Salam alaikum, waramatulhi, wabaratuhu,

Your comments on my contribution on the subject of hijab in schools make me think you are a somewhat boastful and rather pugnacious Muslim sister. I ask: where is your man? This is because you asked, “where are my women?” Because I am a Muslim, I am not used to boasting. My father was an Imam. I finished learning the Quran the traditional way by rote, on wooden slate, and Kalam with Kandahar ink before I started secondary school in 1958. I got a credit grade in Religious Knowledge (as it was called) in 1962 WASC. Then I studied for and obtained a Bachelors Degree at Ahmadu Bello University in 1968. I noticed you said you went to UI in the 80′s.

At the University, although I was studying engineering, I found and read “The Glorious Quran” by M. Picktall, an English man who translated the Qur’an from Arabic to ‘Queen’s English’ to improve on my understanding of the religion of Islam. Without any exaggeration, I know you cannot be more Muslim than I am by background, and knowing the place of women in most Muslim families in Yoruba. I think a Muslim woman who understands Islam will not be querying a man’s pedigrees with a combative attitude unless she is an activist or a fundamentalist who just adheres to religion with a level of ignorant rigidity and ostentatious obstinacy towards voice of reason.

I know there is a Department of Arabic Studies and a magnificent mosque at UI but you cannot compare the Islamic environment to that of ABU. Yet we all know that the hood does not make a monk. Just as the size of the Mosque is not the spiritual measure of those who worship in buildings, hijab wear is not the only true spiritual measure of Islamic adherence of the wearer. The Qur’an says 24: 31 “… they (women) …SHOULD lower their gaze and guard their modesty: they SHOULD not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they SHOULD DRAW THEIR VEILS OVER THEIR BOSOMS AND NOT DISPLAY THEIR BEAUTY except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands’ fathers, their sons …”

Fausat, the operative word here is SHOULD. I am sure my pre-school Arabic teacher must have translated this as MUST. This is the problem. Had I not read the English translation, I would be fighting Lagos State Government that Muslim girls MUST wear hijab to school. This misinterpretation is also, what is wrong with fanatics and fundamentalists. Islam is a beautiful religion that prescribes man’s relationship with God and his creation in a peaceful manner. However, fanatics make the religion hard and combative: the Bin Ladens, the Shekau Boko Harams of Islam.

As for what I regard as derogatory remarks on my person, I do not need to comment on those because those who interact and consult with me at the tertiary academic level in the field of Applied Management and Decision Sciences know me. That is good enough for me as a peaceful Muslim. More Salaam!

Dr. Yisa Ajao

Protest rocks US Embassy in Abuja         

Christian Okeke -Abuja

The Tribune, Friday, May 17, 2013

Protesters in their hundreds on Thursday stormed the United States Embassy in Abuja to seek foreign sanctions against perceived corrupt public officeholders including some serving cabinet ministers in the government of President Goodluck Jonathan.

The protesters who were led by the former member of the House of Representatives and executive secretary of Anti-Corruption Network, Honourable Dino Melaye carried placards with various inscriptions which include ‘Obama help us, o’; ‘We say ‘no’ to corruption and insecurity’; ‘Where is the fresh air we were promised’; ‘Kill corruption not Nigerians’ and ‘Kill corruption’.

Although security agencies,  including the military were drafted in to forestall any crisis, leaders of the protest succeeded in peacefully gaining entrance  into the embassy where they were received by embassy hierarchy.

The leaders also succeeded in delivering a letter to be transmitted to the US President, Barrack Obama.

The Nigerian Tribune got a copy of the letter titled, Corruption with impunity and insecurity in Nigeria.

In the letter with reference number ACN/NEC/CORRP/VOL 1/004, the executive secretary of the group, Honourable Melaye told President Obama that it was with absolute sense of responsibility, duty and patriotism that the group deemed it necessary to draw his attention to the practices of corruption with impunity that is going on in the country and under the present administration.

He said the group was deeply concerned that if the gravity of corrupt practices goes on unchecked, unpunished and unabated, it will definitely worsen the unpalatable security situation and challenges that the country is facing currently.

Honourable Melaye said the anti-graft group seriously appealed to the government of the United States of America and Obama to use his good office and diplomatic influence to impress it upon the Nigerian Government and President Jonathan to stand firm against corruption and recommended that all indicted corrupt government officers’ visas and those of members of their immediate families be withdrawn.

Sunday, May 19, 2013, 2:07 [GMT]

SaharaReporters Interview Exclusive: Achebe A Celebrated Storyteller, But No Father Of African Literature, Says Soyinka

Sahara Reporters, New York, Saturday, May 18, 2013.

Also: Why He Wished Achebe Had Not Written His Last Book; What He Told Ojukwu Before The War; Genocide, And Other Issues

Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has described Africa’s most well known novelist, Chinua Achebe, as a storyteller who earned global celebration, adding, however, that those describing Achebe as “the father of African literature” were ignorant.  In a wide-ranging interview with SaharaReporters, Soyinka paid tribute to the late novelist who died on March 21, 2013 at 82. Soyinka, who won the 1986 Nobel Prize for literature, also spoke on his personal relationship with Achebe and other Nigerian writers; his regrets about Achebe’s last book, There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra; and his attempt to talk the late Biafran leader, Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, out of fighting a war. Soyinka also answered questions about Heinemann’s African Writers Series and scolded “clannish” and “opportunistic hagiographers” fixated on the fact that Achebe never won the Nobel Prize.

Below is the full text of the interview:

Question: Do you recall where or how you first learned about the death of Professor Chinua Achebe? And what was your first reaction?

Soyinka: Where I heard the news? I was on the road between Abeokuta and Lagos. Who called first – BBC or a Nigerian journalist? Can’t recall now, since other calls followed fast and furious, while I was still trying to digest the news. My first reaction? Well, you know the boa constrictor – when it has just swallowed an abnormal morsel, it goes comatose, takes time off to digest. Today’s global media appears indifferent to such a natural entitlement. You are expected to supply that instant response. So, if – as was the case – my first response was to be stunned, that swiftly changed to anger.

Now, why was I stunned? I suspect, mostly because I was to have been present at his last Chinua Achebe symposium just a few months earlier – together with Governor Fashola of Lagos. Something intervened and I was marooned in New York. When your last contact with someone, quite recent, is an event that centrally involves that person, you don’t expect him to embark on a permanent absence. Also, Chinua and I had been collaborating lately on one or two home crises. So, it was all supposed to be ‘business as usual’.  Most irrational expectations at one’s age but, that’s human presumptuousness for you. So, stunned I was, primarily, then media enraged!

Question: Achebe was both a writer as well as editor for Heinemann’s African Writers Series. How would you evaluate his role in the popularization of African literature?

Soyinka: I must tell you that, at the beginning, I was very skeptical of the Heinemann’s African Series. As a literary practitioner, my instinct tends towards a suspicion of “ghetto” classifications – which I did feel this was bound to be. When you run a regional venture, it becomes a junior relation to what exists. Sri Lankan literature should evolve and be recognized as literature of Sri Lanka, release after release, not entered as a series. You place the books on the market and let them take off from there. Otherwise there is the danger that you start hedging on standards. You feel compelled to bring out quantity, which might compromise on quality.

I refused to permit my works to appear in the series – to begin with. My debut took place while I was Gowon’s guest in Kaduna prisons and permission to publish The Interpreters was granted in my absence. Exposure itself is not a bad thing, mind you. Accessibility. Making works available – that’s not altogether negative. Today, several scholars write their PhD theses on Onitsha Market literature. Both Chinua and Cyprian Ekwensi – not forgetting Henshaw and others – published with those enterprising houses. It was outside interests that classified them Onitsha Market Literature, not the publishers. They simply published.

All in all, the odds come down in favour of the series – which, by the way, did go through the primary phase of sloppy inclusiveness, then became more discriminating. Aig Higo – who presided some time after Chinua – himself admitted it.

Question: For any major writer, there’s the inevitable question of influence. In your view, what’s the nature of Achebe’s enduring influence and impact in African literature? And what do you foresee as his place in the canon of world literature?

Soyinka: Chinua’s place in the canon of world literature? Wherever the art of the story-teller is celebrated, definitely assured.

Question: In interviews as well as in writing, Achebe brushed off the title of “father of African literature.” Yet, on his death, numerous media accounts, in Nigeria as well as elsewhere, described him as the father – even grandfather – of African literature. What do you think of that tag?

Soyinka: As you yourself have observed, Chinua himself repudiated such a tag – he did study literature after all, bagged a degree in the subject. So, it is a tag of either literary ignorance or “momentary exuberance” – ala [Nadine] Gordimer – to which we are all sometimes prone. Those who seriously believe or promote this must be asked: have you the sheerest acquaintance with the literatures of other African nations, in both indigenous and adopted colonial languages? What must the francophone, lusophone, Zulu, Xhosa, Ewe etc. etc. literary scholars and consumers think of those who persist in such a historic absurdity? It’s as ridiculous as calling WS father of contemporary African drama! Or Mazisi Kunene father of African epic poetry. Or Kofi Awoonor father of African poetry. Education is lacking in most of those who pontificate.

As a short cut to such corrective, I recommend Tunde Okanlawon’s scholarly tribute to Chinua in The Sun (Nigeria) of May 4th. After that, I hope those of us in the serious business of literature will be spared further embarrassment.

Let me just add that a number of foreign “African experts” have seized on this silliness with glee. It legitimizes their ignorance, their parlous knowledge, enables them to circumscribe, then adopt a patronizing approach to African literatures and creativity. Backed by centuries of their own recorded literary history, they assume the condescending posture of midwiving an infant entity. It is all rather depressing.

Question: Following Achebe’s death, you and J.P. Clarke released a joint statement. In it, you both wrote: “Of the ‘pioneer quartet’ of contemporary Nigerian literature, two voices have been silenced – one, of the poet Christopher Okigbo, and now, the novelist Chinua Achebe.” In your younger days as writers, would you say there was a sense among your circle of contemporaries – say, Okigbo, Achebe, Clarke, Flora Nwapa – of being engaged in a healthy rivalry for literary dominance? By the way, on the Internet, your joint statement was criticized for neglecting to mention any female writers – say, Flora Nwapa – as part of that pioneering group.  Was that an oversight?

Soyinka: This question – the omission of Flora Nwapa, Mabel Segun (nee Imoukhuede) – and do include D.O. Fagunwa, Amos Tutuola, Cyprian Ekwensi, so it is not just a gender affair – is related to the foregoing, and is basically legitimate. JP and I were however paying a tribute to a colleague within a rather closed circle of interaction, of which these others were not members. Finally, and most relevantly, we are language users – this means we routinely apply its techniques. We knew what we were communicating when we placed “pioneer quartet” in – yes! – inverted commas. Some of the media may have removed them; others understood their significance and left them where they belonged.

Question: Did you and Achebe have the opportunity to discuss his last book, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, and its critical reception? What’s your own assessment of There Was a Country? Some critics charged that the book was unduly divisive and diminished Achebe’s image as a nationally beloved writer and intellectual. Should a writer suborn his witness to considerations of fame?

Soyinka: No, Chinua and I never discussed There was a Country.  Matter of fact, that aborted visit I mentioned earlier would have been my opportunity to take him on with some friendly fire at that open forum, continuing at his home over a bottle or two, aided and abetted by Christie’s [editor’s note: Achebe’s wife, Professor Christie Achebe] cooking. A stupendous life companion by the way – Christie – deserves a statue erected to her for fortitude and care – on behalf of us all. More of that will emerge, I am sure, as the tributes pour in.

Unfortunately, that chance of a last encounter was missed, so I don’t really wish to comment on the work at this point. It is however a book I wish he had never written – that is, not in the way it was. There are statements in that work that I wish he had never made.

The saddest part for me was that this work was bound to give joy to sterile literary aspirants like Adewale Maja-Pearce, whose self-published book – self-respecting publishers having rejected his trash – sought to create a “tragedy” out of the relationships among the earlier named “pioneer quartet” and, with meanness aforethought, rubbish them all – WS especially. Chinua got off the lightest. A compendium of outright impudent lies, fish market gossip, unanchored attributions, trendy drivel and name dropping, this is a ghetto tract that tries to pass itself up as a product of research, and has actually succeeded in fooling at least one respectable scholar. For this reason alone, there will be more said, in another place, on that hatchet mission of an inept hustler.

Question: One of the specific issues raised constantly in recent Nigerian public “debate” has to do with whether the Igbo were indeed victims of genocide. What are your thoughts on the question?

Saturday, May 18, 2013, 2:53:47 p.m. [GMT]

Soyinka: The reading of most Igbo over what happened before the Civil War was indeed accurate – yes, there was only one word for it – genocide. Once the war began however, atrocities were committed by both sides, and the records are clear on that. The Igbo got the worst of it, however. That fact is indisputable. The Asaba massacre is well documented, name by victim name, and General Gowon visited personally to apologize to the leaders. The Igbo must remember, however, that they were not militarily prepared for that war. I told Ojukwu this, point blank, when I visited Biafra. Sam Aluko also revealed that he did. A number of leaders outside Biafra warned the leadership of this plain fact. Bluff is no substitute for bullets.

Question: Your joint statement with Clarke balances the “sense of depletion” you felt over Achebe’s death with “consolation in the young generation of writers to whom the baton has been passed, those who have already creatively ensured that there is no break in the continuum of the literary vocation.” How much of the young Nigerian and African writers do you find the time to read?

Soyinka: Yes, I do read much of Nigerian/African literature – as much as my time permits. My motor vehicle in Nigeria is a mobile library of Nigerian publications – you know those horrendous traffic holdups – that’s where I go through some of the latest. The temptation to toss some out of the car window after the first few pages or chapter is sometimes overwhelming. That sour note conceded – and as I have repeatedly crowed – that nation of ours can boast of that one virtue – it’s bursting with literary talent! And the women seem to be at the forefront.

Question: In the joint statement issued by J. P. Clarke and you following Achebe’s death,  you stated: “For us, the loss of Chinua Achebe is, above all else, intensely personal. We have lost a brother, a colleague, a trailblazer and a doughty fighter.” There’s the impression in some quarters that Achebe, Clarke and you were virtual personal enemies. In the specific case of Achebe and you, there’s the misperception that your 1986 Nobel Prize in literature poisoned your personal relationship with a supposedly resentful Achebe. How would you describe your relationship with Achebe from the early days when you were both young writers in a world that was becoming aware of the fecund, protean phenomenon called African literature?  

Soyinka: Now – all right – I feel a need to return to that question of yours – I have a feeling that I won’t be at ease with myself for having dodged it earlier – which was deliberate. If I don’t answer it, we shall all continue to be drenched in misdirected spittle. I’m referring to your question on the relationship between myself and other members of the “pioneer quartet” – JP Clark and Chinua specifically.  At this stage in our lives, the surviving have a duty to smash the mouths of liars to begin with, then move to explain to those who have genuinely misread, who have failed to place incidents in their true perspective, or who simply forget that life is sometimes strange – rich but strange, and inundated with flux.

My first comment is that outsiders to literary life should be more humble and modest. They should begin by accepting that they were strangers to the ferment of the earlier sixties and seventies. It would be stupid to claim that it was all constantly harmonious, but outsiders should at least learn some humility and learn to deal with facts. Where, in any corner of the globe, do you find perfect models of creative harmony, completely devoid of friction? We all have our individual artistic temperaments as well as partisanships in creative directions. And we have strong opinions on the merits of the products of our occupation. But – “rivalry for domination,” to quote you – healthy or unhealthy? Now that is something that has been cooked up, ironically, by camp followers, the most recent of which is that ignoble character I’ve just mentioned, who was so desperate to prove the existence of such a thing that he even tried to rope JP’s wife into it, citing her as source for something I never uttered in my entire existence. I cannot think of a more unprincipled, despicable conduct. These empty, notoriety-hungry hangers-on and upstarts need to find relevance, so they concoct. No, I believe we were all too busy and self-centred – that is, focused on our individual creative grooves – to think ‘dominance’!

Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others. JP remains as irrepressible, contumacious and irascible as he was during that creative ferment of the early sixties. Christopher was ebullient. Chinua mostly hid himself away in Lagos, intervening robustly in MBARI affairs with deceptive disinclination. Perception of Chinua, JP and I as ‘personal enemies’?  The word “enemy” is strong and wrong. The Civil War split up a close-knit literary coterie, of which “the quartet” formed a self-conscious core. That war engendered a number of misapprehensions. Choices were made, some regrettable, and even thus admitted by those who made them. Look, I never considered General Gowon who put me in detention my enemy, even though at the time, I was undeniably bitter at the experience, the circumstances, at the man who authorized it, and contributing individuals – including Chief Tony Enahoro who read out a fabricated confession to a gathering of national and international media.

But the war did end. New wars (some undeclared) commenced. Chief Enahoro and I would later collaborate in a political initiative – though I never warmed up to him personally, I must confess. Gowon and I, by contrast, became good friends. He attended my birthday celebrations, presided at my most recent Nigerian award – the Obafemi Awolowo Leadership Prize. JP was present, with his wife, Ebun. What does that tell you? Before that, I had hosted them in my Abeokuta den on a near full-day visit. Would Achebe, if he had been able, and was in Nigeria, have joined us? Perhaps. But he certainly wouldn’t have been present at the Awolowo Award event. That is a different kettle of fish, a matter between him and Awolowo – which, however, Chinua did let degenerate into tribal charges.

Well then, this prospect that “my 1986 Nobel Prize in literature poisoned my personal relationship with a supposedly resentful Achebe” – I think I shouldn’t dodge that either. Even if that was true – which I do not accept – it surely has dissipated over time. For heaven’s sake, over twenty-five people have taken the prize since then! The problem remains with those vicarious laureates who feel personally deprived, and thus refuse to let go. Chinua’s death was an opportunity to prise open that scab all over again. But they’ve now gone too far with certain posturings and should be firmly called to order, and silenced – in the name of decency.

I refer to that incorrigible sect – no other word for it – some leaders of which threatened Buchi Emecheta early in her career – that she had no business engaging in the novel, since this was Chinua’s special preserve! Incredible? Buchi virtually flew to me for protection – read her own account of that traumatizing experience. It is a Nigerian disease. Nigerians need to be purged of a certain kind of arrogance of expectations, of demand, of self-attribution, of a spurious sense and assertion of entitlement. It goes beyond art and literature. It covers all aspects of interaction with others. Wherever you witness a case of ‘It’s MINE, and no other’s’, ‘it’s OURS, not theirs’, at various levels of vicarious ownership, such aggressive voices, ninety percent of the time, are bound to be Nigerians. This is a syndrome I have had cause to confront defensively with hundreds of Africans and non-Africans. It is what plagues Nigeria at the moment – it’s MY/OUR turn to rule, and if I/WE cannot, we shall lay waste the terrain. Truth is, predictably, part of the collateral damage on that terrain.

Yes, these are the ones who, to co-opt your phrasing, “diminished (and still diminish) Chinua’s image”. In the main, they are, ironically, his assiduous – but basically opportunistic – hagiographers – especially of a clannish, cabalistic temperament. Chinua – we have to be frank here – also did not help matters. He did make one rather unfortunate statement that brought down the hornet’s nest on his head, something like:  “The fact that Wole Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize does not make him the Asiwaju (Leader) of African literature”. I forget now what provoked that statement. Certainly it could not be traced to any such pretensions on my part. I only recollect that it was in the heat of some controversy – on a national issue, I think.

But let us place this in context. Spats between writers, artists, musicians, scientists, even architects and scientific innovators etc. are notorious. They are usually short-lived – though some have been known to last a life-time. This particular episode was at least twenty years ago. Unfortunately some of Chinua’s cohorts decided that they had a mission to prosecute a matter regarding which they lacked any vestige of understanding or competence or indeed any real interest. It is however a life crutch for them and they cannot let go.

What they are doing now – and I urge them to end it shame-facedly – is to confine Chinua’s achievement space into a bunker over which hangs an unlit lamp labeled “Nobel”. Is this what the literary enterprise is about? Was it the Nobel that spurred a young writer, stung by Eurocentric portrayal of African reality, to put pen to paper and produce Things Fall Apart? This conduct is gross disservice to Chinua Achebe and disrespectful of the life-engrossing occupation known as literature. How did creative valuation descend to such banality? Do these people know what they’re doing – they are inscribing Chinua’s epitaph in the negative mode of thwarted expectations. I find that disgusting.

China, with her vast population, history, culture – arts and literature – celebrated her first Nobel Prize in Literature only last year. Yet I have been teaching Chinese literature on and off – within Comparative literary studies – for over forty years. Am I being instructed now that those writers needed recognition by the Nobel for me to open such literary windows to my students? Do these strident, cacophonous Nigerians know how much literature – and of durable quality – radiates the world?

Let me add this teacher complaint: far too many Nigerians – students of literature most perniciously – are being programmed to have no other comparative literary structure lodged in their mental scope than WS vs. CA. Such crass limitation is being pitted against the knowledgeable who, often wearily, but obedient to sheer intellectual doggedness, feel that they owe a duty to stop the march of confident ignorance. For me personally, it is galling to have everything reduced to the Nigerian enclave where, to make matters even more acute, there are supposedly only those two. It makes me squirm. I teach the damned subject – literature – after all. I do know something about it.

So let me now speak as a teacher. It is high time these illiterates were openly instructed that Achebe and Soyinka inhabit different literary planets, each in its own orbit. If you really seek to encounter – and dialogue with – Chinua Achebe in his rightful orbit, then move out of the Nigerian entrapment and explore those circuits coursed by the likes of Hemingway. Or Maryse Conde. Or Salman Rushdie. Think Edouard Glissant. Think Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Think Earl Lovelace. Think Jose Saramago. Think Bessie Head. Think Syl Cheney-Coker, Yambo Ouologuem, Nadine Gordimer. Think Patrick Chamoiseau. Think Toni Morrison. Think Hamidou Kane. Think Shahrnush Parsipur. Think Tahar Ben Jelloun. Think Naguib Mahfouz – and so on and on along those orbits in the galaxy of fiction writers. In the meantime, let us quit this indecent exercise of fatuous plaints, including raising hopes, even now, with talk of “posthumous” conferment, when you know damned well that the Nobel committee does not indulge in such tradition. It has gone beyond ‘sickening’. It is obscene and irreverent. It desecrates memory. The nation can do without these hyper-active jingoists. Can you believe the kind of letters I receive? Here is one beauty – let me quote:

“I told these people, leave it to Wole Soyinka – he will do what is right. We hear Ben Okri, Nuruddin Farah, even Chimamanda Adichie are being nominated. This is mind-boggling. Who are they? Chinua can still be awarded the prize, even posthumously. We know you will intervene to put those upstarts in their place. I’ve assured people you will do what is right.”

Alfred Nobel regretted that his invention, dynamite, was converted to degrading use, hence his creation of the Nobel Prize, as the humanist counter to the destructive power of his genius. If he thought that dynamite was eviscerating in its effects, he should try some of the gut-wrenching concoctions of Nigerian pontificators. Please, let these people know that I am not even a member of Alfred’s Academy that decides such matters. As a ‘club member,’ however, I can nominate, and it is no business of literary ignoramuses whom, if any, I do nominate. My literary tastes are eclectic, sustainable, and unapologetic. Fortunately, thousands of such nominations – from simply partisan to impeccably informed – pour in annually from all corners of the globe to that cold corner of the world called Sweden. Humiliating as this must be for many who carry that disfiguring hunch, the national ego, on their backs, Nigeria is not the centre of the Swedish electors’ world, nor of the African continent, nor of the black world, nor of the rest of the world for that matter. In fact, right now, Nigeria is not the centre of anything but global chagrin.

Chinua is entitled to better than being escorted to his grave with that monotonous, hypocritical aria of deprivation’s lament, orchestrated by those who, as we say in my part of the world, “dye their mourning weeds a deeper indigo than those of the bereaved”. He deserves his peace. Me too! And right now, not posthumously.

It is not all bleakness and aggravation however – I have probably given that impression, but the stridency of cluelessness, sometimes willful, has reached the heights of impiety. Vicarious appropriation is undignified, and it runs counter to the national pride it ostensibly promotes. Other voices are being drowned, or placed in a false position, who value and express the sensibilities between, respect the subtle threads that sustain, writers, even in their different orbits. My parting tribute to Chinua will therefore take the form of the long poem I wrote to him when he turned seventy, after my participation in the celebrations at Bard College. I plan for it to be published on the day of his funeral – my way of taunting death, by pursuing that cultural, creative, even political communion that unites all writers with a decided vision of the possible – and even beyond the grave.

You may also wish to check this:

http://emotanafricana.com/2012/11/14/mohammed-haruna-vs-soyinka-tola-adenle/

Saturday, May 18, 2013, 2:54 p.m. [GMT]

Comments on “I can’t take that money; I won’t sleep well at night … it’s not right” – Jeremy Affeldt”

From my tolaadenle@emotanafricana.com Mail Box:

The story about baseball player Jeremy Affeldt preferring integrity to unearned $500,000 in a contract mistake, reminds me of the extremism of the Japanese for integrity, loyalty and honour.

A Japanese captain of a ship laden with 500 Toyota cars bound for the Los Angeles port in 1992 realized, to his dismay and utter mortification, that 27 of the cars had been damaged by the ocean salt water that had mistakenly seeped in through a tiny crack in the ship.

Rather than put up mitigating excuses about responsibility for this action, and facing what he considered would be corporate taunts and jeers from his employer, he wrote a note to Toyota of Japan regretting the unfortunate development and thereafter committed suicide to “save his name, integrity and corporate loyalty”!

Dolapo Ajao.

emotan77 Says: 
May 18, 2013 at 12:03 pm e

Dear Mr. Ajao,

What a wonderful perspective to share with us about a people who would rather not live with what to many in other parts of the world – say, Nigeria – demands nothing more than “excuses”. And what wonderful very rare company Jeremy Affeldt belongs.

Sincere thanks for sharing this wonderful moving story from the past.

Regards,
TOLA.

I understand there is a lockout and cessation of teaching at the University of Ado-Ekiti (Unad) because MANY, NOT ALL STUDENTS HAVE NOT PAID THEIR DUES. The University is owned and managed by the government of Ekiti State where the main plume is marked as a rich source of higher-educated people per capita of the Nigerian population.

The current Governor, I believe, was an academic and holds a doctoral degree; so we can assume he understands the critical nature of higher education to human and societal development. The Governor is also a member of the clan of PROGRESSIVES in the Nigerian political firmament. He in fact regularly dons an Awo cap either for identity or admiration of Awolowo’s political philosoph, style or track as manager of affairs in the old Western Region.

He therefore must have a little room in his power haversack for education, the right of the citizens to it, and the duty of a people-friendly government to provide it where possible FREE as Awo promised and delivered.

I am advised that the pre-entry cost and price tag of a place at the Unad is currently about two hundred and fifty thousand naira (N250,000) inclusive of about forty thousand for private hostel accommodation, less daily upkeep, books and sundries. At one hundred and fifty thousand naira, the cost is beyond many average Nigerian parents, especially in a society where less than 10 percent of the people own over 80 percent of the wealth, and the economy is under an undeclared recession.

It is no surprise that many students maybe unable to find N250,000 in fees of all sorts sated at Ado. That tertiary education costs so much under Gov Fayemi is embarrassing enough; that Ekiti state university fees are not set at par with Federal Universities is shameful; that it is not free makes a sham of the progressiveness and identity with Awo so sought after by governor Fayemi .

Should we know why THIS hood a monk does not make?

It is easy to presume that comparisons will be made with fees paid in private  universities which are criminally high for a poor country like Nigeria. Yes many find it, but is it far-fetched to believe that quite a number find the fees from corrupt practices, nefarious activities and a manner of social strains.  

Quite a few will lurk in ignorance arguing, often without any basis in facts, that Nigerians have money because as we now are told, Lagosians waste a billion naira each month on weddings, funerals and all sorts of wasteful anti-social habits ( not quite asbo).

I am not in a position to be authoritative on the demographic pattern of intakes to Ado but I shouldn’t be too off the mark to suggest that 80 percent of the student population is drawn from Awo’s old Western Region, a population which, by now, believes that education should be free or, at least, not as expensive as to be difficult to find by our Mr. Average –  the man or woman on the okada pillion.

Awo has established a standard and tradition of governance and the pillar rests on his four cardinal points which include the right to free education.

The above apart, the management of this Management-induced crisis at Ado has been primitive, to say the least. If the crime has been that those who have not worked should not eat or those who have not paid their fees should not enjoy the product in true capitalist fashion, the owners of the Ado education supermarket are right. But why in the name of logic are those who have paid being denied the enjoyment of goods and services they paid for? There is something shabby and grubbily dishonest about this.

With a Fayemi in the driver’s seat at Ekiti State, much more rationality is expected, and a higher degree of high mindedness is equally in order. Unad under a progressive left of center administration should not be mismanaged in defiance of common sense and trampling on a decent sense of justice or worse in the manner of the fascist and illiterates who administered universities in the past.

Happily, the student body remains quintessential.  In spite of the injustice, those who have paid, even if the number is few, have not demanded a refund, not taken the owners of the institution to court, or resort to violence for which we must be thankful.

As visitor/Official Owner/Over-manager, Governor Fayemi should do the right thing, like yesterday, and impose a touch of Awo, and COMMON SENSE to the Unad matter.  He is held to a higher standard, and much is expected from him because much has been given to him.

Saturday, May 18, 2013, 12:09:45 a.m. [GMT]

Don’t be fooled by the smile and the face, the supposed Janice Cottrill who gave notice to her own father to quit his own home but thanks to donors, this daughter-from-the-pit-of-hell is now known throughout the world.

And the 91-year old father she stole a house from.

And Jaclyn, the granddaughter – her own child – who saved the day by going public and getting massive support to buy the old man’s house back from her greedy mother.

When I read the story that led to above on Wednesday, the amount that had been raised was under $70,000.00.  Now, the $125,000 that the elderly Grandpa is being asked to pay for his own home has been reached – and more:  $135,000.00 has been raised!  You can see all the various donations – and names when supplied – of the 5045 Donors by going to

http://www.gofundme.com/GrandpaJohnJPotter

Thanks to my blog visitors who made this the highest viewed subject within the last 7-day period, and to those who may have sent donations.  It is amazing what small donations of $10.00, $25.00 will achieve when there is a worthy cause to attract attention and concern.

Here is the posting from Jaclyn, the grand-daughter behind the Save Grandpa’s Home:
TOLA.

We have met our goal and it is so exciting. We are in awe of all of the love and support. We are still so speechless. Grandpa is amazed at all of the love and support. He told me “I never knew people could love an old man so much.”

As the donations keep coming, please know any money we have raised above the cost of the house will go to anything Grandpa may need for the house or what is needed to take care of him in his home.

Thank you all so very very much!

Grandpa and Jaclyn

Friday, May 17, 2013, 2:27:33 [GMT]

The following thought-provoking essay was first published in Modern Ghana on April 28, 2010 – two years ago.  It’s carried in the latest posting on Metty Markwei’s Kente Weaver to share with her readers.  Ms. Markwei is a graduate student at Yale, and I’ve shared a few of her postings here. This is another one worth sharing.

‘What do you want in Ghana? Go back to your country!’

Are you the kwasia who shouted this at me yesterday from your taxi while I was minding my own business and waiting for my tro-tro at Presby junction? What made you come out with such an exclamation? Was it just too much apio, or do you have a matter you want to discuss with me? Have you been to aborokyire yourself and learnt only the bad things from there, like racism and anti-social behaviour? Did you witness my brothers sticking pickaxes in your brothers’ heads, simply for having the audacity to possess beautiful black skin, and has this made you want to treat all non-Ghanaians with a similar contempt? Why didn’t you come back when I asked you ‘woye hwan?’ and signalled you to ‘bra!’ so that we could continue the conversation? I wanted to know what warranted such an uncalled-for verbal attack, and to ask you why you are so keen for me to go back to my country. As you were too much of a coward to stop the car and allow me to answer, I am forced to write my reply down and publish it on the web for you. Your provocation will not make my readers happy- this article isn’t going to be quite as positive as the rest.

SEBE.
I might have retorted by telling you that I can’t go back to my country because the UK has been taken over by millions of African immigrants, asylum seekers and illegal workers, leaving no jobs, houses or white girls left for the obroni. I’ll go back to my country if you can remove all the Ghanaians from there first. Or, perhaps I should have laid the blame for my continued presence here on the procrastination and incompetence of your empty-promise government, who invited me over here in 2007 for discussions that are still to be had (‘The minister has travelled to South America to collect some more cocaine, the secretary will be with you as soon as she finishes playing Solitaire’). Perhaps you were just jealous of the injustice of our respective visa regulations and angry that it takes you ten times more money and a hundred times more documents to get a visa to my country than it does for me to get one to yours. Maybe out of the vexation your aboa question laid on me, I should have lied and answered that, like most foreigners, I’m here because it’s so damn easy to deceive the black man and even easier to sleep with the black woman. Whichever reply I chose to use would have been an angry one: your unprovoked, out-of-the-blue comment from the safety of a speeding taxi really pissed me off. I wasn’t in the mood to ‘fa wo adamfo’, buy you a Star and tell you the real reason why I’m here, which is because there’s no waakye and nkati cake in aborokyire, and because the GHanja is a hundred times cheaper than the ganja. And don’t you know that a true prophet is never recognised in his own country? Imagine if Jesus Christ had been told to shut up and go back to Bethlehem every time he went out to preach his Father’s word.

Anyway, why do you have a problem with foreigners in your country? Don’t you want us to bring in our dollars, pounds and Euros to help prop up your feeble economy? Does ‘Travel and See’ only apply to Ghanaians struggling to get ‘inside’? Tourism is Ghana’s third highest earner of the money you expect to magically appear in your pocket every day. The money’s definitely not going to end up in your pocket if you permit the perpetuation of the paradox that the most loved tourist hang-outs, like the bambootastic Tawala Beach Resort in La and Kumasi’s Four Villages Inn, are built and owned by foreigners. Your other big earners are begging the IMF/World Bank/International Donors for loans, and all your yahoo contacts and ‘bogga’ friends and family for remittances. Doing something yourself to create wealth doesn’t seem to strike you as being possible (and dozing in your kiosks and containers every day selling foreign crap to each other does NOT create wealth). If you do really want all the foreigners out of Ghana, do you want them to take all their foreign inventions and imports with them when they go? Should the Americans and Germans leave with all their cars which you sit in, should the Chinese tear up all their roads you drive on, and should the Japanese take back all their mobile phones you talk on? Do you want the Indians to leave too? How on Earth will you survive without all their razor blades, matches and biscuits? Your people will probably die of thirst if the Thais cancel all their deliveries of Vitamilk. You probably want the South Africans to head back south too, but you love their Accra Mall with its fancy apparel, expensive food and Hollywood movies, don’t you? Let’s also tell the Norwegians and Canadians to go back to their fjords and Rocky Mountains and take all their mining equipment with them, leaving you to dig up your own oil and gold with a stick. And just make sure that you can produce your own corned beef and rice before you kick out the Argentineans and Vietnamese, OK? Are you sure you are able to function as a 21st century citizen alone? You haven’t even caught up with the 18th (toilet in every home), the 19th (electricity in every home), or the 20th (shoes on every child) yet. Should the British take back all their educational legacy, Eurocentric textbooks and Cambridge curriculum, leaving the black man to devise and implement his own more acceptable, appropriate and Afrocentric schooling system? (Well, actually, yes they should.)

The latter matter goes to show that, even though I thought you put your point across in a rather rude and very un-Ghanaian manner (you didn’t even greet me first!), you are arguably correct. The white man has done nothing but rape, pillage and underdevelop bibiman since he ‘discovered’ it hundreds of years ago. He tries to hide the fact that by that time it had already for thousands of years been the home of mighty empires, luxurious palaces, golden warrior kings, rich internal trade routes, and the world’s first great universities, religions, civilisations and bushdoctors- a time when Europe was wallowing in Dark Age squalor and dying from bubonic plague. It’s all gone downhill for Africa and uphill for Europe from then on: the white man should have been told to go home as soon as he arrived, just as strongly as you told me yesterday. Perhaps your forefathers should have had your same strong convictions back in 1471 and told the Portuguese to ‘Vai tomar no cu!’ when all this kwasiasem began. Instead, they deferentially allowed them to build their dirty slave castle on Elmina’s sacred ground in exchange for a few bags of shells and bottles of cheap whisky. Ayikoo. Why didn’t your great-grandfather tell my great-grandfather to stick the Bond of 1844 up his sorry white ass, instead of sycophantically signing it, thereby forcing his own free black people to become subservient to some faraway white queen? In 1957 the ‘colonial master’, after making himself fat and rich through 300 years of slave dealing and 113 years of natural resource stealing, ‘granted’ you independence of your own land. How noble and gracious of him. At the time, did your fathers follow your proud and outspoken example and cry foul over this ‘Mickey Mouse Independence’? Obviously they didn’t, because Lucky Dube was still singing about such empty emancipations more than fifty years later.

That’s one of the messages Kwame Nkrumah was trying to tell your predecessors before the CIA had him killed off. As well as Osagyefo, you have many more historical figures you can be proud of, who did stand up to the Imperialist immigrants, but can you tell me about some of them? Probably not- you didn’t look very educated. Most schoolchildren should know the name of the Ejisu Queenmother who bravely defended the Golden Stool in 1901, but how many can name the Akwamu chief who whipped some Danish ass in 1693 to become the Governor of Christianborg Castle- the only African to ever gain such a status on the Gold Coast? Name the Asantehene (1720-50) who demanded that the Europeans set up factories and distilleries in Africa, instead of forcing his people to buy imported goods. When your son gets back from school tonight, ask him why MacCarthy Hill is called MacCarthy Hill, and what happened to MacCarthy before he became a hill. I’ll pay his school fees for a year if he knows. The Ashantis should be proud of chopping off that white invader’s head in 1824. But are your children learning about and celebrating these great people and moments in black history, so they will be inspired to become great themselves? Or are they just traipsing 5 miles to their dull little concrete schools every day so they can memorise some Babylonian nonsense in order to regurgitate for the BECE then forget it? More worrying still, where are today’s freedom fighters and role models who will be the future inspiration for your children’s children? Osofo Kantanka can’t do it all by himself. Who is going to stand out from the crowd and make sure that Ghana 2050 is not just a photocopy of Ghana 2010 (only with more layers of plastic waste)? Your leaders will never achieve anything for you and your people by dressing in suits, flying in planes and attending conferences, Bretton Woods negotiations and HIPC summits. Don’t tell me to go home to aborokyire, tell them to come back from there.

Perhaps you shouted at me to go back to my country because you also realise that no state which uses a foreign tongue as its official language has ever progressed, and no economy that relies on foreign aid, Structural Adjustment Programmes and 98% foreign trade has ever grown. Do you also agree that Africa can never develop until it breaks its dependence on the white man? Are you also aware that the West is deliberately keeping Africa poor so that they can remain rich? I can empathise with your point of view; you want the obroni to stop meddling in Mother Africa and allow her to go through her own agricultural and industrial revolutions, without which no developed country has ever been created. Next time you drive past your Vice-President, will you have the balls to shout at him that begging for Brazilian tractors is not the answer?

However, please don’t make the assumption that all foreigners are wicked (only most of us). There are a handful of abrofo afrophiles with no hidden agenda who are here for positive reasons, and anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m one of them. I challenge you to charge me with any offence against Ghana (apart from the herbs, which I only use in my own home with a police officer present). I have never taken money, natural resources, state secrets, smuggled cocoa or trafficked children out of your country (but I do always return home with a suitcase full of Golden Tree chocolate and Mapouka Cream Liqueur: why are these delicious Ghanaian products never available overseas, but I can always buy overpriced European Mars Bars and Baileys here?) I am not one of these ‘foreign investors’ who your government seems to love so much, despite the fact that even if these vampires invest a million dollars, they’re going to suck out more than a billion in the future. I have no interest in profiteering from your people by owning a telecommunications company, Lebanese supermarket or Irish bar. I am not here to impose my English expertise on the primitive African. In fact, the opposite is true: I have learned more here about respect, personal relationships, spiritualism and good living than I gained from decades in Europe. I am not a paedophile or a batty boy. If you don’t believe me, ask my wife. If you don’t believe her, ask my girlfriend. I’m different to most Englishman in that I learn other people’s languages, instead of expecting the whole world to speak mine. I’ve already written at length about the myriad reasons why I’ve chosen to leave my unfriendly country of birth and live in asomdweman, none of which I believe are detrimental to Africa. Quite to the contrary, I only want to lead a conscious life here and do as much as I can to help my beloved adopted country. That’s why I’m writing this column- nobody’s paying me for it, but I hear on the grapevine that a lot of people are ‘feeling’ it. That’s the only form of payment I desire. I’m also doing my utmost to bring more tourists to Ghana- if you and your friends would stop shitting on the beach, then I’m sure it would help to attract a lot more.

Of course, I agree with you that there are plenty of wicked, Godless, money-grabbing foreigners in Ghana who do deserve to be on the receiving end of your scathing attack, and I forgive you for getting me mixed up with one of them. They’re the ones who are doing their best to keep Africa down, whether it be by stealing your oil, imposing the price of your cocoa, braindraining your best graduates, transplanting their ‘foreign expertise’, or forcing you to be generation after generation of hewers of wood and drawers of water. We refer to these neo-colonialists who are feeding off the dying remains of your continent as ‘white men vultures’. I’m sure you have heard the local appellation of ‘Obroni p3t3!’- I half expected you to add that one when you were shouting at me. Even though these people share my colour, they certainly don’t share my principles, and I want to get them out of Ghana as much as you do. These people definitely do not deserve your country’s Akwaaba. I can’t wait for the day when Kofi Wayo becomes president- he promises to arrest all the Chinese vultures who are buying up your factories and farmlands and galamseying in your rivers, and send them all to the firing squad. With Blakk Rasta as his vice-president, there would be a similar fate in store for all the depraved sexual deviants who are coming here to rape your sons and daughters, and for all the crazy junkies who are flooding the country with their evil Colombia powder.

I might even go so far as to say that any foreigner in Ghana who is not a tourist, volunteer, charity worker, philanthropist, prophet, or anyone like Joseph Hill with a desire to help ‘bring back the money with the sign of the Lion on it and take back the money with the sign of the dragon on it’ can be referred to as obroni p3t3. The businessmen, miners, foreign lenders, hoteliers, vehicle dealers and makers of porn movies are all here to enrich themselves at your expense, so I don’t blame you for being angry when you see a white man in your country. Nor was I surprised when a Rasta man who didn’t know I was one of his brethren shouted ‘Slave master!’ at me as we passed recently. Rather, I’m surprised that I’m not at the receiving end of these anti-white sentiments more often, considering the brutal and exploitative way in which my forefathers have treated yours over the past 500 years. I’m sick of hearing, when I reveal that I’m British; ‘Oh! Our colonial masters! We love you! You taught us everything we know!’ If Ghana had colonised Britain and sold my ancestors into slavery, I don’t think I would be so friendly to Ghanaians. So your outburst was actually a breath of fresh air. Maybe more Ghanaians should be like you and strive to kick the bad foreigners out- they’re only going to continue downpressing you if you don’t. But get out the car and talk to them first: there’s a small chance that you might actually like them. Strangers are only friends who have never met.

Ian Utley is the author of
‘Culture Smart! Ghana, the Essential Guide to Customs and Culture’

Friday, May 17, 2013, 1:14 p.m. [GMT]

 PLEASE NOTE:  Some comments below were copied from my mailbox, and therefore, bear my moniker as sender;  they are not only very illuminating to the discussion but point out historical facts of both the Muslim religion and Christianity.  TOLA.

[U.S. State of] South Carolina slave cabin dismantled for Smithsonian display – By BRUCE SMITH | Associated Press

Associated Press/Bruce Smith – In this Monday, May 13, 2013 photo, workers remove roofing from a slave cabin on Edisto Island, S.C.

EDISTO ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — As a cool sea breeze wafted across a 17th century South Carolina plantation that once grew prized sea island cotton, workers this week carefully disassembled, measured and numbered wooden planks from a dilapidated antebellum slave cabin.

Once one of about two dozen on slave row at Point of Pines Plantation, the cabin will be shipped north where it will go on display at the Smithsonian‘s National Museum of African American History and Culture when it opens on Washington‘s National Mall in two years.

“The reason we collect a cabin like this is it allows you to humanize the slavery experience,” said Lonnie Bunch, the director of the museum that has been in planning for a decade. “Often people think about the concept of slavery but they forget this is the story of men and women and children. So this allows us to personalize the experience.”

The plantation was carved out of the sea island less than 15 years after Charles Towne, now Charleston, was founded in 1670 about 45 miles to the northeast. The cabin is one of only two remaining at the plantation and the only one in its original location.

The museum looked at other locations throughout the South for a cabin before settling on the one found on Edisto Island.

“The sea islands are one reason we were interested,” said Nancy Bercaw, the curator of the museum, who was on the site Monday as the cabin was dismantled. “The sea island history is so rich due to the fact that communities are very, very, old and multigenerational here.”

Edisto Island is in the middle of the Gullah-Geechee Heritage Corridor reaching along the coast from North Carolina to northern Florida. A federal commission has been created to help preserve the culture of the descendants of sea island slaves.

When the Civil War broke out, there were 410,000 blacks living in South Carolina, the majority of them slaves, compared to about 290,000 whites. Along most of the coastal areas, more than half the population was black.

The sea island culture survived for decades after the Civil War because of its relative isolation. Now, however, it’s threatened by breakneck coastal growth.

Bercaw said researchers want to find out as much as possible about the cabin to tell its story both during the time of slavery and in the years after emancipation.

Toni Carpenter, the founder of Lowcountry Africana, a group that works to document the history of blacks in the Lowcountry from South Carolina to Florida, said an 1851 map of the plantation shows the cabin at its present site. An 1854 plantation inventory showed 75 people were enslaved there.

The researchers got a bit of unexpected help on Monday when 76-year-old Junior Meggett came by. He identified the cabin as one that his aunt and uncle used to live in when he was a child.

Meggett said he lived in another nearby cabin in the 1940s until he was grown. That cabin later was destroyed by fire. He described living in a two-room cabin with a wood stove and a small attic and opening wooden window shutters to catch the breeze.

“Boys and girls would sleep in the same room,” he said. “You were just glad to have a place to lie down.”

Workers from Museum Resources Construction and Millwork of Providence Forge, Va., carefully removed planks from the cabin roof, then measured them, numbered them and wrapped them with clear plastic tape for the journey north.

The cabin will be rebuilt at the company and then fumigated before being disassembled for a second time before it’s taken to the $500 Smithsonian museum and put on display, said Kerry Shackelford of the contracting company.

The cabin was donated to the Edisto Island Museum, which worked to stabilize the structure several years ago. The original plan was to move it to the museum several miles away, but there were budgetary problems, museum director Gretchen Smith said.

“We had given up on our chance of preserving it and then the Smithsonian came along and said they would love to have it,” she said. “We would be pleased to have it on our property where thousands could see it. But millions will see it in Washington and learn from it.”

Bunch, who spoke by telephone from Washington, said some people are still uncomfortable talking about slavery.

But at the time, he said, “slavery was the dominant institution in America — it colored religion, it colored politics and it colored expansion. It was an economic engine for both northern and southern prosperity. By not talking about it, we neglect a great understanding of who we are.”

Thursday, May 16, 2013, 6:51:40 p.m. [GMT]