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Do folks such as this say something significant? I thought the idea is more to dignify an event than to move society forward.
TF
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According to the Islamic calendar today Rajab 13 is the birthday of Imam Ali, alaihi salaam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiC2_OzUsyQ
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As observed elsewhere, Ojogbon likes to provoke. This time it’s “ Do folks such as this say something significant?”
Like in the Gospel according to John, Nathanael asking the question, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Like in 1986, on hearing that Wole Soyinka had just been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, sour grapes V.S Naipaul asked, “ Has he written anything?” and then added, “the Swedish Academy is pissing on literature from a great height.”
Ojogbon: “ Do folks such as this say something significant?”
The short answer that Ojogbon knows better than anyone else here, is that especially in this digital age, there is POWER in the possibility of the transfer of ideas without borders, and, sometimes positive ideas get translated into action…
Hopefully, the 2022 Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture ´Strength in our common humanity” to be delivered at Uppsala University on 23 February 2023 by Ms. Amina J. Mohammed will have its own unique impact since “will be live-streamed via a link to be shared”.
It is being organised by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in collaboration with the Swedish Association of International Affairs and Pax et Bellum ( a student organisation of the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University)
Dag Hammarskjöld himself ( his plane was shot down whilst he was on a peace mission in the still-troubled Congo) needs no introduction. Ms. Amina J. Mohammed who is Nigerian is of course not as well known; she’s the kind of person that - hopefully, Ojogbon Falola could wing to appear on one of the Falola Conversations on the same topic “ Strength in our common Humanity” which is of acute relevance to the current Nigerian national ethos, to Nigerian Presidential Elections that will be taking place in three weeks time and the aftermath of those elections in a country that is weakened by - not the “clash of civilizations'' but by internal divisions, disunity, conflicts, internal civil strife being fueled - not by the ideals of our common humanity, but by differences in ethnicity, religion, and the tragical paradoxes of a rich country in which a great percentage of the masses continue to be mired in poverty, relative to Nigeria’s riches, all that oil money ….etc etc etc
Perhaps, the fundamental non-racist questions that some of our African leaders and politicians should try to understand and address, in adequate ways are questions such as, who and what is a human being? Who is not a human being? What is meant by humanity? What is the meaning of humane? Who are our people?
Hopefully, the Nigerian patriarchs will listen to Ms. Amina J. Mohammed,
just as in the Bible, the Almighty tells Sheikh Ibrahim to listen to Sarah