wrong with you for highlighting and helping to address our epochal issues.

But something is wrong with those who are silent (acquiesce) or support the wickedness, hypocrisy, violence against vulnerable people, wild greed/self-centredness, racism etc that characterize/dog our current civilization and assail our collective humanity.

Prof, your place is positively assured in African and world history.

On Tuesday, June 2, 2020, 07:58:27 PM GMT+1, Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu> wrote:







dear all

please join me in applauding our renowned, respected moderator. his work on behalf of ALL of US, in postings about everything to do with africa, from politics, to religion, to current events, to covid... all this indeed is demanding, stressful, and difficult
for him, but informative, healing, community building for us. what do the people do about all those nurses and doctors and grocery store clerks, who are out there risking their lives so that we might be able to live and go on with our lives? they take out
a few minutes, maybe thursday at noon, go to their windows, balconies, and applaud. why? not just to show appreciation, but really to say, we are all one.

toyin falola, you are never alone. we all appreciate you much more than you will ever know.

👍❤️🙌😁

ken











kenneth harrow


professor emeritus


dept of english


michigan state university


517 803-8839


har...@msu.edu

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DM5PR12MB2456A336962148839DD0C855DA8B0%40DM5PR12MB2456.namprd12.prod.outlook.com.

[Biko Agozino]

Kpele o

Something is definitely wrong with you!

Why are you lifting a cup of coffee to your 'sleep' at 3AM?

I join others in reminding you that you need your rest for we need you.

Instead of coffee, drink water from 6PM and go to bed latest by 10:30PM

Take a deep breath and count yourself to sleep with a focus on you breathing.

Africa will still be there for the superman to save the next day, fi i le.

Get you 8 hours of sleep every night, old man, and that is a prescription.

Biko

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DM5PR12MB2456A336962148839DD0C855DA8B0%40DM5PR12MB2456.namprd12.prod.outlook.com.

[Uyilawa Usuanlele]

Oga Prof.,

                  I second Biko's prescription. Thank you.

Uyi

---

From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 2, 2020 4:42 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Is Something Wrong With Me?

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/973148784.2932632.1591130539301%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Oga Falola,

I second Okey Ukaga's point that so-called small questions and so-called big ones are interrelated, connected both causally and symbiotically. I use "so-called" because one man's big existential issue is another's small, inconsequential matter, and vice versa.

To elaborate on the point about the interconnections between what might seem like more urgent existential and substantive issues and issues that might seem less tangible, more abstract, and thus less inconsequential, the perfect analogy is the growing popularity of intersectionality and intersectional analysis in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. In essence intersectionality is the recognition that social phenomena and social constructs that may seem separate and unrelated, such as race, creed, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and culture, are coextensive with one another and inform one another. Such is the connection that you have to recognize all of these phenomena as aspects of the same problem and you do violence analytically to one side if you focus only on the other. This the whole point of intersectionality is that you cannot fully analyze or understand one without simultaneously looking at the other.

In the same way, and in addition to the robust explanation given by Udogu, I would say that the issue of representation in national appointments is not only central to nation-building and national cohesion, but it is ultimately related to the issue of whether the nation survives or atrophies. If people do not feel that they belong to the national project, why should they contribute to it and if they don't contribute then how can the nation endure and how can you blame them for wanting out? If representation is trashed and the nation is polarized, how can economic and tangible projects be successfully pursued? How can the nation prosper and if it does how can citizens benefit from that prosperity?

Philosopher Axel Honneth captures the interrelatedness of the tangible and intangible, the concrete/economic and the abstract/representational when he argued that all human struggles are defined by two overarching imperatives: redistribution and recognition. In other words, people desire as much recognition (representation, belonging, dignity, respect) as they do redistribution (socioeconomic goods and opportunity).

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DM6PR01MB540138F9A8E0EA68EFE60CCEC68B0%40DM6PR01MB5401.prod.exchangelabs.com.

[segun ogungbemi]

TF,

Thanks for making the sacrifice for us to be adequately informed about events happening around the globe and blending it with moments of amusements. 

Ken, thanks for asking us to applause TF for the job well done. 

Segun. 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DM5PR12MB2456A336962148839DD0C855DA8B0%40DM5PR12MB2456.namprd12.prod.outlook.com.

[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

 

Southern Nigerian Black Leaders Lives Matter Also

Mr Moderator Sir,

I totally support  Professor Moses Ochonu's take on intersectionality and intersectional analysis on this thread.

We, Nigerian diasporans risk being seen as hippocrates when we join Black Americans mouth platitudes on Black Lives Matter when we cannot demonstrate the same enthusiasm towards southern Nigerian leaders when they were assassinated in cold blood by agents of the Northern Oligarchy and they strut about and are even rewarded after having confessed  to the murder. This has kept me  awake at 3am every night  for the past twenty years

To date five Nigerian leaders have been assassinated: Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (who topped the list of politicians  and military officers murdered in January 1966 ),  General JTU Aguiyi Ironsi, General Murtala Mohammed, General Sanni Abacha and President Moshood Abiola.  The first two and the last two were involved in revenge killings.

Whenever northern Nigerian leaders were assassinated agents of northern power brokers made sure culprits were brought to summary justice and culprits did not go scot free.  It was the inability to secure summary justice in the case of Sir Abubakar that snowballed into the assassination of Ironsi whose perpetrators were then rewarded with rapid promotions instead of being court martialled and made to face military justice by firing squad as it happened when General Murtala  Muhammed was assassinated, all of which led to a catastrophic civil war.

This situation was repeated when General Sanni Abacha was assassinated by members of his inner clique because he had grown totally uncontrollable by the clique that put him in office to prevent the elected President from taking office.  The elected President Moshood Abiola was then assassinated still to prevent him from taking office and the man who organised his beatings to death was allowed to walk free after his confession when he should have been court martialled and be made to face Military Law since he committed the crime in uniform.  I am referring Major (rtd) Al Mustapha.

Members of this forum should in a similar vein to what they are doing to honour American Blacks, be clamouring for General (rtd) Theophilus Danjuma and Al Mustapha to be court martialled by  a military tribunal set up by President Buhari who incidentally was a military officer before becoming President and who cannot pretend not to know the workings of Military Law when it comes to assassination of a country's leaders. President Buhari should demonstrate a new beginning in the administration of justice as prescribed for true Muslims in the just concluded holy month of Ramadan. He should remember that when he was toppled from power as he toppled Shagari from power both would not have lived to tell the tale of their toppling if they were southern Nigerian leaders.  Southern Nigerian  Leaders Lives Matter and they should not be dispensable to share spoils of political wars.

It is true that Mr President holds the ace of commutal of sentences after  justice is seen to have been done but the least the President ought to do as commander in chief of the armed forces to cleanse the armed forces and lay the ghosts of these crimes to rest is to strip them of their ranks and dismiss them from the armed forces for the heinous crimes committed while in uniform  to which their confession is in the public domain.  Anything short of this means it is one law for northern assassins of southern Nigerian leaders and another for assassins of northern Nigerian leaders.

OAA

Sent from Samsung tablet.

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

From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>

Date: 02/06/2020 23:59 (GMT+00:00)

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

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Is Something Wrong With Me?

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

Oga Falola,

I second Okey Ukaga's point that so-called small questions and so-called big ones are interrelated, connected both causally and symbiotically. I use "so-called" because one man's big existential issue is another's small, inconsequential matter, and vice versa.

To elaborate on the point about the interconnections between what might seem like more urgent existential and substantive issues and issues that might seem less tangible, more abstract, and thus less inconsequential, the perfect analogy is the growing popularity of intersectionality and intersectional analysis in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. In essence intersectionality is the recognition that social phenomena and social constructs that may seem separate and unrelated, such as race, creed, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and culture, are coextensive with one another and inform one another. Such is the connection that you have to recognize all of these phenomena as aspects of the same problem and you do violence analytically to one side if you focus only on the other. This the whole point of intersectionality is that you cannot fully analyze or understand one without simultaneously looking at the other.

In the same way, and in addition to the robust explanation given by Udogu, I would say that the issue of representation in national appointments is not only central to nation-building and national cohesion, but it is ultimately related to the issue of whether the nation survives or atrophies. If people do not feel that they belong to the national project, why should they contribute to it and if they don't contribute then how can the nation endure and how can you blame them for wanting out? If representation is trashed and the nation is polarized, how can economic and tangible projects be successfully pursued? How can the nation prosper and if it does how can citizens benefit from that prosperity?

Philosopher Axel Honneth captures the interrelatedness of the tangible and intangible, the concrete/economic and the abstract/representational when he argued that all human struggles are defined by two overarching imperatives: redistribution and recognition. In other words, people desire as much recognition (representation, belonging, dignity, respect) as they do redistribution (socioeconomic goods and opportunity).

On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 5:04 PM Uyilawa Usuanlele <big...@hotmail.com> wrote:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DM6PR01MB540138F9A8E0EA68EFE60CCEC68B0%40DM6PR01MB5401.prod.exchangelabs.com.

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Hallelujah!

Another dark night, another soul, another cry, another  dark night of the soul

Cheer up – Praise God!  We are alive. We have survived…

Another season, another reason, to making whoopee whoopee

Is there something wrong with me?

In that question lurks another question: Why me?

Not only you Professor Toyin Falola

No escape.

The immediate background to the question: All of us inundated by the barrage of bad news, unending corruption, man’s inhumanity to man, May 25, 2020, the brutal murder of George Floyd weighs heavily on our conscience, the United States of America where many of mankind lives, May 25, 2020, Strange Fruit still hanging from the poplar trees –

if it had been Jared Kushner, just think what would have been Trump’s reaction and his talk to the world and to his nation. At least, after his majestic walk to St John’s Episcopal Church just as the Bishop cried, he should have prayed before laying his hands on that Bible; the dalek should have washed his filthy hands, before picking up the Holy Bible. Trump and the stink of all that bad, nauseating news with which we are being hammered all day, that plus the uncertainties of the corona plague upon us, it’s in the news it’s in the interviews, it’s in the air that we breathe even when asleep, it’s everywhere…

Is there something wrong with me? Is it not but the beginning of another “to be or not to be” soliloquy, one in which the anguished soul may be in need of some urgent counselling from the parish priest – at least the last rites, before it is too late, as we must all keep our date with fate?  

Is there something wrong with me? Hallelujah! You are alive!

Bernard Henri-Levy was asked on TV, “Do you believe in God” - and he answered, “Sometimes, at night” - just as we all do when you look at the starry dynamo of heaven,” the starry dynamo in the machinery of night” …

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies? The first line of doubt.

Is it merely the existential late at night moments, and movements of the soul in the candlelight, we could listen to  a still small voice,  or your own voice, some self-doubt in search of sympathy and external reassurance, hope, the voice from within the inside of you self  or by surround stereo  reinforced by the reassuring, appreciative deluge from Harrow, Eto, Ochonu, Agozino, Usuanlele, Ogungbemi, Agbetuyi, that  you are after all a great and formidable  warrior, you’re alright mate, even if  at the end of the day  you should also like to see your epitaph signed ( like that humble Sheikh), “ Allah’s weakest slave”

 What a wonderful job you have done, just during the month of Ramadan alone, not to mention your little acts of kindness, the intellectual zillion megawatt light productions for world, for Africa and nations  

Is Something Wrong With Me?

Is that not but a rehash of the same kind of question that sometimes afflicts the soul:

“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?”    

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DM6PR01MB540138F9A8E0EA68EFE60CCEC68B0%40DM6PR01MB5401.prod.exchangelabs.com.

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

Definitely not coffee. A  smoothie of blueberries, non-fat yogurt  and a banana sent me to dreamland  last night. 

This is a time of chaos, and sleep is precious.

Here in the US  we have a cocktail of:

#Police brutality and systemic anti-Black racism

#The Covid pandemic 

#Unemployment and looming furloughs and layoffs in Colleges

#Systemic unemployment nationally 

#A callous narcissistic President deterred to do anything to be re-elected

Pragmatically speaking, we have to sleep to recharge and deal with this monstrosity facing us.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU

---

From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 2, 2020 4:42 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Is Something Wrong With Me?

 

Please be cautious: **External Email**

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[Elias K. Bongmba]

Dear Professor Falola,

We share the anxieties you express.  I worry about black youths, Cameroon, Africa, being black, and in a strange way still go through a period when I feel out of place. The conversations on this forum keep me grounded in two ways. First, I know very little about Africa, so I must learn from my colleagues. Second, we can do something and many of our colleagues are doing things to change circumstances for many.

During the last several weeks you have brought comfort and expanded my vision through the songs we have listened to everyday. I have been taught to accept that for people like me, rumba is not the only thing that makes life beautiful. 

You have brought us together for an intellectual, professional exchange, and practice that includes many publishing ventures that is helping redefine African studies. We share your anxieties, but we must continue to think and write Africa knowing that we never really know which ideas will bring the change we need, but we must work for the change that must come and bring glory to Africa.

Elias Bongmba

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[Gloria Emeagwali]

No this   $&@/(:{)   Pres is not deterred. Printers error.  He is  DETERMINED to stay in power, even if it means courting the evangelicals with an upside down Bible photo op.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/ba57fc47-6bf0-ce08-009d-c35d757fe4da%40rice.edu.