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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Rhythms 2nd, Transformative Edition : El Anatsui and Richard Serra : A Film on the Journey of Life as Visualized by Artists El Anatsui and Richard Serra.

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So you should add that explanation to your film - maybe in the credits
or even the opening scene. Interconnecting circles could be inserted
with some inscribed data with some of these ideas.





Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries
2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African Studies
 University of Texas at Austin
2019   Distinguished Africanist Award                   
New York African Studies Association
 



From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 1, 2019 1:23 PM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Rhythms 2nd, Transformative Edition : El Anatsui and Richard Serra : A Film on the Journey of Life as Visualized by Artists El Anatsui and Richard Serra.
 
thanks Gloria.

Falola is an explorer of the journeys, through time and space, of Africans and African-Americans and non-Africans who study or identify with Africans and their Diaspora brethren.

This exploration of journeying is demonstrated in diachronic terms, foregrounding human life as a passage through time. The focus on temporal progression is particularly evident in his explicitly historical works, such as his books on the history of Ibadan and his autobiographies.

His investigations of the  progression of human life also foregrounds the synchronic, centred in conditions as they exist at a particular point in time.

A good number of his works combine both approaches, such as the collection The Toyin Falola Reader, which conjoins discussions of temporal progression with expositions of particular ideological and cultural contexts,   and In Praise of Greatness, delineating the achievements of particular figures in the context of their journeys into those achievements, within the framework of the social conditions of their lives.

El Anatsui's artistic instillation Logoligi Logarithms and Richard Serra's sculptural complex The Matter of Time and some other works of Serra's,  explore the progression of experience through visual complexes.

These structures invite people's physical navigation of the fibre or steel constructs,  implicating the navigator in the work as one moves through the opaque nets and alleys of Anatsui's  Logoligi Logarithms   or the  steel undulations and circularities of The Matter of Time and the tunnels of other works of his.

The undulations of experience through which African and African-American societies have journeyed since the earliest times, as explored by Falola, the concentrations of possibility represented by strategic  periods in their histories,  the tension between coordinated and random developments in individual life, the intersection of consciousness and social matrices that shape people's existence, represented by Falola's verbal explorations, may be seen as incidentally evoked by both Anatsui and Serra's  visual configurations, as the navigator of their works moves through space and time, enacting possibilities enabled by their art's metaphoric concretisations of human experience.





On Wed, 1 May 2019 at 09:51, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:
Thanks for the film. It is really great to have a look at the great El Anatsui, 
  but  I really don't see the connections with TF's writings.
 Please clarify how you relate  the two.





Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries
2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African Studies
 University of Texas at Austin
2019   Distinguished Africanist Award                   
New York African Studies Association
 



From:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2019 9:59 PM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Rhythms 2nd, Transformative Edition : El Anatsui and Richard Serra : A Film on the Journey of Life as Visualized by Artists El Anatsui and Richard Serra.
 






       
                                                                                                    
                                                          

                                                                                 Rhythms 

                                                                     2nd Transformative Edition

                                                                 El Anatsui and Richard Serra 

                                     A Film on the Journey of Life as Visualized by Artists El Anatsui and Richard Serra

                                                                           Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
                                                                                        Compcros
                                                             Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
                                         "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

                                                                                                  
                                                                 



              Click on this link to see the film:   Rhythms : El Anatsui and Richard Serra 2nd Edition


A visual and verbal exploration of life's twists and transformations through the visual art of El Anatsui and Richard Serra as responded to by art critic Rikki Wemega-Kwawu and complemented by Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju on the writings of Toyin Falola.

 

This second edition has a new musical score, more images and more text, facilitating better understanding of the film's theme.

 

 The film is inspired by art critic Wemega-Kwawu's Facebook post of 11th March 2019 on El Anatsui's installation "Lorgorligi Logarithms", I adapt that interpretation to Richard Serra's "The Matter of Time" and other works of Serra's and Anatsui's , Serra having been introduced to me by the discussion thread generated by Rikki's post.

 

The simplicity and profundity of the ideas expressed by Wemega-Kwawu's post are used in unifying images of the art of Anatsui and Serra, ideas I see as resonant across the various works in those images from various online sources.

 

These verbal and visual expressions are complemented by my distillations of biographical progression in relation to ideals of scholarly activity from the work of Toyin Falola in "Toyin Falola's In Praise of Greatness and its Intercultural Resonance in the Context of Classical Yoruba Hermeneutics", an essay under consideration for publication in the Yoruba Studies Review.

 

My reflections on Falola's work expand upon the impulse generated by Wemega-Kwawu, carrying forward their ideational possibilities as the images unfold.

 

This is an expanded second edition of the film benefiting from Wemega-Kwawu's critique of the first edition .

 

This edition has a new musical score, more images and more text, facilitating better understanding of the film's theme.  

 

Comments on the film are visible on its Facebook post.

 

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ahmadu Bello University: Dress Code

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Some basic problems  of ethnocentricity, discrimination,  etc with some of these rules :

#3. tattered jeans and jeans with holes - [how many holes count? how about the number of tears?]

Besides, some poor students have and wear jeans that are "tattered" and "have holes" because they are poor, and not because they bought fashionable tattered jeans to flaunt. At some point in university, I used to be one such person.

#5. tight fitting jeans etc that reveal the contour of the body

scary especially for girls and ladies who might like to wear sweaters that natural hug the body or who like to wear dresses that are fitting rather than saggy. This especially because, going beyond forbidding exposure of sexualized body parts, it polices the clothed body! Even the form of the body, in its beauty or ugliness, should be hidden from view, presumably, because some men (perhaps women too) are unable to bring their hormones under control when they sight body contours even under a dress! For a federal institution in an urban multicultural city, this is scary. I can understand such a rule being "informally" enforced and actually naturally adhered to in conservative village settings.

#7. unkempt appearances, such as bushy hair and beards -  

who defines "unkempt" - whose standards are applied?

and how do you distinguish bushy hair and beards from culturally and religious preferred styles of body decoration acceptable to the Sikhs, and some mallams whose identities are partly based on leaving bushy beards? I remember reading a prominent northern Nigerian elder once not only criticizing Wole Soyinka's hair a bushy but concluded that anybody with such hairstyle had a problem which adjective used should not be repeated here! What ethnocentricity!

this rule condemns the Yoruba "dada" or the Rasta hairdo. I am sorry that the Rastafari might have been excluded from this campus if they are not exempted from the definition of "unkempt"

#11. shirts without buttons or not properly buttoned, leaving the wearer bare-chested.

there are regular fashion wears with inner pieces (covering all of the chest) but with tops that are not meant to be buttoned, some not having buttons or having decorative buttons without buttonholes(often times both inner and outer pieces are sewn together). They are very stylish, but far from indecent by any reasonable definition of decency.

#12. wearing of ear-ring by male students & 13. plaiting or weaving of hair by male students

both #12 & #13 are very ethnocentric. for example, male Shango worshippers are thereby not allowed simply because they choose to worship the Shango deity; many people group from Central Africa and East Africa who wear earrings irrespective of gender are excluded. Many Fulani youth, with some of the most artistic body ornamentation styles in West Africa, who use rings in their culture of decoration are penalized and excluded. Their human rights are denied.

#14. wearing of colored eye glasses in the classroom except on medical grounds

- except on security grounds, it is so ridiculous. This is creating a problem where there is none. How many students were such glasses in class in the first place? Insignificant. security is the only reasonable ground for such a rule.  Rulemaking old adult people should know that a stage of life called youth is real and should not be confused with their own staid elderhood! Religious people also should know and accept that there are people without religion or who have different religions - all of who are made, according to most religions, by the same Creator. They want to self-express themselves. It is natural and normal. The generation of my children call it "being cool". It is a stage. They soon pass over it. It does not make them dangerous or less serious or less God seeking.

#16. wearing trousers that stop between the ankle and the knee.

I have seen conservative Hausa pants that stop short of the ankle. I know young Islamic scholars in my neck of the wood who wear trousers that do not reach down to the knee, though with the white flowing gowns as the top. Their identity as Muslim cleric/scholars is actually partly defined by this type of dress, with a specific "alim" type cap to match. Would they be arrested if they come to ABU campus or let go?

Also, there is a particular dashiki type Yoruba hunter wear, which now has been turned into regular fashion ware, that has a pant that does not reach down to the ankle. I have one and wear it to Church and can wear to at a wedding or to a child's name-giving ceremony! That is how so proper it is. I will not be able to wear this were I to visit ABU! Ridiculous. Discriminatory. But being a man, I may actuall be allowed to go.

It's not just the body that is being policed here. Some of these rules police adolescence and youthfulness as a stage of life with its goals, its aspirations. They seek to sublimate youthfulness, vigour, style and class - all normal biological, physiological, and anthropological features of youthfulness and the youth! Mostly though, those who will come under the gavel are females. I can imagine the fashion police being helped by "radical" students to detain girls they deem to have contravened any of these rules based on whimsical interpretations! It is only too clear which of these rules will be enforced and on which gender the most.

Those who fashioned the policy did not seem to think beyond the specific moral code of their particular narrow denominational religious community. It does not show that the authors consulted ABU scholars - anthropologist or sociologist for suggestions. Perhaps they consulted some select religious scholars. Were representatives of students, staff, religious and non-religious people and lawyers, consulted before these rules were sanctioned by ABU? The author indicated in the document is  Management. Did these rules pass through the Senate of the university? Does NUC have a right to countermand those rules that contravene basic human right?

These rules give an indication that that great institution is closing in on itself as an intolerant conservative and exclusionary organization. A huge chunk of the human population, many who by any definition would consider themselves to be concerned with decency, are not welcome! Very scary. Very scary.

Even if security and basic decency requirements are allowed for the document's rationale, quite a few of these rules seem to be in contravention of peoples human right.  Most of them are exclusionary and clearly gender biased and religion laced. If they stand without modification, they portend future trouble for many hapless "non-compliant" students, staff, and visitor, especially, women - some select women. They would likely heighten division and non-native sense of insecurity on the campus.

Something much more reasonable, basic, legal and inclusive can certainly be devised to ensure basic decency than these poorly put together rules.

It will not be surprising if this ABU Management goes the whole hog and make all students wear uniforms and RENT out uniforms to all visitors to the campus. That would be a great way to satisfy the rules regarding dress.

/Femi Kolapo

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 1, 2019 1:32 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ahmadu Bello University: Dress Code
 
Oga Michael:

I know there is a problem here between the demands on ABU as a FEDERAL university (as opposed to state or private institution.)  The event of town and gown as it relates to the cultural dictates of the environs of location of a university still matter.

Many easterners have issues with this as it applies to UI for instance.  These universities are located within specific regions and the intercourse between local community and university is unavoidable.  Local cultural tastes differ and must be respected.

Whereas hijab may not be anathema for ABU because of the cultural dictates up there it may be so for say UI & UNN.( some if my course mates in graduate school in the US for instance dressed in Middle East head dress aroynd campus ( Im not sure with full hijab but full hijab is now routinely comnon in the streets of London with slits only for eyeballs.)

You are right to be apprehensive about use of hijab up there but it IS a legitimate dress code up there ( for instance if the student is admitted for say Islamic studies)

This was the sensibility that informed hypocrite Sani Abacha  ( the one who allegedly died in the company of a prostitute )deciding that ladies who dressed in trousers in public in Abuja be flogged.  Only a dictator could go that far!

The founding Nigerian nationalists understood this very well when they stated each region should westernize at its own pace.  Students and parents who oppose ABUs decision (even if they are notherners) may choose to educate their wards in the South and the Middle Belt.That would be these regions manpower gains.  The demographic  osmosis or reflux will ensure they are vanguard for change in the North in the longer term.

This is the quirky thing about democracy no one can force others to develop at their own pace and people may choose other models apart from the western in any area of develooment.  Much part of the North prefers the Arabian cultural model if not fully but as counterpoint to the excesses of full western mode.  In a democracy they have the right to.  They may also choose to balance their Arabic preference with Chinese rather than western.

  In the South we are more comfortable with westernization but that's due to a long historic ( and continuing) engagement with the West rather than Saudi Arabia and the Middle East.

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: 01/05/2019 10:03 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ahmadu Bello University: Dress Code

Boxbe This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com) Add cleanup rule | More info
Please don't get me wrong, Okey. I am more conservative than you think and I have lived in America for almost four decades. I once sent one of my language/education students home when I went to observe him and he was wearing a pair of jean-pants while student-teaching even though with a nice shirt and standard tie. My student teachers must be professional. Even as a professor, I always visited them in complete suits, even to my discomfort and irritation, and I also did so when teaching them. But all these are commonsensical, not necessarily based on the Mosaic model of the "Ten Commandments." I think a generic announcement of "We expect our students to be decent in their grooming and public appearances" would be sufficient; and individual programs like education, law, medicine, etc., could have more specific guidelines for how their students' carry themselves in public. ABU should transcend this level of rustic simplicity. It's okay for a high school to do so or even some private religious institutions, but let's be real: this is just not good for an institution of ABU status.
MOA 


On Tuesday, April 30, 2019, 4:15:53 PM GMT+1, Okechukwu Ukaga <ukaga001@umn.edu> wrote:


My esteemed broda, I obviously disagree. In your so called civilized society, naked people are found in strip clubs and brothels, not on university campuses. If folks are unwilling to self regulate to maintain a minimum level of decency in terms of dressing, university has both the right and the responsibility to take appropriate steps. After all, university degrees are awarded not just for academic achievement but also character, etc. Notably, dress code is not unusual in universities, even in the West. When I was in school of business in the late 80s for my MBA, business students were expected and required to dress in ways consistent with our profession. So it is not unusual to see business students and law students going to classes, etc in more formal attire than say soil science students. And in some cases there are strict guidelines like no jeans, no sleepers, no T-shirts, etc. Isn't that a kind of dress code?  So even within the same university there is not only an expected minimum standard for the whole, but component units can have their own additional guidelines, norms and expectations. Before zeroing in on the last part of my contribution that you quoted here, you will do well to read and consider the preceding parts that formed the foundation for that last part.
Regards,
Okey

On Apr 29, 2019 5:18 PM, "'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
". . . and if this is not the right means to that end, then what better options or strategies are available?" (Okechukwu Ukaga) 

No options or strategies needed to be explored over a bad idea. The dress code at a first generation public university does not belong in a civil society. Pure and simple!

MOA



On Sunday, April 28, 2019, 1:48:51 PM GMT+1, Okechukwu Ukaga <ukaga001@umn.edu> wrote:


Perhaps there should be a balance between allowing folks to come to school "naked" and "policing" how they dress. How do we strike that balance? If students, staff, faculty and administrators fail to self regulate, how is a university supposed to assure that balance? Beyond automatic condemnation of dress code, it would be helpful to understand what made such a policy necessary, what it is designed to achieve; and if this is not the right means to that end, then what better options or strategies are available? 
OU

On Apr 27, 2019 1:19 PM, "'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafricadialogue@ googlegroups.com> wrote:
So, what is left? Women to wear hijab and men to dress like the Taliban folks. Great progress for a premier Nigerian university. So grotesque, it's not even funny!
MOA  




On Saturday, April 27, 2019, 6:05:50 PM GMT+1, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:




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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Rhythms 2nd, Transformative Edition : El Anatsui and Richard Serra : A Film on the Journey of Life as Visualized by Artists El Anatsui and Richard Serra.

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Thanks, Gloria.

I'll chew on that. I very much appreciate  your encouraging me to provide an expanded explanation.

I'm likely to let your suggestion stew in my mind for some time, since I'm engrossed in another project, but I'll certainly reflect carefully on it, and perhaps bring out a third edition of the film, integrating your suggestions and those of Rikki Wemega-Kwawu, whose comparison of Anatsui and Serra  inspired the film in the first place,  on this second edition.

toyin

On Thu, 2 May 2019 at 03:13, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:
So you should add that explanation to your film - maybe in the credits
or even the opening scene. Interconnecting circles could be inserted
with some inscribed data with some of these ideas.





Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries
2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African Studies
 University of Texas at Austin
2019   Distinguished Africanist Award                   
New York African Studies Association
 



From:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 1, 2019 1:23 PM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Rhythms 2nd, Transformative Edition : El Anatsui and Richard Serra : A Film on the Journey of Life as Visualized by Artists El Anatsui and Richard Serra.
 
thanks Gloria.

Falola is an explorer of the journeys, through time and space, of Africans and African-Americans and non-Africans who study or identify with Africans and their Diaspora brethren.

This exploration of journeying is demonstrated in diachronic terms, foregrounding human life as a passage through time. The focus on temporal progression is particularly evident in his explicitly historical works, such as his books on the history of Ibadan and his autobiographies.

His investigations of the  progression of human life also foregrounds the synchronic, centred in conditions as they exist at a particular point in time.

A good number of his works combine both approaches, such as the collection The Toyin Falola Reader, which conjoins discussions of temporal progression with expositions of particular ideological and cultural contexts,   and In Praise of Greatness, delineating the achievements of particular figures in the context of their journeys into those achievements, within the framework of the social conditions of their lives.

El Anatsui's artistic instillation Logoligi Logarithms and Richard Serra's sculptural complex The Matter of Time and some other works of Serra's,  explore the progression of experience through visual complexes.

These structures invite people's physical navigation of the fibre or steel constructs,  implicating the navigator in the work as one moves through the opaque nets and alleys of Anatsui's  Logoligi Logarithms   or the  steel undulations and circularities of The Matter of Time and the tunnels of other works of his.

The undulations of experience through which African and African-American societies have journeyed since the earliest times, as explored by Falola, the concentrations of possibility represented by strategic  periods in their histories,  the tension between coordinated and random developments in individual life, the intersection of consciousness and social matrices that shape people's existence, represented by Falola's verbal explorations, may be seen as incidentally evoked by both Anatsui and Serra's  visual configurations, as the navigator of their works moves through space and time, enacting possibilities enabled by their art's metaphoric concretisations of human experience.





On Wed, 1 May 2019 at 09:51, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:
Thanks for the film. It is really great to have a look at the great El Anatsui, 
  but  I really don't see the connections with TF's writings.
 Please clarify how you relate  the two.





Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries
2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African Studies
 University of Texas at Austin
2019   Distinguished Africanist Award                   
New York African Studies Association
 



From:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2019 9:59 PM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Rhythms 2nd, Transformative Edition : El Anatsui and Richard Serra : A Film on the Journey of Life as Visualized by Artists El Anatsui and Richard Serra.
 






       
                                                                                                    
                                                          

                                                                                 Rhythms 

                                                                     2nd Transformative Edition

                                                                 El Anatsui and Richard Serra 

                                     A Film on the Journey of Life as Visualized by Artists El Anatsui and Richard Serra

                                                                           Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
                                                                                        Compcros
                                                             Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
                                         "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

                                                                                                  
                                                                 



              Click on this link to see the film:   Rhythms : El Anatsui and Richard Serra 2nd Edition


A visual and verbal exploration of life's twists and transformations through the visual art of El Anatsui and Richard Serra as responded to by art critic Rikki Wemega-Kwawu and complemented by Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju on the writings of Toyin Falola.

 

This second edition has a new musical score, more images and more text, facilitating better understanding of the film's theme.

 

 The film is inspired by art critic Wemega-Kwawu's Facebook post of 11th March 2019 on El Anatsui's installation "Lorgorligi Logarithms", I adapt that interpretation to Richard Serra's "The Matter of Time" and other works of Serra's and Anatsui's , Serra having been introduced to me by the discussion thread generated by Rikki's post.

 

The simplicity and profundity of the ideas expressed by Wemega-Kwawu's post are used in unifying images of the art of Anatsui and Serra, ideas I see as resonant across the various works in those images from various online sources.

 

These verbal and visual expressions are complemented by my distillations of biographical progression in relation to ideals of scholarly activity from the work of Toyin Falola in "Toyin Falola's In Praise of Greatness and its Intercultural Resonance in the Context of Classical Yoruba Hermeneutics", an essay under consideration for publication in the Yoruba Studies Review.

 

My reflections on Falola's work expand upon the impulse generated by Wemega-Kwawu, carrying forward their ideational possibilities as the images unfold.

 

This is an expanded second edition of the film benefiting from Wemega-Kwawu's critique of the first edition .

 

This edition has a new musical score, more images and more text, facilitating better understanding of the film's theme.  

 

Comments on the film are visible on its Facebook post.

 

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria's South-West, the Right Wing Muslim North, the South-East and Recurrent Political Myopia

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I just read on the USAAfrica Google group Wale Lagunju's "Did Buhari Miss Tinubu in Lagos?" on what he describes as the use and dump strategy of the Northern Nigerian Muslim right wing  against their SW allies 

I smiled in my throat  with the bitter and sardonic recognition of a person who saw from a mile away the carcass around which the inebriated revelers were celebrating, yet we are just being told that it was a carcass after all, not a feast, as they thought.

Careful following of Nigerian politics in the last ten to twenty years in relation to pre and post 1960 independence politics and sensitivity to a broad range of social media commentary from Nigerians enable one to anticipate these outcomes.

Nigeria's dominant SW leadership has been an enduring problem in Nigerian politics, from the revered  Obafemi Awolowo to Bola Tinubu.

 What is their problem?

Their problem is that they have refused to realize that it is practically impossible for Southern Nigeria to build a progressive, equitable nation in alliance with the Muslim North, in spite of the mountains of evidence pointing this out.

The Muslim North is a conquered region. It was conquered by a man who used claims of religious and social purification as a means of enthroning an ethnic hegemony. Uthman dan Fodio and his Fulani Jihad. The region remains dominated by the mentalities emanating from that seismic political shift. The region is a confused region, its dominant political players entrenched in perpetual struggles to dominate Nigeria at all costs while the region's social landscape is trapped in the contradictions of feudalistic Islam and atavistic ethnic orientations.

The South is also dominated by greedy politicians but they are not as desperate as their right wing Northern Muslim counterparts, the people who fueled Boko Haram Islamic terrorism and are fuelling Fulani herdsmen terrorism.

The Southern politicians are also less dangerous, more amenable to public action bcs they dont enjoy the level of broad based ethnic and religiously inspired support of their fellow citizens.

I am not able to see any significant future for Nigeria outside radical reworking of the nation, with all ethnicities deciding whether or not to remain within the region and the terms of this arrangement.

The most astute political solution in recent times has come from the South East IPOB's demand for a referendum on the exit of the South-East from Nigeria, describing continued stay in Nigeria as inimical to the humane existence and the development of their people.

Realizing the danger of IPOB's momentum to the cash cow that is the restive Niger Delta, the source of Nigeria's oil wealth, the Northern Muslim conservatives tried to scare IPOB by giving Igbos a deadline to leave the North where they have very significant investments. 

When that failed, the army, controlled by these figures, moved in with tanks and troops into the town of the IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu, killed and turtured IPOB members and got the SE governors to declare IPOB, a non-violent movement,  a terrorist organisation.

Shortly after this,  Fulani herdsmen terrorism, centred in massacres directed at wiping out entire populations in the Middle Belt and occupying their land, systematic encroachments across the nation through murderous raids on communities, individual killings, intimidation and rape, with the vocal support of the pressure group Miyetti Allah led by the nation's most elite Fulani, of whom the Sultan of Sokoto and the Emir of Kano are the most prominent, resumed its bloody mission with a vengeance, yet this movement has never been described as terrorism by Nigeria's Fulani national ruler nor have Miyetti Allah been questioned by the security agencies, the govt's efforts being centred on enabling this terrorist colonization initiative through non-engagement. letting them get on with it, while trying to aid them through policy initiatives. 

That is where we are now.

We are all in danger. The power hungry fools who want to burn the house down, those in the house who insist on silence so as not to provoke the fools and those who think the already spreading fire is no business of theirs.

toyin adepoju





 


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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Nigeria's South-West, the Right Wing Muslim North, the South-East and Recurrent Political Myopia

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Correction-

Lasisi Olagunju not Wale Lagunju

On Thu, 2 May 2019 at 06:18, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com> wrote:
I just read on the USAAfrica Google group Wale Lagunju's "Did Buhari Miss Tinubu in Lagos?" on what he describes as the use and dump strategy of the Northern Nigerian Muslim right wing  against their SW allies 

I smiled in my throat  with the bitter and sardonic recognition of a person who saw from a mile away the carcass around which the inebriated revelers were celebrating, yet we are just being told that it was a carcass after all, not a feast, as they thought.

Careful following of Nigerian politics in the last ten to twenty years in relation to pre and post 1960 independence politics and sensitivity to a broad range of social media commentary from Nigerians enable one to anticipate these outcomes.

Nigeria's dominant SW leadership has been an enduring problem in Nigerian politics, from the revered  Obafemi Awolowo to Bola Tinubu.

 What is their problem?

Their problem is that they have refused to realize that it is practically impossible for Southern Nigeria to build a progressive, equitable nation in alliance with the Muslim North, in spite of the mountains of evidence pointing this out.

The Muslim North is a conquered region. It was conquered by a man who used claims of religious and social purification as a means of enthroning an ethnic hegemony. Uthman dan Fodio and his Fulani Jihad. The region remains dominated by the mentalities emanating from that seismic political shift. The region is a confused region, its dominant political players entrenched in perpetual struggles to dominate Nigeria at all costs while the region's social landscape is trapped in the contradictions of feudalistic Islam and atavistic ethnic orientations.

The South is also dominated by greedy politicians but they are not as desperate as their right wing Northern Muslim counterparts, the people who fueled Boko Haram Islamic terrorism and are fuelling Fulani herdsmen terrorism.

The Southern politicians are also less dangerous, more amenable to public action bcs they dont enjoy the level of broad based ethnic and religiously inspired support of their fellow citizens.

I am not able to see any significant future for Nigeria outside radical reworking of the nation, with all ethnicities deciding whether or not to remain within the region and the terms of this arrangement.

The most astute political solution in recent times has come from the South East IPOB's demand for a referendum on the exit of the South-East from Nigeria, describing continued stay in Nigeria as inimical to the humane existence and the development of their people.

Realizing the danger of IPOB's momentum to the cash cow that is the restive Niger Delta, the source of Nigeria's oil wealth, the Northern Muslim conservatives tried to scare IPOB by giving Igbos a deadline to leave the North where they have very significant investments. 

When that failed, the army, controlled by these figures, moved in with tanks and troops into the town of the IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu, killed and turtured IPOB members and got the SE governors to declare IPOB, a non-violent movement,  a terrorist organisation.

Shortly after this,  Fulani herdsmen terrorism, centred in massacres directed at wiping out entire populations in the Middle Belt and occupying their land, systematic encroachments across the nation through murderous raids on communities, individual killings, intimidation and rape, with the vocal support of the pressure group Miyetti Allah led by the nation's most elite Fulani, of whom the Sultan of Sokoto and the Emir of Kano are the most prominent, resumed its bloody mission with a vengeance, yet this movement has never been described as terrorism by Nigeria's Fulani national ruler nor have Miyetti Allah been questioned by the security agencies, the govt's efforts being centred on enabling this terrorist colonization initiative through non-engagement. letting them get on with it, while trying to aid them through policy initiatives. 

That is where we are now.

We are all in danger. The power hungry fools who want to burn the house down, those in the house who insist on silence so as not to provoke the fools and those who think the already spreading fire is no business of theirs.

toyin adepoju





 


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USA Africa Dialogue Series - RELIGION AND THE FLYING PASTORS

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Religion from the African perspective

By Anthony Akinola

Two athletes, one African and one British, were interviewed after the successful conclusion of their respective events.  The African who had won an event attributed her success to the grace of God.  "He touched my limbs, I could not have done it without him."  The British athlete, on the other hand, gave substantial credit to her coach as she attributed her success to a regime of rigorous training.

Of course, glory must be given to God for all we are able to achieve as mortal human beings.  There are certain things we are never going to achieve in life either because we are too tall or too short!  The natural attributes which propel us to unimaginable heights can hardly be purchased in the cosmetic market.  However, our natural attributes or talents could be a waste if not augmented by appropriate training.  In short, there is something to be celebrated in the explanations both athletes attributed to their individual successes.

Those of us exposed to cultures other than our own have exciting stories about the gulf of differences in cultures.  The British man or woman may be quite happy to say "Happy New Year" to you but cannot understand why you need to keep praying for what you would like God to do for them in the New Year.  He or she knows, for instance, that to own a home one would have to approach a bank for a mortgage!

There is this temptation on my part to assume or conclude that the British, for instance, may be more rational than the Nigerian.  This writer is hardly the most rational of human beings, so there is an element of self-criticism here!  Even among the British who go to church there is hardly the punctuation of every conceivable sentence with "in Jesus name" as is common among Nigerian Christians.  They believe that a lot of problems can be resolved without having to involve Jesus.  One sometimes wonders if Britain was indeed the nation that introduced Christianity to Nigeria, not least because the life of the typical Briton is no longer dominated by religion.

I think I have a perspective into the Christian religion as is currently practised in Nigeria and this perspective came from a discussion with a Nigerian lady who once told me that "people have their different reasons for going to church".  I tried to argue that there is only one universal reason why people should go to church, to worship God and assimilate the Christian culture and that the blessings of the Lord, either here or in heaven, come with devotion to the cause.  Wanting to win an election, or  wanting to be rich, should not be the motivating factor for wanting to go to church.  Unfortunately, the Nigerian lady was talking from experience which, in itself, explains why many Nigerians have become vulnerable to exploitation in the hands of fake pastors who claim to have divine power for all sorts of problems. They stage-manage miracles, fooling man and testing the patience of God

The Nigerian early Churches were what the Church still is in some societies.  The priest prays with and for the congregation without claiming to have the power to reveal what lies ahead.  Many Nigerians want to know what the future holds for them and they also seek miracles.  Otherwise, how do you explain the fact that some Nigerians phone their pastors back home in Nigeria asking to be prayed for so that their visas can be extended here in Britain?  We are a people cocooned in ignorance and that is the major problem. 

The Christian Church has impacted greatly on Nigeria, especially the southern part of it.  Of course, Christianity came with colonisation but the society in general has not been the worse for it.  The achievements of the early missionaries are well documented and such achievements can be seen in the areas of education and health.  It can be said without much contradiction that Christianity has contributed substantially to the foundation of our society. 

The Church continues to play a prominent part in development.  Even a few recent churches have established universities of relatively good quality.  The Church must continue to make its presence felt in areas of community development, as well as in improving the morals of our peoples.  The Nigerian nation, sadly, is one of the most corrupt in the world – something of an irony for a nation which undoubtedly is also one of the most religious.  The Church, therefore, has an ideological responsibility to engage in the war against corruption and a moral one to discourage materialism and ostentatious living which Jesus Christ so much detested in the predispositions of the Pharisees.

Is the perception of the Christian Church as a vanguard of morality well represented by pastors flying all over the place in private jets while most of their flock go about hungry and bare footed?  I tried to appraise the issue of some Nigerian pastors and their private jets with an open mind – bad roads and long distances to travel – but a British theologian seemed to have convinced me that "it is not the way to propagate the gospel".  The trend we are witnessing is tailored towards the culture of those boisterous American pastors who tend to explain every big thing they have – houses, cars and yachts – as the favour of God.  They feed fat while their followers grow thin.  It will be sad if Nigerians now aspire to the leadership of the Church, as they do in politics, solely because it is perceived as an avenue to  affluence and flamboyance.

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RELIGION AND THE FLYING PASTORS

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Dear Anthony,
Thank you for this piece. One thing that touches me is that "people have their different reasons for going to church" and I experienced a reason for someone to go to church some weeks ago when after a funeral service in from of the ''parvis'', a churchgoer introduced his hand into my bomba pocket and took my mobile phone away. This was his reason to come to church.
Seriously, I think the way most of the people practise religion depends on the fact that social services are weak or non-existent in our countries. If there were social security, jobs and banks helping people to own a house, there won't be a need to go to church or to go with the expectation that miracles will occur.
Patrick

Dr Emery Patrick EFFIBOLEY
Assistant Professor, 
Department of History and Archaeology, University of Abomey-Calavi 
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand,Johannesburg,(2014-2016) 
www.researchgate.net/Profile/Emery_Effiboley
 


Le jeudi 2 mai 2019 à 14:22:14 UTC+1, Anthony Akinola <anthony.a.akinola@gmail.com> a écrit :


Religion from the African perspective

By Anthony Akinola

Two athletes, one African and one British, were interviewed after the successful conclusion of their respective events.  The African who had won an event attributed her success to the grace of God.  "He touched my limbs, I could not have done it without him."  The British athlete, on the other hand, gave substantial credit to her coach as she attributed her success to a regime of rigorous training.

Of course, glory must be given to God for all we are able to achieve as mortal human beings.  There are certain things we are never going to achieve in life either because we are too tall or too short!  The natural attributes which propel us to unimaginable heights can hardly be purchased in the cosmetic market.  However, our natural attributes or talents could be a waste if not augmented by appropriate training.  In short, there is something to be celebrated in the explanations both athletes attributed to their individual successes.

Those of us exposed to cultures other than our own have exciting stories about the gulf of differences in cultures.  The British man or woman may be quite happy to say "Happy New Year" to you but cannot understand why you need to keep praying for what you would like God to do for them in the New Year.  He or she knows, for instance, that to own a home one would have to approach a bank for a mortgage!

There is this temptation on my part to assume or conclude that the British, for instance, may be more rational than the Nigerian.  This writer is hardly the most rational of human beings, so there is an element of self-criticism here!  Even among the British who go to church there is hardly the punctuation of every conceivable sentence with "in Jesus name" as is common among Nigerian Christians.  They believe that a lot of problems can be resolved without having to involve Jesus.  One sometimes wonders if Britain was indeed the nation that introduced Christianity to Nigeria, not least because the life of the typical Briton is no longer dominated by religion.

I think I have a perspective into the Christian religion as is currently practised in Nigeria and this perspective came from a discussion with a Nigerian lady who once told me that "people have their different reasons for going to church".  I tried to argue that there is only one universal reason why people should go to church, to worship God and assimilate the Christian culture and that the blessings of the Lord, either here or in heaven, come with devotion to the cause.  Wanting to win an election, or  wanting to be rich, should not be the motivating factor for wanting to go to church.  Unfortunately, the Nigerian lady was talking from experience which, in itself, explains why many Nigerians have become vulnerable to exploitation in the hands of fake pastors who claim to have divine power for all sorts of problems. They stage-manage miracles, fooling man and testing the patience of God

The Nigerian early Churches were what the Church still is in some societies.  The priest prays with and for the congregation without claiming to have the power to reveal what lies ahead.  Many Nigerians want to know what the future holds for them and they also seek miracles.  Otherwise, how do you explain the fact that some Nigerians phone their pastors back home in Nigeria asking to be prayed for so that their visas can be extended here in Britain?  We are a people cocooned in ignorance and that is the major problem. 

The Christian Church has impacted greatly on Nigeria, especially the southern part of it.  Of course, Christianity came with colonisation but the society in general has not been the worse for it.  The achievements of the early missionaries are well documented and such achievements can be seen in the areas of education and health.  It can be said without much contradiction that Christianity has contributed substantially to the foundation of our society. 

The Church continues to play a prominent part in development.  Even a few recent churches have established universities of relatively good quality.  The Church must continue to make its presence felt in areas of community development, as well as in improving the morals of our peoples.  The Nigerian nation, sadly, is one of the most corrupt in the world – something of an irony for a nation which undoubtedly is also one of the most religious.  The Church, therefore, has an ideological responsibility to engage in the war against corruption and a moral one to discourage materialism and ostentatious living which Jesus Christ so much detested in the predispositions of the Pharisees.

Is the perception of the Christian Church as a vanguard of morality well represented by pastors flying all over the place in private jets while most of their flock go about hungry and bare footed?  I tried to appraise the issue of some Nigerian pastors and their private jets with an open mind – bad roads and long distances to travel – but a British theologian seemed to have convinced me that "it is not the way to propagate the gospel".  The trend we are witnessing is tailored towards the culture of those boisterous American pastors who tend to explain every big thing they have – houses, cars and yachts – as the favour of God.  They feed fat while their followers grow thin.  It will be sad if Nigerians now aspire to the leadership of the Church, as they do in politics, solely because it is perceived as an avenue to  affluence and flamboyance.

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RELIGION AND THE FLYING PASTORS

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 Many thanks for your well-appreciated comment.
Regards,
Anthony

On Thu, May 2, 2019 at 2:48 PM 'Patrick Effiboley' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Dear Anthony,
Thank you for this piece. One thing that touches me is that "people have their different reasons for going to church" and I experienced a reason for someone to go to church some weeks ago when after a funeral service in from of the ''parvis'', a churchgoer introduced his hand into my bomba pocket and took my mobile phone away. This was his reason to come to church.
Seriously, I think the way most of the people practise religion depends on the fact that social services are weak or non-existent in our countries. If there were social security, jobs and banks helping people to own a house, there won't be a need to go to church or to go with the expectation that miracles will occur.
Patrick

Dr Emery Patrick EFFIBOLEY
Assistant Professor, 
Department of History and Archaeology, University of Abomey-Calavi 
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand,Johannesburg,(2014-2016) 
 


Le jeudi 2 mai 2019 à 14:22:14 UTC+1, Anthony Akinola <anthony.a.akinola@gmail.com> a écrit :


Religion from the African perspective

By Anthony Akinola

Two athletes, one African and one British, were interviewed after the successful conclusion of their respective events.  The African who had won an event attributed her success to the grace of God.  "He touched my limbs, I could not have done it without him."  The British athlete, on the other hand, gave substantial credit to her coach as she attributed her success to a regime of rigorous training.

Of course, glory must be given to God for all we are able to achieve as mortal human beings.  There are certain things we are never going to achieve in life either because we are too tall or too short!  The natural attributes which propel us to unimaginable heights can hardly be purchased in the cosmetic market.  However, our natural attributes or talents could be a waste if not augmented by appropriate training.  In short, there is something to be celebrated in the explanations both athletes attributed to their individual successes.

Those of us exposed to cultures other than our own have exciting stories about the gulf of differences in cultures.  The British man or woman may be quite happy to say "Happy New Year" to you but cannot understand why you need to keep praying for what you would like God to do for them in the New Year.  He or she knows, for instance, that to own a home one would have to approach a bank for a mortgage!

There is this temptation on my part to assume or conclude that the British, for instance, may be more rational than the Nigerian.  This writer is hardly the most rational of human beings, so there is an element of self-criticism here!  Even among the British who go to church there is hardly the punctuation of every conceivable sentence with "in Jesus name" as is common among Nigerian Christians.  They believe that a lot of problems can be resolved without having to involve Jesus.  One sometimes wonders if Britain was indeed the nation that introduced Christianity to Nigeria, not least because the life of the typical Briton is no longer dominated by religion.

I think I have a perspective into the Christian religion as is currently practised in Nigeria and this perspective came from a discussion with a Nigerian lady who once told me that "people have their different reasons for going to church".  I tried to argue that there is only one universal reason why people should go to church, to worship God and assimilate the Christian culture and that the blessings of the Lord, either here or in heaven, come with devotion to the cause.  Wanting to win an election, or  wanting to be rich, should not be the motivating factor for wanting to go to church.  Unfortunately, the Nigerian lady was talking from experience which, in itself, explains why many Nigerians have become vulnerable to exploitation in the hands of fake pastors who claim to have divine power for all sorts of problems. They stage-manage miracles, fooling man and testing the patience of God

The Nigerian early Churches were what the Church still is in some societies.  The priest prays with and for the congregation without claiming to have the power to reveal what lies ahead.  Many Nigerians want to know what the future holds for them and they also seek miracles.  Otherwise, how do you explain the fact that some Nigerians phone their pastors back home in Nigeria asking to be prayed for so that their visas can be extended here in Britain?  We are a people cocooned in ignorance and that is the major problem. 

The Christian Church has impacted greatly on Nigeria, especially the southern part of it.  Of course, Christianity came with colonisation but the society in general has not been the worse for it.  The achievements of the early missionaries are well documented and such achievements can be seen in the areas of education and health.  It can be said without much contradiction that Christianity has contributed substantially to the foundation of our society. 

The Church continues to play a prominent part in development.  Even a few recent churches have established universities of relatively good quality.  The Church must continue to make its presence felt in areas of community development, as well as in improving the morals of our peoples.  The Nigerian nation, sadly, is one of the most corrupt in the world – something of an irony for a nation which undoubtedly is also one of the most religious.  The Church, therefore, has an ideological responsibility to engage in the war against corruption and a moral one to discourage materialism and ostentatious living which Jesus Christ so much detested in the predispositions of the Pharisees.

Is the perception of the Christian Church as a vanguard of morality well represented by pastors flying all over the place in private jets while most of their flock go about hungry and bare footed?  I tried to appraise the issue of some Nigerian pastors and their private jets with an open mind – bad roads and long distances to travel – but a British theologian seemed to have convinced me that "it is not the way to propagate the gospel".  The trend we are witnessing is tailored towards the culture of those boisterous American pastors who tend to explain every big thing they have – houses, cars and yachts – as the favour of God.  They feed fat while their followers grow thin.  It will be sad if Nigerians now aspire to the leadership of the Church, as they do in politics, solely because it is perceived as an avenue to  affluence and flamboyance.

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RELIGION AND THE FLYING PASTORS

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Won't you think as simplistic and counter-factual your last sentence that apparently or implicitly reduces religiosity to poverty or stupidity or sheer ignorance?


On May 2, 2019, at 8:42 AM, 'Patrick Effiboley' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:


Dear Anthony,
Thank you for this piece. One thing that touches me is that "people have their different reasons for going to church" and I experienced a reason for someone to go to church some weeks ago when after a funeral service in from of the ''parvis'', a churchgoer introduced his hand into my bomba pocket and took my mobile phone away. This was his reason to come to church.
Seriously, I think the way most of the people practise religion depends on the fact that social services are weak or non-existent in our countries. If there were social security, jobs and banks helping people to own a house, there won't be a need to go to church or to go with the expectation that miracles will occur.
Patrick

Dr Emery Patrick EFFIBOLEY
Assistant Professor, 
Department of History and Archaeology, University of Abomey-Calavi 
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand,Johannesburg,(2014-2016) 
 


Le jeudi 2 mai 2019 à 14:22:14 UTC+1, Anthony Akinola <anthony.a.akinola@gmail.com> a écrit :


Religion from the African perspective

By Anthony Akinola

Two athletes, one African and one British, were interviewed after the successful conclusion of their respective events.  The African who had won an event attributed her success to the grace of God.  "He touched my limbs, I could not have done it without him."  The British athlete, on the other hand, gave substantial credit to her coach as she attributed her success to a regime of rigorous training.

Of course, glory must be given to God for all we are able to achieve as mortal human beings.  There are certain things we are never going to achieve in life either because we are too tall or too short!  The natural attributes which propel us to unimaginable heights can hardly be purchased in the cosmetic market.  However, our natural attributes or talents could be a waste if not augmented by appropriate training.  In short, there is something to be celebrated in the explanations both athletes attributed to their individual successes.

Those of us exposed to cultures other than our own have exciting stories about the gulf of differences in cultures.  The British man or woman may be quite happy to say "Happy New Year" to you but cannot understand why you need to keep praying for what you would like God to do for them in the New Year.  He or she knows, for instance, that to own a home one would have to approach a bank for a mortgage!

There is this temptation on my part to assume or conclude that the British, for instance, may be more rational than the Nigerian.  This writer is hardly the most rational of human beings, so there is an element of self-criticism here!  Even among the British who go to church there is hardly the punctuation of every conceivable sentence with "in Jesus name" as is common among Nigerian Christians.  They believe that a lot of problems can be resolved without having to involve Jesus.  One sometimes wonders if Britain was indeed the nation that introduced Christianity to Nigeria, not least because the life of the typical Briton is no longer dominated by religion.

I think I have a perspective into the Christian religion as is currently practised in Nigeria and this perspective came from a discussion with a Nigerian lady who once told me that "people have their different reasons for going to church".  I tried to argue that there is only one universal reason why people should go to church, to worship God and assimilate the Christian culture and that the blessings of the Lord, either here or in heaven, come with devotion to the cause.  Wanting to win an election, or  wanting to be rich, should not be the motivating factor for wanting to go to church.  Unfortunately, the Nigerian lady was talking from experience which, in itself, explains why many Nigerians have become vulnerable to exploitation in the hands of fake pastors who claim to have divine power for all sorts of problems. They stage-manage miracles, fooling man and testing the patience of God

The Nigerian early Churches were what the Church still is in some societies.  The priest prays with and for the congregation without claiming to have the power to reveal what lies ahead.  Many Nigerians want to know what the future holds for them and they also seek miracles.  Otherwise, how do you explain the fact that some Nigerians phone their pastors back home in Nigeria asking to be prayed for so that their visas can be extended here in Britain?  We are a people cocooned in ignorance and that is the major problem. 

The Christian Church has impacted greatly on Nigeria, especially the southern part of it.  Of course, Christianity came with colonisation but the society in general has not been the worse for it.  The achievements of the early missionaries are well documented and such achievements can be seen in the areas of education and health.  It can be said without much contradiction that Christianity has contributed substantially to the foundation of our society. 

The Church continues to play a prominent part in development.  Even a few recent churches have established universities of relatively good quality.  The Church must continue to make its presence felt in areas of community development, as well as in improving the morals of our peoples.  The Nigerian nation, sadly, is one of the most corrupt in the world – something of an irony for a nation which undoubtedly is also one of the most religious.  The Church, therefore, has an ideological responsibility to engage in the war against corruption and a moral one to discourage materialism and ostentatious living which Jesus Christ so much detested in the predispositions of the Pharisees.

Is the perception of the Christian Church as a vanguard of morality well represented by pastors flying all over the place in private jets while most of their flock go about hungry and bare footed?  I tried to appraise the issue of some Nigerian pastors and their private jets with an open mind – bad roads and long distances to travel – but a British theologian seemed to have convinced me that "it is not the way to propagate the gospel".  The trend we are witnessing is tailored towards the culture of those boisterous American pastors who tend to explain every big thing they have – houses, cars and yachts – as the favour of God.  They feed fat while their followers grow thin.  It will be sad if Nigerians now aspire to the leadership of the Church, as they do in politics, solely because it is perceived as an avenue to  affluence and flamboyance.

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - OTC African Delegation Reception: Introducing Mr. Shawn Bennett, U.S. Department of Energy, Keynote Speaker

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USBACC OTC African Delegation Events - May 8th 2019, Houston, Texas 

The U.S. Bilateral African Chamber of Commerce is proud to host it's 8th Annual OTC African Delegation Reception on Wednesday May 8th 2019 in Houston, Texas, and its emPowering Africa! Roundtable Discussion on the sidelines of the Offshore Technology Conference, one of the largest Oil and Gas Conferences in the world, attended by over 68,000! Join USBACC in welcoming the African Delegates to Houston!


OTC African Delegation Reception: Introducing Mr. Shawn Bennett, U.S. Department of Energy, Keynote Speaker
OTC African Delegation Events - Wednesday May 8th 2019
USBACC OTC African Delegation Events - May 8th 2019, Houston, Texas

The U.S. Bilateral African Chamber of Commerce is proud to host it's 8th Annual OTC African Delegation Reception on Wednesday May 8th 2019 in Houston, Texas, and its emPowering Africa! Roundtable Discussion on the sidelines of the Offshore Technology Conference, one of the largest Oil and Gas Conferences in the world, attended by over 68,000! Join USBACC in welcoming the African Delegates to Houston!

emPoweringAfrica!
Round Table Discussion

From 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Panel Information


Join the conversation with government agencies, business leaders and stakeholders. Discuss strategies for attracting private sector investment, for financing power and infrastructure projects in Africa, while creating export opportunities for U.S.companies that want to invest in Africa. Following the round table USBACC will host its annual reception.


8th Annual OTC African Delegation Reception
From 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Register Here
With delegations from: Angola, Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria and many more.

The 8th Annual OTC African Delegation Reception, is one of the largest Africa focused events attended by oil and gas professionals. Meet with other energy executives and confer on new emerging energy markets and various developing sectors. Learn how to capitalize on the growth, and profitability of the energy industry in Africa.

Keynote Speaker: Shawn Bennett
U.S. Department of Energy -  Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oil and Natural Gas

Special Remarks by: Mazda Denon
Mayor's Office of Trade & International Affairs
Location provided upon paid registration.

Who should attend?
Meet US and African Companies working in the Oil and Gas sector
- Companies, delegates who would like to meet prospective partners in business in the Oil and Gas industry. Targeted networking, meet people that have an interest in Africa or doing business in Africa.
- Expand your knowledge about doing business in Africa, network with the African Delegations coming to the Offshore Technology Conference!

Locations provided upon paid registration.
Register for the events
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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ahmadu Bello University: Dress Code

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Oga:

This is a very robust analysis of the rules passed by ABU management.  A university is  supposed to be universal in scope. Again it depends on whose cultural values of universality.

You mentioned a germane constituency; youth.  We're they consulted? I don't know. They will be in the best position to do battle with management.  What was the reaction of the intellectual body of ABU (particularly scholars from the North) before the rules were passed into law?  I dont know.  Perhaps northerm Muslim scholars like Jibrin Ibrahim would like to shed some light on this for us.

To be frank I haven't seen a full statement of the rules themselves but my guess which is as good as yours  is that they have Muslim religious bias.  The "sexism" and other biases follow from that.  Islamic cultural code is basically what it is.  What is sexist to a westernized sensibility us not sexist to an Islamic conscious woman who is committed to followung the dictates.   of the Quoran.

I have taken a multicutural English class where a Congolese Christian male tried to incite Somali Muslim ladies against their husbands by asking why they allowed the men take other wives.  They replied in my presence that they were not forced into any arrangement and they liked it like that!
I have been in a Methodist congregation in the US where the priest announced that here in the Church mother's take last ( it was supposed to be a dignified arrangement as opposed to the feminised environment of the outer American society of ladies first.)  Mothers in the church( with their daughters) enthusiastically  supported the priest.


ABU is in northern Nigeria.  The whole region has a dominant Muslim ethos.  We shall see how the new rules on dress codes stand up against youth multiculturalism of university life .  Only time will tell.

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Femi Kolapo <kolapof@uoguelph.ca>
Date: 02/05/2019 03:25 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ahmadu Bello University: Dress Code

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Some basic problems  of ethnocentricity, discrimination,  etc with some of these rules :

#3. tattered jeans and jeans with holes - [how many holes count? how about the number of tears?]

Besides, some poor students have and wear jeans that are "tattered" and "have holes" because they are poor, and not because they bought fashionable tattered jeans to flaunt. At some point in university, I used to be one such person.

#5. tight fitting jeans etc that reveal the contour of the body

scary especially for girls and ladies who might like to wear sweaters that natural hug the body or who like to wear dresses that are fitting rather than saggy. This especially because, going beyond forbidding exposure of sexualized body parts, it polices the clothed body! Even the form of the body, in its beauty or ugliness, should be hidden from view, presumably, because some men (perhaps women too) are unable to bring their hormones under control when they sight body contours even under a dress! For a federal institution in an urban multicultural city, this is scary. I can understand such a rule being "informally" enforced and actually naturally adhered to in conservative village settings.

#7. unkempt appearances, such as bushy hair and beards -  

who defines "unkempt" - whose standards are applied?

and how do you distinguish bushy hair and beards from culturally and religious preferred styles of body decoration acceptable to the Sikhs, and some mallams whose identities are partly based on leaving bushy beards? I remember reading a prominent northern Nigerian elder once not only criticizing Wole Soyinka's hair a bushy but concluded that anybody with such hairstyle had a problem which adjective used should not be repeated here! What ethnocentricity!

this rule condemns the Yoruba "dada" or the Rasta hairdo. I am sorry that the Rastafari might have been excluded from this campus if they are not exempted from the definition of "unkempt"

#11. shirts without buttons or not properly buttoned, leaving the wearer bare-chested.

there are regular fashion wears with inner pieces (covering all of the chest) but with tops that are not meant to be buttoned, some not having buttons or having decorative buttons without buttonholes(often times both inner and outer pieces are sewn together). They are very stylish, but far from indecent by any reasonable definition of decency.

#12. wearing of ear-ring by male students & 13. plaiting or weaving of hair by male students

both #12 & #13 are very ethnocentric. for example, male Shango worshippers are thereby not allowed simply because they choose to worship the Shango deity; many people group from Central Africa and East Africa who wear earrings irrespective of gender are excluded. Many Fulani youth, with some of the most artistic body ornamentation styles in West Africa, who use rings in their culture of decoration are penalized and excluded. Their human rights are denied.

#14. wearing of colored eye glasses in the classroom except on medical grounds

- except on security grounds, it is so ridiculous. This is creating a problem where there is none. How many students were such glasses in class in the first place? Insignificant. security is the only reasonable ground for such a rule.  Rulemaking old adult people should know that a stage of life called youth is real and should not be confused with their own staid elderhood! Religious people also should know and accept that there are people without religion or who have different religions - all of who are made, according to most religions, by the same Creator. They want to self-express themselves. It is natural and normal. The generation of my children call it "being cool". It is a stage. They soon pass over it. It does not make them dangerous or less serious or less God seeking.

#16. wearing trousers that stop between the ankle and the knee.

I have seen conservative Hausa pants that stop short of the ankle. I know young Islamic scholars in my neck of the wood who wear trousers that do not reach down to the knee, though with the white flowing gowns as the top. Their identity as Muslim cleric/scholars is actually partly defined by this type of dress, with a specific "alim" type cap to match. Would they be arrested if they come to ABU campus or let go?

Also, there is a particular dashiki type Yoruba hunter wear, which now has been turned into regular fashion ware, that has a pant that does not reach down to the ankle. I have one and wear it to Church and can wear to at a wedding or to a child's name-giving ceremony! That is how so proper it is. I will not be able to wear this were I to visit ABU! Ridiculous. Discriminatory. But being a man, I may actuall be allowed to go.

It's not just the body that is being policed here. Some of these rules police adolescence and youthfulness as a stage of life with its goals, its aspirations. They seek to sublimate youthfulness, vigour, style and class - all normal biological, physiological, and anthropological features of youthfulness and the youth! Mostly though, those who will come under the gavel are females. I can imagine the fashion police being helped by "radical" students to detain girls they deem to have contravened any of these rules based on whimsical interpretations! It is only too clear which of these rules will be enforced and on which gender the most.

Those who fashioned the policy did not seem to think beyond the specific moral code of their particular narrow denominational religious community. It does not show that the authors consulted ABU scholars - anthropologist or sociologist for suggestions. Perhaps they consulted some select religious scholars. Were representatives of students, staff, religious and non-religious people and lawyers, consulted before these rules were sanctioned by ABU? The author indicated in the document is  Management. Did these rules pass through the Senate of the university? Does NUC have a right to countermand those rules that contravene basic human right?

These rules give an indication that that great institution is closing in on itself as an intolerant conservative and exclusionary organization. A huge chunk of the human population, many who by any definition would consider themselves to be concerned with decency, are not welcome! Very scary. Very scary.

Even if security and basic decency requirements are allowed for the document's rationale, quite a few of these rules seem to be in contravention of peoples human right.  Most of them are exclusionary and clearly gender biased and religion laced. If they stand without modification, they portend future trouble for many hapless "non-compliant" students, staff, and visitor, especially, women - some select women. They would likely heighten division and non-native sense of insecurity on the campus.

Something much more reasonable, basic, legal and inclusive can certainly be devised to ensure basic decency than these poorly put together rules.

It will not be surprising if this ABU Management goes the whole hog and make all students wear uniforms and RENT out uniforms to all visitors to the campus. That would be a great way to satisfy the rules regarding dress.

/Femi Kolapo

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 1, 2019 1:32 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ahmadu Bello University: Dress Code
 
Oga Michael:

I know there is a problem here between the demands on ABU as a FEDERAL university (as opposed to state or private institution.)  The event of town and gown as it relates to the cultural dictates of the environs of location of a university still matter.

Many easterners have issues with this as it applies to UI for instance.  These universities are located within specific regions and the intercourse between local community and university is unavoidable.  Local cultural tastes differ and must be respected.

Whereas hijab may not be anathema for ABU because of the cultural dictates up there it may be so for say UI & UNN.( some if my course mates in graduate school in the US for instance dressed in Middle East head dress aroynd campus ( Im not sure with full hijab but full hijab is now routinely comnon in the streets of London with slits only for eyeballs.)

You are right to be apprehensive about use of hijab up there but it IS a legitimate dress code up there ( for instance if the student is admitted for say Islamic studies)

This was the sensibility that informed hypocrite Sani Abacha  ( the one who allegedly died in the company of a prostitute )deciding that ladies who dressed in trousers in public in Abuja be flogged.  Only a dictator could go that far!

The founding Nigerian nationalists understood this very well when they stated each region should westernize at its own pace.  Students and parents who oppose ABUs decision (even if they are notherners) may choose to educate their wards in the South and the Middle Belt.That would be these regions manpower gains.  The demographic  osmosis or reflux will ensure they are vanguard for change in the North in the longer term.

This is the quirky thing about democracy no one can force others to develop at their own pace and people may choose other models apart from the western in any area of develooment.  Much part of the North prefers the Arabian cultural model if not fully but as counterpoint to the excesses of full western mode.  In a democracy they have the right to.  They may also choose to balance their Arabic preference with Chinese rather than western.

  In the South we are more comfortable with westernization but that's due to a long historic ( and continuing) engagement with the West rather than Saudi Arabia and the Middle East.

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: 01/05/2019 10:03 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ahmadu Bello University: Dress Code

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Please don't get me wrong, Okey. I am more conservative than you think and I have lived in America for almost four decades. I once sent one of my language/education students home when I went to observe him and he was wearing a pair of jean-pants while student-teaching even though with a nice shirt and standard tie. My student teachers must be professional. Even as a professor, I always visited them in complete suits, even to my discomfort and irritation, and I also did so when teaching them. But all these are commonsensical, not necessarily based on the Mosaic model of the "Ten Commandments." I think a generic announcement of "We expect our students to be decent in their grooming and public appearances" would be sufficient; and individual programs like education, law, medicine, etc., could have more specific guidelines for how their students' carry themselves in public. ABU should transcend this level of rustic simplicity. It's okay for a high school to do so or even some private religious institutions, but let's be real: this is just not good for an institution of ABU status.
MOA 


On Tuesday, April 30, 2019, 4:15:53 PM GMT+1, Okechukwu Ukaga <ukaga001@umn.edu> wrote:


My esteemed broda, I obviously disagree. In your so called civilized society, naked people are found in strip clubs and brothels, not on university campuses. If folks are unwilling to self regulate to maintain a minimum level of decency in terms of dressing, university has both the right and the responsibility to take appropriate steps. After all, university degrees are awarded not just for academic achievement but also character, etc. Notably, dress code is not unusual in universities, even in the West. When I was in school of business in the late 80s for my MBA, business students were expected and required to dress in ways consistent with our profession. So it is not unusual to see business students and law students going to classes, etc in more formal attire than say soil science students. And in some cases there are strict guidelines like no jeans, no sleepers, no T-shirts, etc. Isn't that a kind of dress code?  So even within the same university there is not only an expected minimum standard for the whole, but component units can have their own additional guidelines, norms and expectations. Before zeroing in on the last part of my contribution that you quoted here, you will do well to read and consider the preceding parts that formed the foundation for that last part.
Regards,
Okey

On Apr 29, 2019 5:18 PM, "'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
". . . and if this is not the right means to that end, then what better options or strategies are available?" (Okechukwu Ukaga) 

No options or strategies needed to be explored over a bad idea. The dress code at a first generation public university does not belong in a civil society. Pure and simple!

MOA



On Sunday, April 28, 2019, 1:48:51 PM GMT+1, Okechukwu Ukaga <ukaga001@umn.edu> wrote:


Perhaps there should be a balance between allowing folks to come to school "naked" and "policing" how they dress. How do we strike that balance? If students, staff, faculty and administrators fail to self regulate, how is a university supposed to assure that balance? Beyond automatic condemnation of dress code, it would be helpful to understand what made such a policy necessary, what it is designed to achieve; and if this is not the right means to that end, then what better options or strategies are available? 
OU

On Apr 27, 2019 1:19 PM, "'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafricadialogue@ googlegroups.com> wrote:
So, what is left? Women to wear hijab and men to dress like the Taliban folks. Great progress for a premier Nigerian university. So grotesque, it's not even funny!
MOA  




On Saturday, April 27, 2019, 6:05:50 PM GMT+1, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:




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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: Invitation to the Awujale's Third Annual Professorial Chair in Governance Lecture

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To:"Abayomi Babatola"<babatolaaa@oouagoiwoye.edu.ng>
Cc:"Ayo Olukotun"<ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>
Sent: Thu, 2 May 2019 at 19:45
Subject: Fw: Invitation to the Awujale's Third Annual Professorial Chair in Governance Lecture


----- Forwarded Message -----
From: femi@at3resources.com <femi@at3resources.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 2, 2019, 1:30:17 PM GMT+1
Subject: Invitation to the Awujale's Third Annual Professorial Chair in Governance Lecture

Dear Sir/Ma,

On behalf of the Board of Trustees of the Oba Adetona Professorial Chair in Governance and the Olabisi Onabanjo University, it is our pleasure to invite you for the 3rd Annual Lecture Series scheduled to hold on Friday, May 10, 2019 at the Adeola Odutola Hall, ijebu-Ode. Ogun State.

Professor Yemi Osinbajo SAN, GCON - Vice-President of Nigeria will be our special guest of honour. The occupier of the Professorial Chair will be joined by an elite panel of discussants, Professor Kingsley Moghalu and Professor Remi Sonaiya to share their perspectives on this year's theme: Grassroot Governance: The Soft Underbelly of Nigeria's Political Architecture.

Kindly find attached e-invite as we hope to see you there!

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Poetic Thoughts

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Truth
Bound hands and feet,
Gagged,
Encaged.
To be extradited
To the paradise of pretend freedom.

(c)Chidi Anthony Opara

#2019Poeticthoughts


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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Civil Servant as Contractor and Politician Diatribe: My Argument - THISDAYLIVE

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ahmadu Bello University: Dress Code

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Shari'a Court In Kaduna Jails Two Ladies For Two Months For Wearing Skimpy Dresses

The ladies who are residents of Argungu road in Kaduna, were convicted after they pleaded guilty to "constituting public nuisance and indecent dressing."


BY SAHARAREPORTERS, NEW YORKAPR 23, 2019

Two ladies, Farida Taofiq and Raihana Abbas, have bagged two months in prison each for wearing skimpy dresses.

The sentences were handed down to the 20-year-olds by a Shari'a Court II sitting at Magajin Gari, Kaduna State.

Before learning of their fate, the two convicts had pleaded for leniency, saying they won't repeat the crime.

The ladies, who are residents of Argungu road in Kaduna, were convicted after they pleaded guilty to "constituting public nuisance and indecent dressing".

The judge, Mallam Musa Sa'ad-Goma, however, gave the convicts an option to pay N3,000 fine each.

Sa'ad-Goma also ordered them to return to their parents' homes.

Earlier, the prosecution counsel, Aliyu Ibrahim, said that Taofiq and Abbas were arrested on April 16, at a black spot along Sabon-Gari Road roaming the streets in skimpy dresses.

"When they were asked where they were going, they said they were going to the house of a friend who had just put to bed," the prosecution said.

Ibrahim said the offence contravened the provisions of Section 346 of the Sharia Penal Code of Kaduna State.



On Thu, May 2, 2019 at 12:09 PM OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
Oga:

This is a very robust analysis of the rules passed by ABU management.  A university is  supposed to be universal in scope. Again it depends on whose cultural values of universality.

You mentioned a germane constituency; youth.  We're they consulted? I don't know. They will be in the best position to do battle with management.  What was the reaction of the intellectual body of ABU (particularly scholars from the North) before the rules were passed into law?  I dont know.  Perhaps northerm Muslim scholars like Jibrin Ibrahim would like to shed some light on this for us.

To be frank I haven't seen a full statement of the rules themselves but my guess which is as good as yours  is that they have Muslim religious bias.  The "sexism" and other biases follow from that.  Islamic cultural code is basically what it is.  What is sexist to a westernized sensibility us not sexist to an Islamic conscious woman who is committed to followung the dictates.   of the Quoran.

I have taken a multicutural English class where a Congolese Christian male tried to incite Somali Muslim ladies against their husbands by asking why they allowed the men take other wives.  They replied in my presence that they were not forced into any arrangement and they liked it like that!
I have been in a Methodist congregation in the US where the priest announced that here in the Church mother's take last ( it was supposed to be a dignified arrangement as opposed to the feminised environment of the outer American society of ladies first.)  Mothers in the church( with their daughters) enthusiastically  supported the priest.


ABU is in northern Nigeria.  The whole region has a dominant Muslim ethos.  We shall see how the new rules on dress codes stand up against youth multiculturalism of university life .  Only time will tell.

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Femi Kolapo <kolapof@uoguelph.ca>
Date: 02/05/2019 03:25 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ahmadu Bello University: Dress Code

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Some basic problems  of ethnocentricity, discrimination,  etc with some of these rules :

#3. tattered jeans and jeans with holes - [how many holes count? how about the number of tears?]

Besides, some poor students have and wear jeans that are "tattered" and "have holes" because they are poor, and not because they bought fashionable tattered jeans to flaunt. At some point in university, I used to be one such person.

#5. tight fitting jeans etc that reveal the contour of the body

scary especially for girls and ladies who might like to wear sweaters that natural hug the body or who like to wear dresses that are fitting rather than saggy. This especially because, going beyond forbidding exposure of sexualized body parts, it polices the clothed body! Even the form of the body, in its beauty or ugliness, should be hidden from view, presumably, because some men (perhaps women too) are unable to bring their hormones under control when they sight body contours even under a dress! For a federal institution in an urban multicultural city, this is scary. I can understand such a rule being "informally" enforced and actually naturally adhered to in conservative village settings.

#7. unkempt appearances, such as bushy hair and beards -  

who defines "unkempt" - whose standards are applied?

and how do you distinguish bushy hair and beards from culturally and religious preferred styles of body decoration acceptable to the Sikhs, and some mallams whose identities are partly based on leaving bushy beards? I remember reading a prominent northern Nigerian elder once not only criticizing Wole Soyinka's hair a bushy but concluded that anybody with such hairstyle had a problem which adjective used should not be repeated here! What ethnocentricity!

this rule condemns the Yoruba "dada" or the Rasta hairdo. I am sorry that the Rastafari might have been excluded from this campus if they are not exempted from the definition of "unkempt"

#11. shirts without buttons or not properly buttoned, leaving the wearer bare-chested.

there are regular fashion wears with inner pieces (covering all of the chest) but with tops that are not meant to be buttoned, some not having buttons or having decorative buttons without buttonholes(often times both inner and outer pieces are sewn together). They are very stylish, but far from indecent by any reasonable definition of decency.

#12. wearing of ear-ring by male students & 13. plaiting or weaving of hair by male students

both #12 & #13 are very ethnocentric. for example, male Shango worshippers are thereby not allowed simply because they choose to worship the Shango deity; many people group from Central Africa and East Africa who wear earrings irrespective of gender are excluded. Many Fulani youth, with some of the most artistic body ornamentation styles in West Africa, who use rings in their culture of decoration are penalized and excluded. Their human rights are denied.

#14. wearing of colored eye glasses in the classroom except on medical grounds

- except on security grounds, it is so ridiculous. This is creating a problem where there is none. How many students were such glasses in class in the first place? Insignificant. security is the only reasonable ground for such a rule.  Rulemaking old adult people should know that a stage of life called youth is real and should not be confused with their own staid elderhood! Religious people also should know and accept that there are people without religion or who have different religions - all of who are made, according to most religions, by the same Creator. They want to self-express themselves. It is natural and normal. The generation of my children call it "being cool". It is a stage. They soon pass over it. It does not make them dangerous or less serious or less God seeking.

#16. wearing trousers that stop between the ankle and the knee.

I have seen conservative Hausa pants that stop short of the ankle. I know young Islamic scholars in my neck of the wood who wear trousers that do not reach down to the knee, though with the white flowing gowns as the top. Their identity as Muslim cleric/scholars is actually partly defined by this type of dress, with a specific "alim" type cap to match. Would they be arrested if they come to ABU campus or let go?

Also, there is a particular dashiki type Yoruba hunter wear, which now has been turned into regular fashion ware, that has a pant that does not reach down to the ankle. I have one and wear it to Church and can wear to at a wedding or to a child's name-giving ceremony! That is how so proper it is. I will not be able to wear this were I to visit ABU! Ridiculous. Discriminatory. But being a man, I may actuall be allowed to go.

It's not just the body that is being policed here. Some of these rules police adolescence and youthfulness as a stage of life with its goals, its aspirations. They seek to sublimate youthfulness, vigour, style and class - all normal biological, physiological, and anthropological features of youthfulness and the youth! Mostly though, those who will come under the gavel are females. I can imagine the fashion police being helped by "radical" students to detain girls they deem to have contravened any of these rules based on whimsical interpretations! It is only too clear which of these rules will be enforced and on which gender the most.

Those who fashioned the policy did not seem to think beyond the specific moral code of their particular narrow denominational religious community. It does not show that the authors consulted ABU scholars - anthropologist or sociologist for suggestions. Perhaps they consulted some select religious scholars. Were representatives of students, staff, religious and non-religious people and lawyers, consulted before these rules were sanctioned by ABU? The author indicated in the document is  Management. Did these rules pass through the Senate of the university? Does NUC have a right to countermand those rules that contravene basic human right?

These rules give an indication that that great institution is closing in on itself as an intolerant conservative and exclusionary organization. A huge chunk of the human population, many who by any definition would consider themselves to be concerned with decency, are not welcome! Very scary. Very scary.

Even if security and basic decency requirements are allowed for the document's rationale, quite a few of these rules seem to be in contravention of peoples human right.  Most of them are exclusionary and clearly gender biased and religion laced. If they stand without modification, they portend future trouble for many hapless "non-compliant" students, staff, and visitor, especially, women - some select women. They would likely heighten division and non-native sense of insecurity on the campus.

Something much more reasonable, basic, legal and inclusive can certainly be devised to ensure basic decency than these poorly put together rules.

It will not be surprising if this ABU Management goes the whole hog and make all students wear uniforms and RENT out uniforms to all visitors to the campus. That would be a great way to satisfy the rules regarding dress.

/Femi Kolapo

From:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 1, 2019 1:32 PM
To:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ahmadu Bello University: Dress Code
 
Oga Michael:

I know there is a problem here between the demands on ABU as a FEDERAL university (as opposed to state or private institution.)  The event of town and gown as it relates to the cultural dictates of the environs of location of a university still matter.

Many easterners have issues with this as it applies to UI for instance.  These universities are located within specific regions and the intercourse between local community and university is unavoidable.  Local cultural tastes differ and must be respected.

Whereas hijab may not be anathema for ABU because of the cultural dictates up there it may be so for say UI & UNN.( some if my course mates in graduate school in the US for instance dressed in Middle East head dress aroynd campus ( Im not sure with full hijab but full hijab is now routinely comnon in the streets of London with slits only for eyeballs.)

You are right to be apprehensive about use of hijab up there but it IS a legitimate dress code up there ( for instance if the student is admitted for say Islamic studies)

This was the sensibility that informed hypocrite Sani Abacha  ( the one who allegedly died in the company of a prostitute )deciding that ladies who dressed in trousers in public in Abuja be flogged.  Only a dictator could go that far!

The founding Nigerian nationalists understood this very well when they stated each region should westernize at its own pace.  Students and parents who oppose ABUs decision (even if they are notherners) may choose to educate their wards in the South and the Middle Belt.That would be these regions manpower gains.  The demographic  osmosis or reflux will ensure they are vanguard for change in the North in the longer term.

This is the quirky thing about democracy no one can force others to develop at their own pace and people may choose other models apart from the western in any area of develooment.  Much part of the North prefers the Arabian cultural model if not fully but as counterpoint to the excesses of full western mode.  In a democracy they have the right to.  They may also choose to balance their Arabic preference with Chinese rather than western.

  In the South we are more comfortable with westernization but that's due to a long historic ( and continuing) engagement with the West rather than Saudi Arabia and the Middle East.

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: 01/05/2019 10:03 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ahmadu Bello University: Dress Code

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Please don't get me wrong, Okey. I am more conservative than you think and I have lived in America for almost four decades. I once sent one of my language/education students home when I went to observe him and he was wearing a pair of jean-pants while student-teaching even though with a nice shirt and standard tie. My student teachers must be professional. Even as a professor, I always visited them in complete suits, even to my discomfort and irritation, and I also did so when teaching them. But all these are commonsensical, not necessarily based on the Mosaic model of the "Ten Commandments." I think a generic announcement of "We expect our students to be decent in their grooming and public appearances" would be sufficient; and individual programs like education, law, medicine, etc., could have more specific guidelines for how their students' carry themselves in public. ABU should transcend this level of rustic simplicity. It's okay for a high school to do so or even some private religious institutions, but let's be real: this is just not good for an institution of ABU status.
MOA 


On Tuesday, April 30, 2019, 4:15:53 PM GMT+1, Okechukwu Ukaga <ukaga001@umn.edu> wrote:


My esteemed broda, I obviously disagree. In your so called civilized society, naked people are found in strip clubs and brothels, not on university campuses. If folks are unwilling to self regulate to maintain a minimum level of decency in terms of dressing, university has both the right and the responsibility to take appropriate steps. After all, university degrees are awarded not just for academic achievement but also character, etc. Notably, dress code is not unusual in universities, even in the West. When I was in school of business in the late 80s for my MBA, business students were expected and required to dress in ways consistent with our profession. So it is not unusual to see business students and law students going to classes, etc in more formal attire than say soil science students. And in some cases there are strict guidelines like no jeans, no sleepers, no T-shirts, etc. Isn't that a kind of dress code?  So even within the same university there is not only an expected minimum standard for the whole, but component units can have their own additional guidelines, norms and expectations. Before zeroing in on the last part of my contribution that you quoted here, you will do well to read and consider the preceding parts that formed the foundation for that last part.
Regards,
Okey

On Apr 29, 2019 5:18 PM, "'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
". . . and if this is not the right means to that end, then what better options or strategies are available?" (Okechukwu Ukaga) 

No options or strategies needed to be explored over a bad idea. The dress code at a first generation public university does not belong in a civil society. Pure and simple!

MOA



On Sunday, April 28, 2019, 1:48:51 PM GMT+1, Okechukwu Ukaga <ukaga001@umn.edu> wrote:


Perhaps there should be a balance between allowing folks to come to school "naked" and "policing" how they dress. How do we strike that balance? If students, staff, faculty and administrators fail to self regulate, how is a university supposed to assure that balance? Beyond automatic condemnation of dress code, it would be helpful to understand what made such a policy necessary, what it is designed to achieve; and if this is not the right means to that end, then what better options or strategies are available? 
OU

On Apr 27, 2019 1:19 PM, "'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafricadialogue@ googlegroups.com> wrote:
So, what is left? Women to wear hijab and men to dress like the Taliban folks. Great progress for a premier Nigerian university. So grotesque, it's not even funny!
MOA  




On Saturday, April 27, 2019, 6:05:50 PM GMT+1, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:




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Okey C. Iheduru

Just published"The African Corporation, 'Africapitalism' and Regional Integration in Africa" (September 2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781785362538.

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - War on Women

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The War on Women in Abuja

Jibrin Ibrahim, Friday Column, Daily Trust, 3rdMy 2019

There is an open war against women in Abuja and the justification is a moral crusade against so-called prostitutes but not their male customers who are apparently considered the moral pillars of contemporary Nigerian society. Over the past two weeks, raids were organized in different locations leading to the arrest of over 100 women by agents of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) Joint Task Team. The first raid about two weeks ago was at a popular night club, Caramelo, where 34 females, alleged to be nude dancers, were arrested. This was followed by the arrest of another 70 women in different clubs on Wednesday and Friday last week. The women were taken to Utako police station, Abuja and detained.

It is important to note that for the past two decades, this task force has been systematically arresting women in the streets after 10pm and any woman seen outside is assumed to be a criminal and prostitute and treated as such. Independent Nigeria has therefore fully restored the colonial rules of arbitrarily arresting people in the streets for "loitering and wondering" but this time the targets are exclusively female. They have made complete nonsense of our Constitution which protects the human rights of all Nigerians including the right to walk in the streets, day and night. They are also disregarding the right that you cannot be assumed to be a criminal simply because you are found at a location at a certain time.  

Concordant reports indicate that some of these women were sexually assaulted and released after the "moral policemen" had sex with them. Others paid bribes and were released and it was the few that refused to be blackmailed that were taken to court and charged with prostitution. It is really shameful that this would occur in the capital city of Nigeria. The charge of prostitution has become an instrument for committing terrible crimes against women. All the clubs had men and women in them but they picked on only the women, a blatantly discriminatory approach. Some of the women were professionals, AND YES RESPONSIBLE PROFESSIONAL WOMEN ALSO HAVE THE RIGHT TO GO AND ENJOY THEMSELVES IN CLUBS JUST AS MEN. The women who resisted arrest and made the argument they have a right to go to clubs were thoroughly beaten up for daring to stand for their rights.

The Federal Capital Authority has made the argument that one of the night clubs is supposed to be a clinic and was illegally turned into a night club. It that was the case, the authorities should have no issue with guests, their case should have been with the proprietor, whose business could have been closed and the person prosecuted. They did nothing to the proprietor and just arrested the women who were there enjoying themselves.

The Abuja authorities justify their war on women on the basis of the implementation of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board Act 1997, which is a statutory act applicable in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The law gives them powers to: "Keep owned or occupied tenements clean, neat, keep grass low and trim, cut and trim flowers; keep drainage running through the tenement free from blockage. Provide adequate dust bin and sanitary convenience; must not dry cloths in front of the balcony or in front of his premises or on hedges or sidewalks, must not keep animals or birds likely to cause nuisance; must not use residential premises for the sale of alcoholic drinks or as a restaurant or for other commercial activity." Out of all these responsibilities, their only focus is skimpily dressed women. The law provides as punishment the payment of N5,000 and or imprisonment from one month to six months or both depending on the offence. This is the basis on which they collect the N5,000 from all the women they arrest and sexually abuse them when they do not have the money or refuse to pay.

This blatant violation of human rights in Abuja must stop and the officials prosecuted for their crimes against so many women. The women still in detention must be released immediately. When I raised this issue in the social media, many people intervened to tell me that I am supposed to be responsible man so I should not defend prostitutes engaged in illegal acts. The act in question is dancing and I do not know how dancing can be defined as prostitution. Secondly, even if some prostitutes attend such clubs, other women also attend. One of the women arrested for example is a youth corper visiting Abuja for the Easter vacation. In Nigerian law, you are innocent until proved guilty. The most important issue for me however is that the task force calls every woman they see at night a "prostitute" because they know that in our sexist society defined by bigotry and hypocrisy, "responsible" men will keep quiet and watch the way as soon as a woman has been labelled a "prostitute". All responsible men should have a different attitude, they should come out and defend any woman who is labelled a prostitute without proof. When such men start doing the needful, the task force will be forced to stop the massive violations of the rights of women they are engaged in.

The recent raids are being organized on the basis of an unholy alliance between anAbuja-based NGO, the Society Against Prostitution and Child Labour in Nigeria (SAP-CLN), in collaboration with Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) on a moral crusade to rid Abuja of prostitutes. This NGO should ask itself the ethical and moral basis of declaring every woman out at night as a prostitute. They should ask themselves the basis on which they provide support for rape and sexual assault on women. I understand their concern that "innocent" men are being dragged into sin by prostitutes, but should they not focus their attention on moral and ethical reinforcement of the men to resist the said temptation. Prostitution, according to the police is said to be illegal under AEPB law and offenders risk fines and jail terms. The problem however is that there is no definition of who is a prostitute. In the absence of a definition, two criteria have been developed – a woman, in the streets or in a club must be a prostitute. This is lawlessness of the highest order. The worst aspect is that many of the women taken to court are forced to "confess" being prostitutes to get a smaller fine and then have the conviction in their records for the rest of their lives. All those who have suffered this indignity should sue SAP-CLN  for their role in spoiling their names. Their activities violate the rights of women guaranteed in our Constitution. Once again, I call on all responsible men to stand up and defend all these innocent women who are baselessly and illegally declared to be prostitutes without evidence. FCDA STOP THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN.

 


Professor Jibrin Ibrahim
Senior Fellow
Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja
Follow me on twitter @jibrinibrahim17

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Africa!

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This is reported to be former Sudanese Minister of Defence, Col. Ibrahim Chamsadine,  jailed in 1995 by recently deposed leader, Omar Al-Bashir for opposing his tyrannical rule.

Chamsadine, said to have died in an air crash, was reportedly recently discovered in an underground cell in Khartoum.



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Chidi Anthony Opara is a "Life Time Achievement" Awardee, Registered Freight Forwarder, Professional Fellow Of Institute Of Information Managerment, Africa, Poet and Publisher of PublicInformationProjects



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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - War on Women

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Thanks, Jibrin:

Brilliant essay, as always.

The photos of dragging nude women in public and tossing them as criminals to police vans are difficult to watch. "Moral policing" is an instrument of control, but here the motive is unclear as to the public being protected. Are those spaces also for drugs? Do the police lack the capacity to disguise and do quiet work? Are those so-called prostitutes not victims of a high unemployment rate? Do people not go to Church vigils?

TF

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

104 Inner Campus Drive

Austin, TX 78712-0220

USA

512 475 7224

512 475 7222 (fax)

http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue   

 

From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Jibrin Ibrahim <jibrinibrahim891@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Friday, May 3, 2019 at 5:10 AM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - War on Women

 

The War on Women in Abuja

Jibrin Ibrahim, Friday Column, Daily Trust, 3rdMy 2019

There is an open war against women in Abuja and the justification is a moral crusade against so-called prostitutes but not their male customers who are apparently considered the moral pillars of contemporary Nigerian society. Over the past two weeks, raids were organized in different locations leading to the arrest of over 100 women by agents of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) Joint Task Team. The first raid about two weeks ago was at a popular night club, Caramelo, where 34 females, alleged to be nude dancers, were arrested. This was followed by the arrest of another 70 women in different clubs on Wednesday and Friday last week. The women were taken to Utako police station, Abuja and detained.

It is important to note that for the past two decades, this task force has been systematically arresting women in the streets after 10pm and any woman seen outside is assumed to be a criminal and prostitute and treated as such. Independent Nigeria has therefore fully restored the colonial rules of arbitrarily arresting people in the streets for "loitering and wondering" but this time the targets are exclusively female. They have made complete nonsense of our Constitution which protects the human rights of all Nigerians including the right to walk in the streets, day and night. They are also disregarding the right that you cannot be assumed to be a criminal simply because you are found at a location at a certain time.  

Concordant reports indicate that some of these women were sexually assaulted and released after the "moral policemen" had sex with them. Others paid bribes and were released and it was the few that refused to be blackmailed that were taken to court and charged with prostitution. It is really shameful that this would occur in the capital city of Nigeria. The charge of prostitution has become an instrument for committing terrible crimes against women. All the clubs had men and women in them but they picked on only the women, a blatantly discriminatory approach. Some of the women were professionals, AND YES RESPONSIBLE PROFESSIONAL WOMEN ALSO HAVE THE RIGHT TO GO AND ENJOY THEMSELVES IN CLUBS JUST AS MEN. The women who resisted arrest and made the argument they have a right to go to clubs were thoroughly beaten up for daring to stand for their rights.

The Federal Capital Authority has made the argument that one of the night clubs is supposed to be a clinic and was illegally turned into a night club. It that was the case, the authorities should have no issue with guests, their case should have been with the proprietor, whose business could have been closed and the person prosecuted. They did nothing to the proprietor and just arrested the women who were there enjoying themselves.

The Abuja authorities justify their war on women on the basis of the implementation of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board Act 1997, which is a statutory act applicable in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The law gives them powers to: "Keep owned or occupied tenements clean, neat, keep grass low and trim, cut and trim flowers; keep drainage running through the tenement free from blockage. Provide adequate dust bin and sanitary convenience; must not dry cloths in front of the balcony or in front of his premises or on hedges or sidewalks, must not keep animals or birds likely to cause nuisance; must not use residential premises for the sale of alcoholic drinks or as a restaurant or for other commercial activity." Out of all these responsibilities, their only focus is skimpily dressed women. The law provides as punishment the payment of N5,000 and or imprisonment from one month to six months or both depending on the offence. This is the basis on which they collect the N5,000 from all the women they arrest and sexually abuse them when they do not have the money or refuse to pay.

This blatant violation of human rights in Abuja must stop and the officials prosecuted for their crimes against so many women. The women still in detention must be released immediately. When I raised this issue in the social media, many people intervened to tell me that I am supposed to be responsible man so I should not defend prostitutes engaged in illegal acts. The act in question is dancing and I do not know how dancing can be defined as prostitution. Secondly, even if some prostitutes attend such clubs, other women also attend. One of the women arrested for example is a youth corper visiting Abuja for the Easter vacation. In Nigerian law, you are innocent until proved guilty. The most important issue for me however is that the task force calls every woman they see at night a "prostitute" because they know that in our sexist society defined by bigotry and hypocrisy, "responsible" men will keep quiet and watch the way as soon as a woman has been labelled a "prostitute". All responsible men should have a different attitude, they should come out and defend any woman who is labelled a prostitute without proof. When such men start doing the needful, the task force will be forced to stop the massive violations of the rights of women they are engaged in.

The recent raids are being organized on the basis of an unholy alliance between anAbuja-based NGO, the Society Against Prostitution and Child Labour in Nigeria (SAP-CLN), in collaboration with Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) on a moral crusade to rid Abuja of prostitutes. This NGO should ask itself the ethical and moral basis of declaring every woman out at night as a prostitute. They should ask themselves the basis on which they provide support for rape and sexual assault on women. I understand their concern that "innocent" men are being dragged into sin by prostitutes, but should they not focus their attention on moral and ethical reinforcement of the men to resist the said temptation. Prostitution, according to the police is said to be illegal under AEPB law and offenders risk fines and jail terms. The problem however is that there is no definition of who is a prostitute. In the absence of a definition, two criteria have been developed – a woman, in the streets or in a club must be a prostitute. This is lawlessness of the highest order. The worst aspect is that many of the women taken to court are forced to "confess" being prostitutes to get a smaller fine and then have the conviction in their records for the rest of their lives. All those who have suffered this indignity should sue SAP-CLN  for their role in spoiling their names. Their activities violate the rights of women guaranteed in our Constitution. Once again, I call on all responsible men to stand up and defend all these innocent women who are baselessly and illegally declared to be prostitutes without evidence. FCDA STOP THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN.

 

 

Professor Jibrin Ibrahim

Senior Fellow

Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja

Follow me on twitter @jibrinibrahim17

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - War on Women

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Women who have been illegally abused are unlikely to sue because they cannot afford a lawyer.   Unless the NBA sets up an outfit which can defend pro bono the abuse will continue.

Most modern societies have provisions against prostitution but they don't arrest in any club except brothels and designated red light districts.

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu>
Date: 03/05/2019 11:26 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - War on Women

Boxbe This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu) Add cleanup rule | More info

Thanks, Jibrin:

Brilliant essay, as always.

The photos of dragging nude women in public and tossing them as criminals to police vans are difficult to watch. "Moral policing" is an instrument of control, but here the motive is unclear as to the public being protected. Are those spaces also for drugs? Do the police lack the capacity to disguise and do quiet work? Are those so-called prostitutes not victims of a high unemployment rate? Do people not go to Church vigils?

TF

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

104 Inner Campus Drive

Austin, TX 78712-0220

USA

512 475 7224

512 475 7222 (fax)

http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue   

 

From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Jibrin Ibrahim <jibrinibrahim891@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Friday, May 3, 2019 at 5:10 AM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - War on Women

 

The War on Women in Abuja

Jibrin Ibrahim, Friday Column, Daily Trust, 3rdMy 2019

There is an open war against women in Abuja and the justification is a moral crusade against so-called prostitutes but not their male customers who are apparently considered the moral pillars of contemporary Nigerian society. Over the past two weeks, raids were organized in different locations leading to the arrest of over 100 women by agents of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) Joint Task Team. The first raid about two weeks ago was at a popular night club, Caramelo, where 34 females, alleged to be nude dancers, were arrested. This was followed by the arrest of another 70 women in different clubs on Wednesday and Friday last week. The women were taken to Utako police station, Abuja and detained.

It is important to note that for the past two decades, this task force has been systematically arresting women in the streets after 10pm and any woman seen outside is assumed to be a criminal and prostitute and treated as such. Independent Nigeria has therefore fully restored the colonial rules of arbitrarily arresting people in the streets for "loitering and wondering" but this time the targets are exclusively female. They have made complete nonsense of our Constitution which protects the human rights of all Nigerians including the right to walk in the streets, day and night. They are also disregarding the right that you cannot be assumed to be a criminal simply because you are found at a location at a certain time.  

Concordant reports indicate that some of these women were sexually assaulted and released after the "moral policemen" had sex with them. Others paid bribes and were released and it was the few that refused to be blackmailed that were taken to court and charged with prostitution. It is really shameful that this would occur in the capital city of Nigeria. The charge of prostitution has become an instrument for committing terrible crimes against women. All the clubs had men and women in them but they picked on only the women, a blatantly discriminatory approach. Some of the women were professionals, AND YES RESPONSIBLE PROFESSIONAL WOMEN ALSO HAVE THE RIGHT TO GO AND ENJOY THEMSELVES IN CLUBS JUST AS MEN. The women who resisted arrest and made the argument they have a right to go to clubs were thoroughly beaten up for daring to stand for their rights.

The Federal Capital Authority has made the argument that one of the night clubs is supposed to be a clinic and was illegally turned into a night club. It that was the case, the authorities should have no issue with guests, their case should have been with the proprietor, whose business could have been closed and the person prosecuted. They did nothing to the proprietor and just arrested the women who were there enjoying themselves.

The Abuja authorities justify their war on women on the basis of the implementation of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board Act 1997, which is a statutory act applicable in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The law gives them powers to: "Keep owned or occupied tenements clean, neat, keep grass low and trim, cut and trim flowers; keep drainage running through the tenement free from blockage. Provide adequate dust bin and sanitary convenience; must not dry cloths in front of the balcony or in front of his premises or on hedges or sidewalks, must not keep animals or birds likely to cause nuisance; must not use residential premises for the sale of alcoholic drinks or as a restaurant or for other commercial activity." Out of all these responsibilities, their only focus is skimpily dressed women. The law provides as punishment the payment of N5,000 and or imprisonment from one month to six months or both depending on the offence. This is the basis on which they collect the N5,000 from all the women they arrest and sexually abuse them when they do not have the money or refuse to pay.

This blatant violation of human rights in Abuja must stop and the officials prosecuted for their crimes against so many women. The women still in detention must be released immediately. When I raised this issue in the social media, many people intervened to tell me that I am supposed to be responsible man so I should not defend prostitutes engaged in illegal acts. The act in question is dancing and I do not know how dancing can be defined as prostitution. Secondly, even if some prostitutes attend such clubs, other women also attend. One of the women arrested for example is a youth corper visiting Abuja for the Easter vacation. In Nigerian law, you are innocent until proved guilty. The most important issue for me however is that the task force calls every woman they see at night a "prostitute" because they know that in our sexist society defined by bigotry and hypocrisy, "responsible" men will keep quiet and watch the way as soon as a woman has been labelled a "prostitute". All responsible men should have a different attitude, they should come out and defend any woman who is labelled a prostitute without proof. When such men start doing the needful, the task force will be forced to stop the massive violations of the rights of women they are engaged in.

The recent raids are being organized on the basis of an unholy alliance between anAbuja-based NGO, the Society Against Prostitution and Child Labour in Nigeria (SAP-CLN), in collaboration with Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) on a moral crusade to rid Abuja of prostitutes. This NGO should ask itself the ethical and moral basis of declaring every woman out at night as a prostitute. They should ask themselves the basis on which they provide support for rape and sexual assault on women. I understand their concern that "innocent" men are being dragged into sin by prostitutes, but should they not focus their attention on moral and ethical reinforcement of the men to resist the said temptation. Prostitution, according to the police is said to be illegal under AEPB law and offenders risk fines and jail terms. The problem however is that there is no definition of who is a prostitute. In the absence of a definition, two criteria have been developed – a woman, in the streets or in a club must be a prostitute. This is lawlessness of the highest order. The worst aspect is that many of the women taken to court are forced to "confess" being prostitutes to get a smaller fine and then have the conviction in their records for the rest of their lives. All those who have suffered this indignity should sue SAP-CLN  for their role in spoiling their names. Their activities violate the rights of women guaranteed in our Constitution. Once again, I call on all responsible men to stand up and defend all these innocent women who are baselessly and illegally declared to be prostitutes without evidence. FCDA STOP THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN.

 

 

Professor Jibrin Ibrahim

Senior Fellow

Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja

Follow me on twitter @jibrinibrahim17

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - CONTRA-dictions

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My employer is on my neck for me to keep to certain obligations, but I
also remember my pledge to USAAfricaDialogue. After all, people like
Farooq Kperogi and Olouwatoyin Adepoju who hold humburger in one hand
and still manage to write with the other hand, do not have have seven
heads while I have one!

So, let me try to catch up with them, although terribly marooned here
in Buhariland!

I have been able to write my weekend piece. Please, click on this link
to access in on X-Pens:

https://x-pensiverrors.blogspot.com/2019/05/contra-dictions.html

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Obododimma.

--
--
B.A.,First Class Honours (English & Literary Studies);
M.A., Ph.D. (English Language);
M.Sc. (Legal, Criminological & Security Psychology);
Professor of Cultural Semiotics & Stylistics,
Department of English,
University of Ibadan.

COORDINATES:

Phone (Mobile):
+234 8033331330;
+234 9033333555;
+234 8022208008;
+234 8073270008.
Skype: obododimma.oha
Twitter: @mmanwu
Personal Blog: http://udude.wordpress.com/

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