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

May 5, 2019, 5:53 am
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OA,
I think this article explains the issue best.

GE

 


From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 4, 2019 11:37 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ahmadu Bello University: Dress Code
 
HE.

We may have  different rtakes on the
e ruling.  My own take is not that the atjletic body is right in any decion but to highlight that hormones are not evenly dtributed among people. I dont thi nk the body asked her to suppress her hormones.  I thi k she tested pisitive to drugs and jer explanatio. Was that the drugs were to suppress the high levels of testosterone  in her system.  Correct me if I'm wrong g on this take


OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Date: 05/05/2019 01:59 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ahmadu Bello University: Dress Code

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"thank God the case of that Sout African female athlete featured in the news earlier this week who had to use drugs to SUPPRESS her excessive hormones and was sanctioned.  When the case first came up a year or two ago I thought she was a man disguised as a woman the way she looked." 


What!!!  So you agree with that outrageous athletic body, the IAAF,  that seeks to drug a female  athlete under the guise of testosterone control!  The ruling  smacks of intolerance, sexism  and racism.  I hope we examine the repercussions of this ruling, should it stand.

The IAAF would now prescribe medication for the East African marathon runners and  every successful female athlete on the planet, especially when Black.  Before you know it we would be  in genetic engineering/ manipulation territory, writ large. It also opens the way for hard working  female athletes to be discriminated against and insulted. 

 Are  great athletes determined by their testosterone profile? Whatever happened to the following:

  1. passion for the sport
  2. constant training and years of practice
  3. appropriate diet
  4. dedication, determination and grit
  5. a competitive spirit
This ruling is insulting to the athlete and all female athletes-  and I hope that
it is thrown out on appeal. The South African sporting community called it an apartheid era  move.
I agree. Next they would want to mandate all Black successful female athletes to take
hormone pills. Serena next? How about all the successful Black female track stars of the past?


As I asked in another group, at what point do the testosterone levels in a male athlete
 make him an alien and too fit  to compete?

BTW, the Nazis would have injected Jesse Owens with testostorone reducing medication
at the 1936 Olympics  if they could.



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 OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, May 3, 2019 8:32 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ahmadu Bello University: Dress Code
 
Oga Okey:
Thank you for furnishing these details. I agree with the citing of the provisions of Kaduna State law on which the judges acted to the extent that the Nigerian state and the Constitution  allowed customary laws to be incorporated into Nigerian jurisprudence. Customary law operates in the legal Cannon of the South too.

I agree that nuisance dressing should be sanctioned but not that harsh as in jail terms.  I will never allow my own daughter dress in that manner so long as she lives under my roof.  If she does not live with me and is coming to visit she cannot dress like that to visit me.  I know we were all born naked without a stitch of clothes on, we agreed to enter civilization and cover up.  This is in part why I disagree with that contributor who blamed those who cannot bring their hormones under control.  As a student of psychoanalysis I know that hormones are NEVER evenly dustributed for everyone.  Some have far more in excess of what is needed pumping in their blood;  the real culprits if that hormonal victim isGod and their parents. ( thank God the case of that Sout African female athlete featured in the news earlier this week who had to use drugs to SUPPRESS her excessive hormones and was sanctioned.  When the case first came up a year or two ago I thought she was a man disguised as a woman the way she looked.  ) 

 So if Mr A can effectively control his hormones because they are average or stingily present to the extent that it is an Amazonian effort to arouse them then it is not the fault of B that he is easily aroused.  That is natures trick of ensuring the survival of the human race

 It's up to the North to reform Sharia law in view of its harsh sentences so it is brought into the purview of the 21st century human rights considerations.  We cant be cutting off peoples hands in this day and age because they stole or stoning women to death because they committed adultery.

OAA.



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Okey Iheduru <okeyiheduru@gmail.com>
Date: 03/05/2019 09:55 (GMT+00:00)
To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ahmadu Bello University: Dress Code

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http://saharareporters.com/2019/04/23/sharia-court-kaduna-jails-two-ladies-two-months-wearing-skimpy-dresses#.XMvcTB8_LnY.email  

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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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 - How Illuminating is the Philosophy in African Philosophy? : A Vital Analysis on Decolonizing Philosophy in the Western Style University

May 5, 2019, 9:49 am
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Those who seek changes must show they are desirable

OPINION / 17 JULY 2015, 11:08AM / DAVID BENATAR

DEMANDING TRANSFORMATION: UCT workers and Rhodes Must Fall members march to the Bremner Building to hand over a memorandum to Vice-Chancellor Max Price seeking transformation at the university. Photo: David Ritchie

Those demanding "transformation" and "decolonisation" of South African universities rarely define their terms, or they do so imprecisely. The resultant ambiguity may facilitate the halo effect that surrounds these terms.

Academics and students alike, piously intone them. But slogans are no substitute for real argument.

If one wants to establish some conclusion, one must use key terms as unambiguously and precisely as the underlying concepts permit.

A "transformation", for example, is "a thorough or dramatic change". Not all such changes are positive. Thus those who seek particular changes need to demonstrate that they are desirable ones.

One demand is for the transformation of the student and staff profiles to reflect the racial demographics of the country. However, it is not enough to endorse that goal. The means to attaining it must also be appropriate.

Admitting, on the basis of their "race", students who are not at all prepared for university would set them up for failure and squander limited public resources.

To be clear, the university can, should, and does provide support to those students who have been educationally disadvantaged, but it can do so only for those students who are moderately disadvantaged and could succeed with remedial help.

Universities cannot compensate for 12 years of appalling primary and secondary education in South Africa's dysfunctional schools.

The sad truth is that the pool of qualified university applicants is only a small proportion of school-leavers. Without improved schooling, the student demographics at universities simply cannot resemble the national demographics. It is wishful, delusional thinking to imagine otherwise.

Similarly, in hiring academics, universities can draw on only a very small subset of the entire population. The quarry is not all adults or even those with PhDs. The aim is to appoint the best scholars and teachers from the pool of suitably qualified applicants. That pool bears very little resemblance to the country's demographics.

In response to this, many advocates of "transformation" argue that we have to alter our conception of "excellence" which, they say, is "Eurocentric".

They might make a more persuasive case if they could explicate the ways in which the current standards of "excellence" are questionable. Should we, for example, not be seeking academics who have finely honed analytical skills, a command of their field and who can publish articles in excellent international journals, and books with prestigious academic presses?

Advocates of "transformation" also claim that the curriculum needs to be "decolonialised" or "Africanised". It is very difficult to understand what exactly this is meant to imply.

Sometimes the suggestion is that African ways of thinking should be affirmed and that "European" ways of thinking should not be privileged.

One problem with this suggestion is that it oversimplifies "African" and "European" ways of thinking. For example, the ways of thinking that characterised European universities several hundred years ago have changed. If European universities had insisted, as conservatives might have wanted, on preserving traditional European thinking, there would not have been the advances in knowledge that there have been.

Similarly, if advocates of "decolonisation" insist on injecting traditional African ways of thinking, there would be similar stultification.

The success of modern universities is not based on self-consciously pursuing or affirming traditional or ethnicspecific ways of thinking. Instead, the goal is to pursue knowledge as a common human endeavour. Thus we should be interested in whatever methodologies and innovations work, and adopt them irrespective of their origin.

Europeans did not reject Indo-Arabic numerals on the grounds that they were not of European origin. (This is one illustration that not everything brought to South Africa by Europeans was European in origin.) The process is never complete, which is why change should be welcomed - but only if change improves what universities do.

Change for the sake of fitting an ethnic or nationalist agenda is unlikely to have that effect. Thus, Africa should demonstrate that it has something valuable to add rather than arguing that it has something African to contribute.

This is not to say that Africa can offer nothing valuable, but rather that the selling point should be that it is valuable rather than that it is African.

One possibility is to investigate scientifically whether some traditional African medicines have therapeutic value. However, it would be a mistake to reject the scientific methodology as a "colonial epistemology" and to teach medical students to prescribe traditional remedies without scientific evidence that they are safe and effective. It is only through advances made by the scientific methodology that European medicine shed itself of such errors as miasmatic theory and humorism. No doubt there are lingering (and new) errors in modern medicine that still need to be expunged by advancing knowledge.

Parts of the university curriculum are already Africanised in some sense - African languages and literature, African customary law and African religion are taught. That is entirely appropriate, but not all disciplines lend themselves to Africanisation.

It is not clear, for example, what it would mean to "decolonise" physics or mathematics. There is only mathematics - not European or African mathematics.

What about my own discipline, philosophy? The main source of confusion with demands to Africanise a philosophy curriculum is the ambiguity in the word "philosophy". Many people use the term to refer to any system of thought. However, that is not the way it is used in the academic context.

Academic philosophy is not even merely the study of thought systems, for that would not differentiate philosophy from areas of anthropology and religious studies.

Philosophy is characterised not only by particular questions, but also by the methodologies it uses in answering those questions. These methodologies, like those of mathematics and physics, are imports. Even if they can be applied to African thought, that would involve a kind of "colonisation" - African thought would be subjected to non-indigenous academic tools.

But indigenousness is no more a marker of value than non-indigenousness is a marker of disvalue.

Ideas, innovations, methodologies should be evaluated on their merits rather than on their provenance.

One psychological factor that impedes the recognition of this is the misplaced ("colonising") pride of some people and the misplaced ("colonised") insecurity of others.

Peoples' intellectual capacity and promise is not a function of what has been achieved by their forebears.

In any event, not all "white" South Africans are descended from either colonialists or from the great centres of European learning. Some are descended from non-colonial immigrants. They are first or second-generation university graduates.

Universities and their curricula were not part of their own "cultural heritage", but they embraced university learning -because it is valuable and despite its "cultural unfamiliarity".

Most "blacks" in South Africa are not immigrants. Nevertheless, we should all be heartened by the words of the eminent Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, who asked whether it was absurd for him, "someone just one generation from the shtetl, a pisher from… Brooklyn", even to touch on the work of monumental thinkers. He replied: "Of course it is. Yet it was ludicrous for them too. We are all just a few years past something or other, if only childhood. Even the monuments themselves… must have been children once… - so they too are immigrants to the realm of thought."

* Benatar is Professor andHead of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town

 

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: Prof. Olukotun's Column

May 5, 2019, 10:32 am
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Thank you. I still think the initiative was put forward first under Johnathan but rejected I can recall very well. The other initiatives brought forward under Buhari were dubbed colonization attempts.  That's is why I asked for a break down of th money so the details will assure Nigerians it is not money for colonization projects or rewards for villainy but attempts at mutually agreeable resettlement schemes.Anything short of that will fail. 

 That is why the President whom the nation gave another contractual mandate must level with the nation on details in a national broadcast. The President owe it to the people to give such strategic broadcasts to stop the rumour mills especially concerning such milestones as this agreement.

The problems did not start with this administration but they came to a head.from the beginning of the Buhari era.  Buhari must make sure that the agreement means the problem outlasted his administration.  He can't start regretting from his retirement what he should have done while in office

Nigerians must be ready to embrace their Fulani brothers and sisters the way they embraced their Igbo brothers and sisters after the Biafran Civil War in which countless lives were list and let bygones be bygones.

The acting IGP must make sure justice is seen to be done as it relates to verifiable confirmed criminals.

No matter how high the cost of peace the cost of war trumps it several times over.  We are not even talking of unquantifiable colossal loss of lives. 

OAA.



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Funmi Odusolu <eleda.odusolu@gmail.com>
Date: 05/05/2019 16:19 (GMT+00:00)
To: OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Cc: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com, Royal Gardens <royalgardensnet@gmail.com>, May <mayortk@yahoo.com>, Toks Olaoluwa <olaoluwatokunboh@gmail.com>, bukkydada@hotmail.com, Ayo Banjo <profayobanjo@yahoo.com>, mdayansola@gmail.com, Mary Kolawole <memkolawole@yahoo.com>, Margaret Solo-Anaeto <soloanaeto.margaret@gmail.com>, Noel Ihebuzor <noel.ihebuzor@gmail.com>, oibidapoobe@gmail.com, ibrahim.gambari@gmail.com, FON Roberts <fonroberts@yahoo.com>, fonaiyekan@yahoo.com, Willy Fawole <fawolew@yahoo.com>, Fola Oyeyinka <fola.oyeyinka@gmail.com>, offlinenspri@gmail.com, foegbokhare@yahoo.com, Sheriff Folarin <sheriff.folarin@covenantuniversity.edu.ng>, Dele Seteolu <folabiset@yahoo.com>, charlieedema@yahoo.co.uk, Eesuola Kayode <foomoterribly@yahoo.com>, Cynthia Samuel-Olonjuwon <cynthiafunmi@gmail.com>, Prof Olufemi VAUGHAN <ovaughan@bowdoin.edu>, gloryukwenga@gmail.com, Rotimi Suberu <rotimisuberu@yahoo.com>, Rebecca Adugbe <omoadugbe@gmail.com>, waleadebanwi@gmail.com, "Prof. W.O. Alli" <alliwo@yahoo.co.uk>, Ademiluyi Wole <woleademiluyi@gmail.com>, waleadebanwi@yahoo.com, anujah@yahoo.com, Wunmi Toke <wunmitoke2@gmail.com>, tadeakinaina@yahoo.com, Chibuzo Nwoke <chibuzonwoke@yahoo.com>, Michael Adeyeye <madeyeye2002@yahoo.com>, ozoesonpi@yahoo.com, obadare@ku.edu, oluyinkaesan@gmail.com, Solomon Uwaifo <so_uwaifo@yahoo.co.uk>, aribidesi.usman@asu.edu, dijiaina@yahoo.com, OLAYODE OLUSOLA <kennyode@yahoo.com>, Kayode Soremekun <paddykay2002@yahoo.com>, stiker88@hotmail.com, "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>, bukkystars@gmail.com, babsowoeye@gmail.com, Ayo Olukotun <ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>, akinsanyaadeoye@gmail.com, akinosuntokun@yahoo.com, jadesany@yahoo.co.uk, David Atte <david_atte@yahoo.com>, Dele Alake <alakedele@yahoo.com>, Dr Oluwajuyitan <ecjide@yahoo.com>, Sat Obiyan <satobiyan@yahoo.com>, Ayobami Salami <ayobasalami@yahoo.com>, lereamusan@gmail.com, Yusuf Bangura <bangura.ym@gmail.com>, Dr Yemi Dipeolu <dipeolu.a@statehouse.gov.ng>, diekoye@gmail.com, tundejaiyeoba@yahoo.co.uk, Bola Sotunsa <bolasotunsa@yahoo.com>, Solomon Akinboye <solomon_akinboye@yahoo.com>, Peyi Soyinka-Airewele <pairewele@ithaca.edu>, Sola Isola <sola_isola@yahoo.com>, Dr Nathaniel Danjibo <danjib@yahoo.com>, Daniel Bach <d.bach@sciencespobordeaux.fr>, Moshood Omotosho <mashomotosho@yahoo.com>, ffk2011@aol.com, Redeemer's University Vice-Chancellor <vc@run.edu.ng>, Senatormamora <senatormamora@yahoo.com>, enyiabaribe@yahoo.com, Ibiwumi Saliu <saliuibiwumi@yahoo.com>, Lanre Idowu <lanreidowu@gmail.com>, ibini_olaide@yahoo.com, dam_nik@yahoo.com, Adebayo Salami <adebayosalami2015@gmail.com>, salawuabiodun@yahoo.com, Remi Raji <remraj1@googlemail.com>, abiodunraufu@yahoo.com, Stephen Bolaji <stephen.bolaji@cdu.edu.au>, nimiwari@msn.com, vadetula@gmail.com, Vincent Adugbe <vadugbe@yahoo.com>, Fola Arthur-Worrey <folaaw@yahoo.com>, funmiolorunfemi@gmail.com, Funmi Soetan <funm_soetan@yahoo.com>, Olufunke Adeboye <funks29adeboye@yahoo.co.uk>, Funke Egbemode <egbemode_funke@yahoo.com>, Michael Sokupa <sokupam@gc.adventist.org>, "mvickers@mvickers plus. com" <mvickers@mvickers.plus.com>, John McMurtry <mcmurtry@uoguelph.ca>, Prof Toyin FALOLA <toyin.falola@mail.utexas.edu>, Prof Maurice AMUTABI <amutabi@gmail.com>, Duro Oni <durooni@unilag.edu.ng>, dr_ademi <dr_ademi@yahoo.co.uk>, Yinka Davies <tinydafidi@gmail.com>, Serifat Davies <sisialadire@gmail.com>, ss <ss@segunsofowote.com>, Olayinka Lawal-Solarin <yls@lantern-books.com>, Yemi Shodimu <yemishodimu@yahoo.com>, Sam Amusan <elsamolus@yahoo.com>, dinah jurksaitis <d_jurksaitis@yahoo.co.uk>, bayo awala <bayo_awala@yahoo.com>, AKOGUN TOLA ADENIYI <akoguntolaadeniyi@gmail.com>, sundaytribuneeditor@yahoo.com, tunde jose <josemoto@gmail.com>, Taiwo Lycett <lycettamore@gmail.com>, Tunde Adegbola <taintransit@gmail.com>, oliver.brown@telegraph.co.uk, yemi wilde-halim <yemihalim@hotmail.com>, Biodun Jeyifo <bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu>, t.w.l@hotmail.com, Femi Osofisan <okinbalaunko@yahoo.com>, Niyi Osundare <oosunda1@uno.edu>, Makinde Adeniran <makindeadeniran@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: Prof. Olukotun's Column

Yinka 

It is clear that this 100Billion Naira pacification of MACDAN patrons of Fulani terrorists, kidnappers, murderers et al is a wholly Buhari executive initiative. Were the Nigeria National Assembly and Judiciary party to it?

The alibi of an ECOWAS dimension to the illegal settlement shall remain a smokescreen until the Nigeria NASS and the various ECOWAS governments make their own positions here public.

But even internally here in Nigeria, there is mindless contradiction; for the Nigeria Police has relentlessly warned kidnapped victims and their families never to offer ransom for their release, but the Nigeria 'Federal government' is now begging terrorist-murderers with 100Billion Naira for starters.

However, over and above whatever ECOWAS and the global community may come to think or do about this awesomely fraudulent cultivation/patronage of terrorism/kidnapping/ecstatic-murders, it is those who bear the brunt of everything that must discharge themselves as fit.

FO

On Sun, May 5, 2019, 1:52 PM OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com wrote:
Funmi.

Thanks for your response. How would you suggest government should handle the matter differently  now that it is considered a regional crisis even by ECoWAS.?

How do you think another leader say Johnathan or Obasanjo would have handled the matter differently than the returned leader Buhari?

Do you follow those who think a dissolution of Nigeria will be the ultimate solution and by what means in order to avoid even more apocalyptic  violence in that dissolution?

Do you think defying the people's representatives at the national assent my and insisting on restructuring at all cost as some people suggest will solve the problem or turn  the situation into a catastrophic all out war of unimaginable proportions whose final cost no one knows and which will dwarf the suggested. figures in this I initiative exponentially?

QAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Funmi Odusolu <eleda.odusolu@gmail.com>
Date: 05/05/2019 11:41 (GMT+00:00)
To: OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Cc: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com, Royal Gardens <royalgardensnet@gmail.com>, May <mayortk@yahoo.com>, Toks Olaoluwa <olaoluwatokunboh@gmail.com>, bukkydada@hotmail.com, Ayo Banjo <profayobanjo@yahoo.com>, mdayansola@gmail.com, Mary Kolawole <memkolawole@yahoo.com>, Margaret Solo-Anaeto <soloanaeto.margaret@gmail.com>, Noel Ihebuzor <noel.ihebuzor@gmail.com>, oibidapoobe@gmail.com, ibrahim.gambari@gmail.com, FON Roberts <fonroberts@yahoo.com>, fonaiyekan@yahoo.com, Willy Fawole <fawolew@yahoo.com>, Fola Oyeyinka <fola.oyeyinka@gmail.com>, offlinenspri@gmail.com, foegbokhare@yahoo.com, Sheriff Folarin <sheriff.folarin@covenantuniversity.edu.ng>, Dele Seteolu <folabiset@yahoo.com>, charlieedema@yahoo.co.uk, Eesuola Kayode <foomoterribly@yahoo.com>, Cynthia Samuel-Olonjuwon <cynthiafunmi@gmail.com>, Prof Olufemi VAUGHAN <ovaughan@bowdoin.edu>, gloryukwenga@gmail.com, Rotimi Suberu <rotimisuberu@yahoo.com>, Rebecca Adugbe <omoadugbe@gmail.com>, waleadebanwi@gmail.com, "Prof. W.O. Alli" <alliwo@yahoo.co.uk>, Ademiluyi Wole <woleademiluyi@gmail.com>, waleadebanwi@yahoo.com, anujah@yahoo.com, Wunmi Toke <wunmitoke2@gmail.com>, tadeakinaina@yahoo.com, Chibuzo Nwoke <chibuzonwoke@yahoo.com>, Michael Adeyeye <madeyeye2002@yahoo.com>, ozoesonpi@yahoo.com, obadare@ku.edu, oluyinkaesan@gmail.com, Solomon Uwaifo <so_uwaifo@yahoo.co.uk>, aribidesi.usman@asu.edu, dijiaina@yahoo.com, OLAYODE OLUSOLA <kennyode@yahoo.com>, Kayode Soremekun <paddykay2002@yahoo.com>, stiker88@hotmail.com, "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>, bukkystars@gmail.com, babsowoeye@gmail.com, Ayo Olukotun <ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>, akinsanyaadeoye@gmail.com, akinosuntokun@yahoo.com, jadesany@yahoo.co.uk, David Atte <david_atte@yahoo.com>, Dele Alake <alakedele@yahoo.com>, Dr Oluwajuyitan <ecjide@yahoo.com>, Sat Obiyan <satobiyan@yahoo.com>, Ayobami Salami <ayobasalami@yahoo.com>, lereamusan@gmail.com, Yusuf Bangura <bangura.ym@gmail.com>, Dr Yemi Dipeolu <dipeolu.a@statehouse.gov.ng>, diekoye@gmail.com, tundejaiyeoba@yahoo.co.uk, Bola Sotunsa <bolasotunsa@yahoo.com>, Solomon Akinboye <solomon_akinboye@yahoo.com>, Peyi Soyinka-Airewele <pairewele@ithaca.edu>, Sola Isola <sola_isola@yahoo.com>, Dr Nathaniel Danjibo <danjib@yahoo.com>, Daniel Bach <d.bach@sciencespobordeaux.fr>, Moshood Omotosho <mashomotosho@yahoo.com>, ffk2011@aol.com, Redeemer's University Vice-Chancellor <vc@run.edu.ng>, Senatormamora <senatormamora@yahoo.com>, enyiabaribe@yahoo.com, Ibiwumi Saliu <saliuibiwumi@yahoo.com>, Lanre Idowu <lanreidowu@gmail.com>, ibini_olaide@yahoo.com, dam_nik@yahoo.com, Adebayo Salami <adebayosalami2015@gmail.com>, salawuabiodun@yahoo.com, Remi Raji <remraj1@googlemail.com>, abiodunraufu@yahoo.com, Stephen Bolaji <stephen.bolaji@cdu.edu.au>, nimiwari@msn.com, vadetula@gmail.com, Vincent Adugbe <vadugbe@yahoo.com>, Fola Arthur-Worrey <folaaw@yahoo.com>, funmiolorunfemi@gmail.com, Funmi Soetan <funm_soetan@yahoo.com>, Olufunke Adeboye <funks29adeboye@yahoo.co.uk>, Funke Egbemode <egbemode_funke@yahoo.com>, Michael Sokupa <sokupam@gc.adventist.org>, Funmi Odusolu <eleda.odusolu@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: Prof. Olukotun's Column

In a bizarre fashion, the Federal Government has thrown a huge carrot at the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, MACBAN, by offering it  N100 billion over two years to stop kidnapping in the country.* 

The Federal Government delegation was led by the Minister of Interior, Abdul-Rahman Dambazau, and met with MACBAN leaders on Friday.

It was a closed door meeting which lasted for over five hours as monetary negotiations according to a source dragged on until N100 billion was accepted.

MACBAN had said it would take nothing less than N160 billion.
But briefing news men after the meeting the exhausted Minister said, the "gathering is part of steps we have taken to tackle insecurity and clashes between herdsmen and farmers."
"You should not forget the fact that we have extended the meeting as a regional one when the Economic Community of West African Countries hosted a conference on this.
"These issues were discussed, and part of the dialogue was to provide a national action plan on security challenges and solutions by all members of the ECOWAS commission, and to present it to the commission for consideration.
"That is the main reason we have come to Kebbi State, to dialogue with leaders of herdsmen as part of the process,'' Danbazzau said.

Herdsmen have been on rampage since 2015 at the ascension of Mr Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria's President pillaging, sacking, rapping and kidnapping for ransom which always lead to deaths.
The orgy of kidnapping has made major national roads especially in the North West impassable. The Abuja/Kaduna road is one major road that has been affected.
Daily Mail reports that the herdsmen also attacked and killed many people in villages and farms in *Benue, Zamfara, Plateau, Nasarawa, Kogi, Kaduna, Enugu, Imo, Cross River, Edo, Delta, Abia, Kwara, Taraba, Osun, Ondo, Sokoto and others.* 

The killings associated with the fulani herdsmen led to the group designation as the fourth most dangerous and deadly terrorist group in the world by the World Terrorist Index.
Also at the meeting was the Acting Inspector General of Police, Alhaji Muhammad Adamu, who few days ago gave a grim picture of the havoc being wrecked on Nigerins by the herdsmen.
While nothing that over one thousand people had been killed and a lot more kidnapped in Kaduna, he noted in Bernin Kebbi that, "The criminals have infiltrated the crisis, and we should cooperate and deal decisively with the culprits, hence we called for this interaction.
"Those criminals that are beyond redemption, will be dealt with and brought to book," Adamu said.
On his position, the State Governor, Atiku Bagudu, said hosting the meeting in his state "shows the seriousness of President Muhammadu Buhari's administration in tackling the security challenges in the country."
Responding, the President of MACBAN, Alhaji Muhammad Kiruwa, said, "This is the first of its kind in the history of this country, for the president to direct his security aides to interact with an aggrieved party to air its views.
"This meeting will serve as a foundation for peace between the Fulani herdsmen and farmers; and among the Fulanis themselves," Kiruwa said.
News Agency of Nigeria noted that other members of the Federal Government delegation at the meeting include: Alh. Yusuf Bichi, Director-General (D-G) Department of State Security Services, Alh Ahmed Rufa'I, D-G, National Intelligence Agency; among others.


ANY BETTER PROOF THAT THE REST OF NIGERIA HAS BEEN TOTALLY EMASCULATED AND BURIED ALIVE BY THE FULANI OLIGARCHY?

On Thu, Mar 21, 2019, 7:20 PM OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com wrote:
Timely piece.  Now that elections are over politicizing all events needs to stop and political jobbers must return to their day jobs.  Government needs to now justify its renewed mandate.  It cannot claim 8 years is not enough to make a difference.


OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: 'Ayo Olukotun' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: 21/03/2019 15:54 (GMT+00:00)
To: Digest Recipients <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
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Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: Prof. Olukotun's Column

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On Thu, 21 Mar 2019 at 14:29, Tobi Adewunmi

LAME RESPONSE TO UNENDING SECURITY JITTERS

by Ayo Olukotun                                                          

 

"In 2019, violence could intensify, triggering more displacements and exacerbating food insecurity for millions of Nigerians".- International Rescue Committee Report, December 2018

Insecurity of lives and property has returned to the front burner of national conversation, with the ongoing Kajuru crisis in Kaduna state, and the killing in Benue state a few days back, of farmers in Guma Local Government by suspected herdsmen. The prediction of the International Rescue Committee appears to be coming to pass, without much being done to avert it. Conceivably, at the time the Report was published, the politicians, having contacted an overdose of election fever, had little or no time to take seriously, the fundamental reason for the existence of states, namely, to act as a shield against the Hobbesian state of nature.

 

The IRC Report, quoted in the opening paragraph also informed that the past year featured, 'persistent attacks from armed gangs and communal violence', in which over 2 million Nigerians were displaced. It went on to say that Nigeria is one of 10 countries with the highest risk of humanitarian emergency this year. It will be interesting to know what the projections and scenario building of our own security institutions and our government are. That, at least, would be a signal that there is security planning, which begins with a mapping of challenges and remote sensing of possible flashpoints. This columnist's reading of the deterioration of security is that, it has to do with the divorce between policy science and the actual work of security organizations. There is also, the shift from governance to politics and political competition, because it is easier to shout slogans, utter clever ripostes, than the hard grind of governance interventions, built upon a study of the problems, thinking through them, and providing cogent solutions.

 

On Wednesday, the Federal Executive Council in its weekly meeting approved 8.5 Billion Naira to succour states ridden by internal conflicts, with its harvest of displaced persons. These states include Adamawa, Benue, Bornu, Taraba, Yobe and Zamfara. There are of course, other theatres of conflict. such as Kaduna, which do not feature on this list, but more importantly, which is more consequential, administering remedies after the harm has been done, or proactively and expeditiously acting to prevent humanitarian emergencies?

 

The other point to be made concerns the administration of these resources, in the light of earlier experience regarding the mismanagement and outright looting of such funds. But that is a matter for another day. Who was not shocked by the revelation, a few days ago, by the governor of Zamfara state, Abdulaziz Yari, that the bandits which have terrorized that state, for over one year, are better equipped than the military sent there to ward off incessant attacks? Explained the governor, "they (the bandits) are in control of the kind of weapons that the (army) command in Zamfara does not have. In one armoury alone, they have over five hundred AK 47, we saw them". One of the issues to investigate would be, how this significant military build-up by bandits occurred under the very nose of Yari himself, who had governed the state for a number of years. It also draws attention to whether as a nation, we have given enough thought to the upgrade and maintenance of our security infrastructure, hardware and software, in the midst of ever rising challenges.

 

If you thought that what Yari had to say was an isolated case, then, consider the ongoing distress of criminal challenges by armed pirates in our maritime sector. In the wake of the murder of a naval rating, Chinedu Osakwe, by armed pirates, a fortnight or so ago, a former Senior Special Assistant on Maritime Affairs to the Presidency, Gbenga Oyewole, informed that, "The Nigerian Navy lacks enough platforms to man the nation's waterways. If as the time the last attack was happening, the naval personnel escorts on the boats under attack could radio any other platform, I'm sure the pirates would not have gone that far." In other words, key security infrastructure are in terrible disrepair with no decisive action, as far as we know, being taken. The untoward development mirrors the situation in the North East where our boys are reportedly beginning to dodge posting to the front because they are underequipped and carrying on heroically against better equipped insurgents. There was some discussion about this at the end of last year against the backdrop of a savage attack on our Metele stronghold, but the election, still ongoing, shoved that discussion out of the headlines (see Ayo Olukotun, 'Defence Sector Spending: Have We Come Full Circle?', The Punch, Friday, December 28, 2018).

 

Now that the elections are being concluded, hopefully, it is time to revisit the nation's foundational problems, several of them vexing, rather than being drowned out by party hacks attacking one political warlord or another, as if that is what will save the nation from its current status. Elections, are supposed to be about national renewal and a reimagining of the social contract, but one doubts seriously if the politicians know that, from the way they carry on, more or less fiddling while Nigeria bleeds. In the heat of the previous election, it was easy to demonize social critics and Rights advocates, by alleging that they were working for one party or another, but since the problems they raised have not gone away, and are in some cases getting worse, there is now nowhere to hide, except to act forthrightly concerning the citizens' unrelieved woes. We need to pose serious questions to those who govern us, while on their own part, they need to tell us what they are doing about spreading security jitters.

 

 Interestingly, the rising vortex has also produced casualties within the military organization, including for example, the murder, last Sunday, of an army garrison commander in Bauchi, Colonel Muhammed Barack. Of course, fresh in our memory is the murder, in December, of former Air Chief marshal, Alex Badeh, and former Chief of Administration in the Army, Gen. Idris Alkali. This dimension raises the spectre of possible disloyalty within the military, to which President Muhammadu Buhari alluded some weeks back. If a security think tank exists beyond the conventional defence institutions, then it is time for it to sit up to come up with strategic solutions, as well as short and medium term panaceas. For example, we can no longer afford to treat the challenge as a police action problem, in which, security contingents are simply putting out fires breaking out here and there. Instead, we must see it as a governance problem, related to high unemployment, unacceptable level of poverty, which, according to World Bank data, is higher in the North, where most of the theatre of conflicts are, than in the South. Communities, long excluded from the orbit of governance, and abandoned by an incompetent state will sooner than later breed monsters that are hard to slay. That means, a holistic response must see crime as a social, rather than a law and order problem.

 

Finally, Buhari has demonstrated that he can win elections, but he must now increasingly worry about how to govern and secure the nation, so that history can have something substantial to record in his favour.

 

-        Prof. Ayo Olukotun is the Oba (Dr.) Sikiru Adetona Chair of Governance, Department of Political Science, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - (Photo) Exhausted Nigerian child Hawking fruits at night

May 5, 2019, 12:30 pm
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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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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

May 5, 2019, 1:42 pm
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I am reading Professor Ebenezer Obadare's brilliant new book, Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (Zed Books, 2018), and I came across the quote below, one of those he advances as touchstones for his central argument.


It is not lifted from a sermon or a facebook post. It is not extracted from a theological or hermeneutical document. 

On the contrary, ladies and gentlemen of Facebook Nigeriana, it is an excerpt from the inaugural professorial lecture of a certain Professor Osisioma B.C Nwolise, a Professor of Political Science (a social science that teaches logic, empirical proof, rigor, verifiability, and rational analysis) at the University of Ibadan. 


This is the most important lecture of his academic career, delivered in a university to an academic audience. And yet if I did not know its context I would have surmised that this was a sermon delivered in one of the parishes of my home church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God.


Here is an academic lending his professorial weight to the Nigerian pastime of spiritualizing sociopolitical, security, and economic problems--our culture of conflating piety and politics, or neglecting political action for pietistic escapism. 


We try to pray away our problems when we should be acting against them. Now, our professors who should know better are uncritically legitimizing and trying to intellectualize this culture of fatalistic spiritualization of secular, practical problems.


Farooq Kperogi is right; our problem is not just leadership but also a national scourge of illiteracy (literal and figurative) and irrationality. How can a country whose professors profess such nonsense make progress or solve its problems?


And how can a people challenge their oppressors and tormentors in power when even their professors subscribe to such drivel, such spiritual causality for everything, including election rigging, bad governance and incompetent leadership?

Read and weep for what remains of the diminishing country called Nigeria.


"When we want to watch our television, we switch it on with our remote control by pressing a button. Then we can stay in Ibadan and watch a football match being played in Athens, Sydney or Paris. In the same way, a witch stays in her house in Lokoja or any other town, stirs water in a pot, or conjurs(sic) a mirror, and can monitor any targeted person or object in London, Athens, or Sydney. In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic. A witch can also stay in South Africa or the United Kingdom and break the leg of an effigy spiritually programmed to represent a person domiciled in the United States, and the person's leg will break mysteriously there. The scientist or intellectualist may not see or accept these as real based on his training, but they happen daily and are factual. There are spirits attached to walls, plants, leaves, found in bushes, on people's clothes, etc.; and there are roving spirits that move about especially between 12 noon and 2.00 pm, and at night. Some of these spirits are benevolent, while others are malevolent. It is the malevolent spirits that constitute threats to humans. They can project sickness into people's bodies, change people's star or destiny, or change the sex of a baby in the womb, remove the baby completely or turn it into a stone, or tortoise, snail, horse, snake, or a disabled [person]. If it were possible to carve out a block of the air for spiritual analysis, we can find several arrows, and many other dangerous pollutants, spiritual weapons of mass destruction flying in various directions 24 hours of the day."


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USA Africa Dialogue Series - jum...@gmail.com

May 5, 2019, 3:25 pm
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Prof, everyone is welcome to attend, whether presenting a paper or not. We will re-send your acceptance letter shortly, though. Thanks.

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

May 5, 2019, 3:48 pm
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Question:

 

Is the professor expressing a belief system or affirming a belief system? If expressing a belief system, there is nothing new in what he has said. If he is affirming it, can you and I deny him of his faith? Pentecostalists tend to believe in magic and witchcraft. There is a clue in one sentence:

"In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic."

 

Suppose the professor is a practicing Muslim who is observing the Ramadan and he talks about Allah and the rewards of heaven, is this not similar to his ideas on Nigerian religion?

 

And what about he a Christian, do we accept his faith-derived statement? A fundamentalist Christian can win the Nobel Prize in medicine.

 

I am not sure that one can win the argument in many parts of Africa that it is possible to disconnect this kind of belief from the work they do. In many Nollywood movies, the medical doctors tell their patients to forget about modern medicine and see the "native doctor".  The campuses are littered with sacrifices, and when I was at Ife, one was put in my office.

 

There must be an examination of his essays and books to conclude on the degree to which his faith as affected his findings. Human beings can "fragment" one part of the brain to write the most brilliant essay today and another part can see witches the next day.

 

The assumption that human beings are rational all the time is actually not correct. Indeed, they are not, in the secularist understanding of faith.

 

In any case, I hope the professor is reading this so that he can teach Moses a lesson by breaking his two legs!!!

TF

 

From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meochonu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 4:56 PM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

 

This message is from an external sender. Learn more about why this matters.

 

 

I am reading Professor Ebenezer Obadare's brilliant new book, Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (Zed Books, 2018), and I came across the quote below, one of those he advances as touchstones for his central argument.

 

It is not lifted from a sermon or a facebook post. It is not extracted from a theological or hermeneutical document. 

On the contrary, ladies and gentlemen of Facebook Nigeriana, it is an excerpt from the inaugural professorial lecture of a certain Professor Osisioma B.C Nwolise, a Professor of Political Science (a social science that teaches logic, empirical proof, rigor, verifiability, and rational analysis) at the University of Ibadan. 

 

This is the most important lecture of his academic career, delivered in a university to an academic audience. And yet if I did not know its context I would have surmised that this was a sermon delivered in one of the parishes of my home church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God.

 

Here is an academic lending his professorial weight to the Nigerian pastime of spiritualizing sociopolitical, security, and economic problems--our culture of conflating piety and politics, or neglecting political action for pietistic escapism. 

 

We try to pray away our problems when we should be acting against them. Now, our professors who should know better are uncritically legitimizing and trying to intellectualize this culture of fatalistic spiritualization of secular, practical problems.

 

Farooq Kperogi is right; our problem is not just leadership but also a national scourge of illiteracy (literal and figurative) and irrationality. How can a country whose professors profess such nonsense make progress or solve its problems?

 

And how can a people challenge their oppressors and tormentors in power when even their professors subscribe to such drivel, such spiritual causality for everything, including election rigging, bad governance and incompetent leadership?

Read and weep for what remains of the diminishing country called Nigeria.

 

"When we want to watch our television, we switch it on with our remote control by pressing a button. Then we can stay in Ibadan and watch a football match being played in Athens, Sydney or Paris. In the same way, a witch stays in her house in Lokoja or any other town, stirs water in a pot, or conjurs(sic) a mirror, and can monitor any targeted person or object in London, Athens, or Sydney. In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic. A witch can also stay in South Africa or the United Kingdom and break the leg of an effigy spiritually programmed to represent a person domiciled in the United States, and the person's leg will break mysteriously there. The scientist or intellectualist may not see or accept these as real based on his training, but they happen daily and are factual. There are spirits attached to walls, plants, leaves, found in bushes, on people's clothes, etc.; and there are roving spirits that move about especially between 12 noon and 2.00 pm, and at night. Some of these spirits are benevolent, while others are malevolent. It is the malevolent spirits that constitute threats to humans. They can project sickness into people's bodies, change people's star or destiny, or change the sex of a baby in the womb, remove the baby completely or turn it into a stone, or tortoise, snail, horse, snake, or a disabled [person]. If it were possible to carve out a block of the air for spiritual analysis, we can find several arrows, and many other dangerous pollutants, spiritual weapons of mass destruction flying in various directions 24 hours of the day."

 

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: Us congress hearing of maan alsaan Money laundry قضية الكونغجرس لغسيل الأموال للمليادير معن الصانع

May 5, 2019, 4:28 pm
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YouTube videos of

 

 U.S. Congressmoneylaunderinghearing


of

Saudi Billionaire " Maan Al sanea"

 with bank of America


and  The  owner of Saad Hospital and  Schools

 intheEasternProvincein Saudi Arabia

 

and the Chairman of the BoardofDirectorsofAwal Bank  in Bahrain


With Arabic Subtitles


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIBNnQvhU8s

 

 

موقع اليوتيوب الذي عرض جلسة استماع الكونجرس الأمريكي

 لمتابعة نشاطات غسل الأموال ونشاطات

 

السعودي معن عبدالواحد الصانع

 

مالك مستشفى  وشركة سعد  ومدارس سعدبالمنطقة الشرقية بالسعودية  ورئيس مجلس ادارة بنك اوال البحريني

 

مترجم باللغة العربية

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIBNnQvhU8s

 

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

May 5, 2019, 4:58 pm
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The Professor was analyzing a core belief of most Nigerians and that is what social scientists do. He is not alone in identifying that Nigerians believe that juju is factual. Awolowo stated the same thesis of Juju as Science for killing enemies (1939) in opposition to Azikiwe who called for the scientific method to be applied to healthcare in Renascent Africa (1937). In his series of essays on 'How I survived Ebola', Biodun Jeyifo observed that medical doctors and Physics professors still believe in divine intervention even when they follow the scientific method. Professor Nwolise may have been arguing the same thesis as Obadare but from a different perspective, from the perspective of the believers.

Without reading the entire lecture, we should not judge his entire scholarship or those of all Nigerian professors based on one paragraph taken out of context. He may have been hypothesizing, like Obadare, that in a country where rulers call for prayers as the solution to every problem, how is a political scientists to be taken seriously if he fails to address this mindset? His argument may be that psychological health is indeed part of national security and so if the average Nigerian goes about with the belief that there are witches and wizards out to cause every kind of mischief, it will be a mistake for social scientists to call them imbeciles without risking irrelevance. That was why religion was called the opium of the people, the soul of a soulless world, and the heart of heartless conditions.

Even after the society guarantees the security of electricity supply, pipe-borne water, hospitals and schools for all, motor-worthy roads, fast railways, safer airlines, food and housing, jobs with living wages, the people will continue to reserve the right to believe in spiritual curses as realities sui generis. The trick is to be tolerant of all spiritual beliefs that are not oppressive of others and focus public policy on things that can be solved without mysticism while researchers should not be ridiculed for trying to understand the magical thinking of most human beings.

The Japanese and Chinese still pray at the shrines of their ancestors for blessings, Israelis still pray at the Wailing Walls, a religious party dominates India today, Arabs still fast, pray and believe that there are evil forces of Shetan, Americans still believe in the inerrancy of the Bible and many think that elected officials are the representatives of the Divine, while the British still have a state church. No one is weeping for them because they also have huge funding for research and development by their STEM specialists who send people to the moon, build enough weapons to wipe out life on earth, tackle incurable diseases, and make millions speculating on market trends. 

Instead of weeping for our colleagues at home, we should be humble and acknowledge that some of them, like OBC Nwolise himself, are busy advocating for the Nigerian Diaspora to be given a role in Nigerian foreign policy, addressing the insecurity in the country, peacemaking in West Africa, analyzing the implications of the Arab Spring, and advocating gender sensitivity in public policy. 

Did Obadare have recommendations on how to solve some these problems that Nwolise has been addressing? Pentecostal Republic is a narrow title anyway because adherents of traditional spirituality, Catholics, Rasta, and Islamists all buy into the idea of spiritual warfare around the world and not only in Nigeria.

Biko

On Sunday, 5 May 2019, 17:56:28 GMT-4, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:



I am reading Professor Ebenezer Obadare's brilliant new book, Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (Zed Books, 2018), and I came across the quote below, one of those he advances as touchstones for his central argument.


It is not lifted from a sermon or a facebook post. It is not extracted from a theological or hermeneutical document. 

On the contrary, ladies and gentlemen of Facebook Nigeriana, it is an excerpt from the inaugural professorial lecture of a certain Professor Osisioma B.C Nwolise, a Professor of Political Science (a social science that teaches logic, empirical proof, rigor, verifiability, and rational analysis) at the University of Ibadan. 


This is the most important lecture of his academic career, delivered in a university to an academic audience. And yet if I did not know its context I would have surmised that this was a sermon delivered in one of the parishes of my home church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God.


Here is an academic lending his professorial weight to the Nigerian pastime of spiritualizing sociopolitical, security, and economic problems--our culture of conflating piety and politics, or neglecting political action for pietistic escapism. 


We try to pray away our problems when we should be acting against them. Now, our professors who should know better are uncritically legitimizing and trying to intellectualize this culture of fatalistic spiritualization of secular, practical problems.


Farooq Kperogi is right; our problem is not just leadership but also a national scourge of illiteracy (literal and figurative) and irrationality. How can a country whose professors profess such nonsense make progress or solve its problems?


And how can a people challenge their oppressors and tormentors in power when even their professors subscribe to such drivel, such spiritual causality for everything, including election rigging, bad governance and incompetent leadership?

Read and weep for what remains of the diminishing country called Nigeria.


"When we want to watch our television, we switch it on with our remote control by pressing a button. Then we can stay in Ibadan and watch a football match being played in Athens, Sydney or Paris. In the same way, a witch stays in her house in Lokoja or any other town, stirs water in a pot, or conjurs(sic) a mirror, and can monitor any targeted person or object in London, Athens, or Sydney. In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic. A witch can also stay in South Africa or the United Kingdom and break the leg of an effigy spiritually programmed to represent a person domiciled in the United States, and the person's leg will break mysteriously there. The scientist or intellectualist may not see or accept these as real based on his training, but they happen daily and are factual. There are spirits attached to walls, plants, leaves, found in bushes, on people's clothes, etc.; and there are roving spirits that move about especially between 12 noon and 2.00 pm, and at night. Some of these spirits are benevolent, while others are malevolent. It is the malevolent spirits that constitute threats to humans. They can project sickness into people's bodies, change people's star or destiny, or change the sex of a baby in the womb, remove the baby completely or turn it into a stone, or tortoise, snail, horse, snake, or a disabled [person]. If it were possible to carve out a block of the air for spiritual analysis, we can find several arrows, and many other dangerous pollutants, spiritual weapons of mass destruction flying in various directions 24 hours of the day."


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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Iche Eme Ka Ugo

May 5, 2019, 5:59 pm
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I hope you had a delightful weekend. I am starting your week with this
piece, "Iche Eme Ka Ugo." I borrowed that title from the chant I once
heard from the lips of the Nne Mmuo (mother spirit) of our village and
which my late father was fond us. Indeed, I dedicate this piece to
him. He was actually the person that buried the chant in my soul as he
performed it in his manual labour.

Please, click on this link to read the essay:

https://obododimma-oha.blogspot.com/2019/05/iche-eme-ka-ugo.html

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Obododimma.
--
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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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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

May 5, 2019, 10:30 pm
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Oh, Brother Agozino Biko!

You just went off on a wild chase in your vain attempt to refute Prof. Ochonu's post, thereby exposing your total ignorance of both Prof. Obadare's highly acclaimed book and Prof. Osisioma Basil Chinedu Nwolise's very strange "theory of strategic spiritual intelligence." I've copied from Prof. Nwolise's CV and pasted below the exact text of the abstract of a book manuscript he says he's writing on this subject to give you some idea of what he means.

"Introduction To Strategic Spiritual Intelligence":  This book presents spiritual intelligence as a compliment to emperical (sic) intelligence.  It challenges Sun Tzu's thesis that foreknowledge can not be got from ghosts and spirits.  The work is aimed at terminating inelligence (sic) garthering (sic) through torture, quicken investigation, and promote human security." 

I first heard about Prof. Osisioma's bizarre thesis in October 2011 when he spoke on "Intelligence and National Security" to Course 20 Participants (students) at the National Defense College, Abuja where I had just arrived two weeks earlier on sabbatical leave. The hot exchanges between me and the guest lecturer during Q & A were so brutal that it became my first full introduction to the students (who were mostly Army Colonels or equivalent ranks in the other Services) and the other Directing Staff (faculty members--mostly Brigadier-Generals and Major-Generals--or equivalent ranks, and two other university professors) many of whom were clearly impressed with the "erudite scholar." 

I later learnt that Prof. Nwolise had been giving the same lecture and promoting his "strategic spiritual intelligence" to rapturous applause three years in a row (Each cohort numbers about 135 students, including those from 10-15 other African countries). It's worth noting that many in the audience were/are notorious for burying live rams and white cocks in "aladura" churches and Alfas' shrines/mosques as part of their arsenal to ward off evil forces (witches being top on the list) during their board promotion interviews! 

The Professor is also propagating this same "theory" among the dozens of PhD students he's supervising all over the country. In addition to the nine PhDs he has supervised (by 2016), this is what he wrote in his CV: 


"Currently, I am supervising five Ph.D. students in the Department of Political Science, and four Ph.D. students in the Institute for Peace and Strategic Studies (IPSS), University of Ibadan. I am also supervising five Phd students on part-time basis in Igbinedion University, Okada.  Between 2007 and 2015, I successfully supervised five Phd Students in the Department of Political Science of Igbinedion University. I also co-supervised a Phd student at Covenant University."


Regrettably, Prof. Nwolise isn't on this forum to defend himself, but in one of my post-sabbatical posts in 2013, I wrote about concerns in some quarters in Nigeria about some professors awarding "Pure Water PhDs" as part of the factors responsible for the deteriorating standards of scholarship in Nigeria's higher ed institutions. I make no such accusation against Professor Nwolise, but I'm not sure what to make of an academic who proudly claims to be supervising fourteen (14) PhD candidates at the same time! Worse still is the institutional setting that allows such joke to be perpetrated.

So, Prof. Agozino, if you still want to learn more about Professor Nwolise's "science of witchcraft", you may wish to consult the bibliographic references (including the Professor's "Inaugural Lecture") listed below.

Regards,

Okey
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++=====  

1. Nwolise OBC, (2015), "Motion for Serious Focus of Research On The Spiritual Dimension of Human And National Security", Studies In Politics and Society, Vol.3, No. 1, December, pp. 1-14

 

2. Nwolise OBC (2014),"Oracles On Excessive Use of Force", Ibadan Journal of Peace and Development, Vols 3 and 4, May, pp 35-42.


3. Is physical security alone enough for the survival, progress and happiness of man? : an inaugural lecture delivered at the University of Ibadan on Thursday, 20 February, 2014

Author:O B C Nwolise
Publisher:Ibadan, Nigeria : Ibadan University Press Publishing House, 2013. ©2013
Series:Inaugural lectures (University of Ibadan), 2014.

4. Spiritual dimension of human and national security

Author:O B C Nwolise
Publisher:[Ibadan] : Faculty of the Social Sciences, University of Ibadan, [2012]
Series:Faculty lecture series (University of Ibadan. Faculty of the Social Sciences), no. 18

5. Battle for security must first be won in the spirit realm —Prof. Nwolise

By Mayowa Okekale, Ibadan on 28/02/2014

https://www.newsexpressngr.com/news/detail.php?news=4789  

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A university don, Prof. Osisioma Nwolise, has stressed the need for the country's quest for security to be extended to the spiritual realm, saying the battle cannot be won if limited to the physical realm.

Nwolise, of the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences of University of Ibadan, made the submission in his inaugural lecture entitled 'Is physical security alone for the survival, progress and happiness of man?' delivered recently at the Trenchard Hall of the university.

He enjoined the leadership of the country to, as a matter of urgency, embrace the indigenous knowledge of spiritual instrument to enhance security in the country. In his words, "There is so much anarchy and havoc going on in the spiritual realm of human and national security today that there is every urgent need for governmental and societal attention to be focused on that realm, with a view to saving lives, protect human rights and national values, and to enhance human and national security.

"There is nothing happening in the physical world today that is not happening in the spiritual world – rape, bombing, robbery, kidnapping, hostage taking, food poisoning, ambushing, imprisonment, murder, torture, politics and accidents."

Nwolise argued that there is an urgent need to establish an academic structure for the teaching, research and study of the spiritual dimension of human and national security. His words: "There is a need to open up studies in mysticism, Nigerian n and African divinities, magic, spiritual healings, death and Strategic Spiritual Intelligence (SSI). We should as well open a new Department of Metaphysical Studies or Department of Spiritual Studies, which will serve as the nucleus for a future Faculty of Spiritual Sciences, because our little efforts so far convinced me that juju can be dissected, studied and understood just as the rabbit."

He described security as the primary concern of all humans and nations at all times, as it is a pre-requisite for their survival, progress and happiness of humanity.

In his comparison on physical and spiritual security, Nwolise opined that the welfare of human beings is not only in the physical realm as perceived by many leaders but also in the spiritual realm. Quoting the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, he said: "The aim of a leader should be the welfare of the people whom he leads. I have used 'welfare' to denote physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of the people."

Nwolise faulted the stance of scientific posture on nature, arguing that science is being too cowardly, pompous, despotic and arrogant in insisting that whatever it cannot understand, capture, measure, control or predict, does not exist. The don said it is important to understand the spiritual not only because it is superior to the physical but also because it positively reinforces the physical, and can equally endanger it under some certain circumstances.

Prof. Nwolise condemned what he called the miseducation of today's children and youths as well as the poor funding of the education sector, stressing a need for this to be urgently reversed so as to rescue the country's future.

•Photo shows Prof. Osisioma Nwolise.

Source News Express

Posted 28/02/2014 11:12:11 PM




On Sun, May 5, 2019 at 5:04 PM 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
The Professor was analyzing a core belief of most Nigerians and that is what social scientists do. He is not alone in identifying that Nigerians believe that juju is factual. Awolowo stated the same thesis of Juju as Science for killing enemies (1939) in opposition to Azikiwe who called for the scientific method to be applied to healthcare in Renascent Africa (1937). In his series of essays on 'How I survived Ebola', Biodun Jeyifo observed that medical doctors and Physics professors still believe in divine intervention even when they follow the scientific method. Professor Nwolise may have been arguing the same thesis as Obadare but from a different perspective, from the perspective of the believers.

Without reading the entire lecture, we should not judge his entire scholarship or those of all Nigerian professors based on one paragraph taken out of context. He may have been hypothesizing, like Obadare, that in a country where rulers call for prayers as the solution to every problem, how is a political scientists to be taken seriously if he fails to address this mindset? His argument may be that psychological health is indeed part of national security and so if the average Nigerian goes about with the belief that there are witches and wizards out to cause every kind of mischief, it will be a mistake for social scientists to call them imbeciles without risking irrelevance. That was why religion was called the opium of the people, the soul of a soulless world, and the heart of heartless conditions.

Even after the society guarantees the security of electricity supply, pipe-borne water, hospitals and schools for all, motor-worthy roads, fast railways, safer airlines, food and housing, jobs with living wages, the people will continue to reserve the right to believe in spiritual curses as realities sui generis. The trick is to be tolerant of all spiritual beliefs that are not oppressive of others and focus public policy on things that can be solved without mysticism while researchers should not be ridiculed for trying to understand the magical thinking of most human beings.

The Japanese and Chinese still pray at the shrines of their ancestors for blessings, Israelis still pray at the Wailing Walls, a religious party dominates India today, Arabs still fast, pray and believe that there are evil forces of Shetan, Americans still believe in the inerrancy of the Bible and many think that elected officials are the representatives of the Divine, while the British still have a state church. No one is weeping for them because they also have huge funding for research and development by their STEM specialists who send people to the moon, build enough weapons to wipe out life on earth, tackle incurable diseases, and make millions speculating on market trends. 

Instead of weeping for our colleagues at home, we should be humble and acknowledge that some of them, like OBC Nwolise himself, are busy advocating for the Nigerian Diaspora to be given a role in Nigerian foreign policy, addressing the insecurity in the country, peacemaking in West Africa, analyzing the implications of the Arab Spring, and advocating gender sensitivity in public policy. 

Did Obadare have recommendations on how to solve some these problems that Nwolise has been addressing? Pentecostal Republic is a narrow title anyway because adherents of traditional spirituality, Catholics, Rasta, and Islamists all buy into the idea of spiritual warfare around the world and not only in Nigeria.

Biko

On Sunday, 5 May 2019, 17:56:28 GMT-4, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:



I am reading Professor Ebenezer Obadare's brilliant new book, Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (Zed Books, 2018), and I came across the quote below, one of those he advances as touchstones for his central argument.


It is not lifted from a sermon or a facebook post. It is not extracted from a theological or hermeneutical document. 

On the contrary, ladies and gentlemen of Facebook Nigeriana, it is an excerpt from the inaugural professorial lecture of a certain Professor Osisioma B.C Nwolise, a Professor of Political Science (a social science that teaches logic, empirical proof, rigor, verifiability, and rational analysis) at the University of Ibadan. 


This is the most important lecture of his academic career, delivered in a university to an academic audience. And yet if I did not know its context I would have surmised that this was a sermon delivered in one of the parishes of my home church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God.


Here is an academic lending his professorial weight to the Nigerian pastime of spiritualizing sociopolitical, security, and economic problems--our culture of conflating piety and politics, or neglecting political action for pietistic escapism. 


We try to pray away our problems when we should be acting against them. Now, our professors who should know better are uncritically legitimizing and trying to intellectualize this culture of fatalistic spiritualization of secular, practical problems.


Farooq Kperogi is right; our problem is not just leadership but also a national scourge of illiteracy (literal and figurative) and irrationality. How can a country whose professors profess such nonsense make progress or solve its problems?


And how can a people challenge their oppressors and tormentors in power when even their professors subscribe to such drivel, such spiritual causality for everything, including election rigging, bad governance and incompetent leadership?

Read and weep for what remains of the diminishing country called Nigeria.


"When we want to watch our television, we switch it on with our remote control by pressing a button. Then we can stay in Ibadan and watch a football match being played in Athens, Sydney or Paris. In the same way, a witch stays in her house in Lokoja or any other town, stirs water in a pot, or conjurs(sic) a mirror, and can monitor any targeted person or object in London, Athens, or Sydney. In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic. A witch can also stay in South Africa or the United Kingdom and break the leg of an effigy spiritually programmed to represent a person domiciled in the United States, and the person's leg will break mysteriously there. The scientist or intellectualist may not see or accept these as real based on his training, but they happen daily and are factual. There are spirits attached to walls, plants, leaves, found in bushes, on people's clothes, etc.; and there are roving spirits that move about especially between 12 noon and 2.00 pm, and at night. Some of these spirits are benevolent, while others are malevolent. It is the malevolent spirits that constitute threats to humans. They can project sickness into people's bodies, change people's star or destiny, or change the sex of a baby in the womb, remove the baby completely or turn it into a stone, or tortoise, snail, horse, snake, or a disabled [person]. If it were possible to carve out a block of the air for spiritual analysis, we can find several arrows, and many other dangerous pollutants, spiritual weapons of mass destruction flying in various directions 24 hours of the day."


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

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

May 5, 2019, 11:11 pm
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Don't you think that theism and atheism or theism and non-theism or atheism and non-atheism are not inconsistent with "faith" (as long as one does not assume faith as synonymous with morality)?


On May 5, 2019, at 6:58 PM, 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

The Professor was analyzing a core belief of most Nigerians and that is what social scientists do. He is not alone in identifying that Nigerians believe that juju is factual. Awolowo stated the same thesis of Juju as Science for killing enemies (1939) in opposition to Azikiwe who called for the scientific method to be applied to healthcare in Renascent Africa (1937). In his series of essays on 'How I survived Ebola', Biodun Jeyifo observed that medical doctors and Physics professors still believe in divine intervention even when they follow the scientific method. Professor Nwolise may have been arguing the same thesis as Obadare but from a different perspective, from the perspective of the believers.

Without reading the entire lecture, we should not judge his entire scholarship or those of all Nigerian professors based on one paragraph taken out of context. He may have been hypothesizing, like Obadare, that in a country where rulers call for prayers as the solution to every problem, how is a political scientists to be taken seriously if he fails to address this mindset? His argument may be that psychological health is indeed part of national security and so if the average Nigerian goes about with the belief that there are witches and wizards out to cause every kind of mischief, it will be a mistake for social scientists to call them imbeciles without risking irrelevance. That was why religion was called the opium of the people, the soul of a soulless world, and the heart of heartless conditions.

Even after the society guarantees the security of electricity supply, pipe-borne water, hospitals and schools for all, motor-worthy roads, fast railways, safer airlines, food and housing, jobs with living wages, the people will continue to reserve the right to believe in spiritual curses as realities sui generis. The trick is to be tolerant of all spiritual beliefs that are not oppressive of others and focus public policy on things that can be solved without mysticism while researchers should not be ridiculed for trying to understand the magical thinking of most human beings.

The Japanese and Chinese still pray at the shrines of their ancestors for blessings, Israelis still pray at the Wailing Walls, a religious party dominates India today, Arabs still fast, pray and believe that there are evil forces of Shetan, Americans still believe in the inerrancy of the Bible and many think that elected officials are the representatives of the Divine, while the British still have a state church. No one is weeping for them because they also have huge funding for research and development by their STEM specialists who send people to the moon, build enough weapons to wipe out life on earth, tackle incurable diseases, and make millions speculating on market trends. 

Instead of weeping for our colleagues at home, we should be humble and acknowledge that some of them, like OBC Nwolise himself, are busy advocating for the Nigerian Diaspora to be given a role in Nigerian foreign policy, addressing the insecurity in the country, peacemaking in West Africa, analyzing the implications of the Arab Spring, and advocating gender sensitivity in public policy. 

Did Obadare have recommendations on how to solve some these problems that Nwolise has been addressing? Pentecostal Republic is a narrow title anyway because adherents of traditional spirituality, Catholics, Rasta, and Islamists all buy into the idea of spiritual warfare around the world and not only in Nigeria.

Biko

On Sunday, 5 May 2019, 17:56:28 GMT-4, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:



I am reading Professor Ebenezer Obadare's brilliant new book, Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (Zed Books, 2018), and I came across the quote below, one of those he advances as touchstones for his central argument.


It is not lifted from a sermon or a facebook post. It is not extracted from a theological or hermeneutical document. 

On the contrary, ladies and gentlemen of Facebook Nigeriana, it is an excerpt from the inaugural professorial lecture of a certain Professor Osisioma B.C Nwolise, a Professor of Political Science (a social science that teaches logic, empirical proof, rigor, verifiability, and rational analysis) at the University of Ibadan. 


This is the most important lecture of his academic career, delivered in a university to an academic audience. And yet if I did not know its context I would have surmised that this was a sermon delivered in one of the parishes of my home church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God.


Here is an academic lending his professorial weight to the Nigerian pastime of spiritualizing sociopolitical, security, and economic problems--our culture of conflating piety and politics, or neglecting political action for pietistic escapism. 


We try to pray away our problems when we should be acting against them. Now, our professors who should know better are uncritically legitimizing and trying to intellectualize this culture of fatalistic spiritualization of secular, practical problems.


Farooq Kperogi is right; our problem is not just leadership but also a national scourge of illiteracy (literal and figurative) and irrationality. How can a country whose professors profess such nonsense make progress or solve its problems?


And how can a people challenge their oppressors and tormentors in power when even their professors subscribe to such drivel, such spiritual causality for everything, including election rigging, bad governance and incompetent leadership?

Read and weep for what remains of the diminishing country called Nigeria.


"When we want to watch our television, we switch it on with our remote control by pressing a button. Then we can stay in Ibadan and watch a football match being played in Athens, Sydney or Paris. In the same way, a witch stays in her house in Lokoja or any other town, stirs water in a pot, or conjurs(sic) a mirror, and can monitor any targeted person or object in London, Athens, or Sydney. In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic. A witch can also stay in South Africa or the United Kingdom and break the leg of an effigy spiritually programmed to represent a person domiciled in the United States, and the person's leg will break mysteriously there. The scientist or intellectualist may not see or accept these as real based on his training, but they happen daily and are factual. There are spirits attached to walls, plants, leaves, found in bushes, on people's clothes, etc.; and there are roving spirits that move about especially between 12 noon and 2.00 pm, and at night. Some of these spirits are benevolent, while others are malevolent. It is the malevolent spirits that constitute threats to humans. They can project sickness into people's bodies, change people's star or destiny, or change the sex of a baby in the womb, remove the baby completely or turn it into a stone, or tortoise, snail, horse, snake, or a disabled [person]. If it were possible to carve out a block of the air for spiritual analysis, we can find several arrows, and many other dangerous pollutants, spiritual weapons of mass destruction flying in various directions 24 hours of the day."


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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

May 6, 2019, 12:08 am
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can we please have the complete lecture so as to understand the context in which these  assertions about witchcraft were made?

prof falola- is it not vital to distinguish between analytical presentation of subjects, which may be understood as the core of academic work and uncritical declarations of belief, which is the opposite of the academic ideal?

agozino- beautiful and insightful summation, but without access to the rest of the lecture, can we conclude the writer was analyzing rather than declaring a belief?

thanks

toyin












On Mon, 6 May 2019 at 01:04, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Question:

 

Is the professor expressing a belief system or affirming a belief system? If expressing a belief system, there is nothing new in what he has said. If he is affirming it, can you and I deny him of his faith? Pentecostalists tend to believe in magic and witchcraft. There is a clue in one sentence:

"In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic."

 

Suppose the professor is a practicing Muslim who is observing the Ramadan and he talks about Allah and the rewards of heaven, is this not similar to his ideas on Nigerian religion?

 

And what about he a Christian, do we accept his faith-derived statement? A fundamentalist Christian can win the Nobel Prize in medicine.

 

I am not sure that one can win the argument in many parts of Africa that it is possible to disconnect this kind of belief from the work they do. In many Nollywood movies, the medical doctors tell their patients to forget about modern medicine and see the "native doctor".  The campuses are littered with sacrifices, and when I was at Ife, one was put in my office.

 

There must be an examination of his essays and books to conclude on the degree to which his faith as affected his findings. Human beings can "fragment" one part of the brain to write the most brilliant essay today and another part can see witches the next day.

 

The assumption that human beings are rational all the time is actually not correct. Indeed, they are not, in the secularist understanding of faith.

 

In any case, I hope the professor is reading this so that he can teach Moses a lesson by breaking his two legs!!!

TF

 

From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meochonu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 4:56 PM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

 

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I am reading Professor Ebenezer Obadare's brilliant new book, Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (Zed Books, 2018), and I came across the quote below, one of those he advances as touchstones for his central argument.

 

It is not lifted from a sermon or a facebook post. It is not extracted from a theological or hermeneutical document. 

On the contrary, ladies and gentlemen of Facebook Nigeriana, it is an excerpt from the inaugural professorial lecture of a certain Professor Osisioma B.C Nwolise, a Professor of Political Science (a social science that teaches logic, empirical proof, rigor, verifiability, and rational analysis) at the University of Ibadan. 

 

This is the most important lecture of his academic career, delivered in a university to an academic audience. And yet if I did not know its context I would have surmised that this was a sermon delivered in one of the parishes of my home church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God.

 

Here is an academic lending his professorial weight to the Nigerian pastime of spiritualizing sociopolitical, security, and economic problems--our culture of conflating piety and politics, or neglecting political action for pietistic escapism. 

 

We try to pray away our problems when we should be acting against them. Now, our professors who should know better are uncritically legitimizing and trying to intellectualize this culture of fatalistic spiritualization of secular, practical problems.

 

Farooq Kperogi is right; our problem is not just leadership but also a national scourge of illiteracy (literal and figurative) and irrationality. How can a country whose professors profess such nonsense make progress or solve its problems?

 

And how can a people challenge their oppressors and tormentors in power when even their professors subscribe to such drivel, such spiritual causality for everything, including election rigging, bad governance and incompetent leadership?

Read and weep for what remains of the diminishing country called Nigeria.

 

"When we want to watch our television, we switch it on with our remote control by pressing a button. Then we can stay in Ibadan and watch a football match being played in Athens, Sydney or Paris. In the same way, a witch stays in her house in Lokoja or any other town, stirs water in a pot, or conjurs(sic) a mirror, and can monitor any targeted person or object in London, Athens, or Sydney. In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic. A witch can also stay in South Africa or the United Kingdom and break the leg of an effigy spiritually programmed to represent a person domiciled in the United States, and the person's leg will break mysteriously there. The scientist or intellectualist may not see or accept these as real based on his training, but they happen daily and are factual. There are spirits attached to walls, plants, leaves, found in bushes, on people's clothes, etc.; and there are roving spirits that move about especially between 12 noon and 2.00 pm, and at night. Some of these spirits are benevolent, while others are malevolent. It is the malevolent spirits that constitute threats to humans. They can project sickness into people's bodies, change people's star or destiny, or change the sex of a baby in the womb, remove the baby completely or turn it into a stone, or tortoise, snail, horse, snake, or a disabled [person]. If it were possible to carve out a block of the air for spiritual analysis, we can find several arrows, and many other dangerous pollutants, spiritual weapons of mass destruction flying in various directions 24 hours of the day."

 

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

May 6, 2019, 12:23 am
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On Sun, 5 May 2019 at 22:56, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:


I am reading Professor Ebenezer Obadare's brilliant new book, Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (Zed Books, 2018), and I came across the quote below, one of those he advances as touchstones for his central argument.


It is not lifted from a sermon or a facebook post. It is not extracted from a theological or hermeneutical document. 

On the contrary, ladies and gentlemen of Facebook Nigeriana, it is an excerpt from the inaugural professorial lecture of a certain Professor Osisioma B.C Nwolise, a Professor of Political Science (a social science that teaches logic, empirical proof, rigor, verifiability, and rational analysis) at the University of Ibadan. 


This is the most important lecture of his academic career, delivered in a university to an academic audience. And yet if I did not know its context I would have surmised that this was a sermon delivered in one of the parishes of my home church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God.


Here is an academic lending his professorial weight to the Nigerian pastime of spiritualizing sociopolitical, security, and economic problems--our culture of conflating piety and politics, or neglecting political action for pietistic escapism. 


We try to pray away our problems when we should be acting against them. Now, our professors who should know better are uncritically legitimizing and trying to intellectualize this culture of fatalistic spiritualization of secular, practical problems.


Farooq Kperogi is right; our problem is not just leadership but also a national scourge of illiteracy (literal and figurative) and irrationality. How can a country whose professors profess such nonsense make progress or solve its problems?


And how can a people challenge their oppressors and tormentors in power when even their professors subscribe to such drivel, such spiritual causality for everything, including election rigging, bad governance and incompetent leadership?

Read and weep for what remains of the diminishing country called Nigeria.


"When we want to watch our television, we switch it on with our remote control by pressing a button. Then we can stay in Ibadan and watch a football match being played in Athens, Sydney or Paris. In the same way, a witch stays in her house in Lokoja or any other town, stirs water in a pot, or conjurs(sic) a mirror, and can monitor any targeted person or object in London, Athens, or Sydney. In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic. A witch can also stay in South Africa or the United Kingdom and break the leg of an effigy spiritually programmed to represent a person domiciled in the United States, and the person's leg will break mysteriously there. The scientist or intellectualist may not see or accept these as real based on his training, but they happen daily and are factual. There are spirits attached to walls, plants, leaves, found in bushes, on people's clothes, etc.; and there are roving spirits that move about especially between 12 noon and 2.00 pm, and at night. Some of these spirits are benevolent, while others are malevolent. It is the malevolent spirits that constitute threats to humans. They can project sickness into people's bodies, change people's star or destiny, or change the sex of a baby in the womb, remove the baby completely or turn it into a stone, or tortoise, snail, horse, snake, or a disabled [person]. If it were possible to carve out a block of the air for spiritual analysis, we can find several arrows, and many other dangerous pollutants, spiritual weapons of mass destruction flying in various directions 24 hours of the day."


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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

May 6, 2019, 12:49 am
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I am glad about the response to Oga Moses' engagement with Prof. Nwolise's thought. I agree: the entire lecture ought to be read before such criticism is leveled. I am also surprised that as a social scientist, he fails to see how religion has not only resurged contrary to the argument of the rationalists and the modernization theorists, but also how the religious now plays a significant role in our calculations of what is or is not possible. I will recommend Prof. Nimi Wariboko as a counterpoint to the attempt to dismiss the pentecostal, for example, as a mere manifestation of our religious prejudices or our pre-rational development. I have read, and indeed engaged, two of Wariboko's brilliant works: Nigerian Pentecostalism and the Pentecostal Principle. These are genuine attempts to interrogate the epistemological basis of the spiritual self in the pentecostal movement. The Pentecostal Principle attempts to fashion an emergentist philosophy out of pentecostalism and its playful theology. One of my favorite passages in Nigerian Pentecostalism is this: "Pentecostalism, whether considered as care of the soul...or care for external things...is a process, formation practice, for the production of truths and ethics of hope that converts noumenal knowledges into phenomenal technologies of existence" (2014:3). This epistemological and existential calclulation cannot just be dismissed as being puerile from the rationalist's perspective which is also blinded to the mysteries of the universe. 

And the same explanation goes for what has been called the "logic of witchcraft" and the other "spirituals" and "metaphysicals" as the enchantments of modernity.   

Adeshina Afolayan, PhD
Department of Philosophy
University of Ibadan

+23480-3928-8429


On Monday, May 6, 2019, 1:04:39 AM GMT+1, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:


Question:

 

Is the professor expressing a belief system or affirming a belief system? If expressing a belief system, there is nothing new in what he has said. If he is affirming it, can you and I deny him of his faith? Pentecostalists tend to believe in magic and witchcraft. There is a clue in one sentence:

"In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic."

 

Suppose the professor is a practicing Muslim who is observing the Ramadan and he talks about Allah and the rewards of heaven, is this not similar to his ideas on Nigerian religion?

 

And what about he a Christian, do we accept his faith-derived statement? A fundamentalist Christian can win the Nobel Prize in medicine.

 

I am not sure that one can win the argument in many parts of Africa that it is possible to disconnect this kind of belief from the work they do. In many Nollywood movies, the medical doctors tell their patients to forget about modern medicine and see the "native doctor".  The campuses are littered with sacrifices, and when I was at Ife, one was put in my office.

 

There must be an examination of his essays and books to conclude on the degree to which his faith as affected his findings. Human beings can "fragment" one part of the brain to write the most brilliant essay today and another part can see witches the next day.

 

The assumption that human beings are rational all the time is actually not correct. Indeed, they are not, in the secularist understanding of faith.

 

In any case, I hope the professor is reading this so that he can teach Moses a lesson by breaking his two legs!!!

TF

 

From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meochonu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 4:56 PM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

 

This message is from an external sender. Learn more about why this matters.

 

 

I am reading Professor Ebenezer Obadare's brilliant new book, Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (Zed Books, 2018), and I came across the quote below, one of those he advances as touchstones for his central argument.

 

It is not lifted from a sermon or a facebook post. It is not extracted from a theological or hermeneutical document. 

On the contrary, ladies and gentlemen of Facebook Nigeriana, it is an excerpt from the inaugural professorial lecture of a certain Professor Osisioma B.C Nwolise, a Professor of Political Science (a social science that teaches logic, empirical proof, rigor, verifiability, and rational analysis) at the University of Ibadan. 

 

This is the most important lecture of his academic career, delivered in a university to an academic audience. And yet if I did not know its context I would have surmised that this was a sermon delivered in one of the parishes of my home church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God.

 

Here is an academic lending his professorial weight to the Nigerian pastime of spiritualizing sociopolitical, security, and economic problems--our culture of conflating piety and politics, or neglecting political action for pietistic escapism. 

 

We try to pray away our problems when we should be acting against them. Now, our professors who should know better are uncritically legitimizing and trying to intellectualize this culture of fatalistic spiritualization of secular, practical problems.

 

Farooq Kperogi is right; our problem is not just leadership but also a national scourge of illiteracy (literal and figurative) and irrationality. How can a country whose professors profess such nonsense make progress or solve its problems?

 

And how can a people challenge their oppressors and tormentors in power when even their professors subscribe to such drivel, such spiritual causality for everything, including election rigging, bad governance and incompetent leadership?

Read and weep for what remains of the diminishing country called Nigeria.

 

"When we want to watch our television, we switch it on with our remote control by pressing a button. Then we can stay in Ibadan and watch a football match being played in Athens, Sydney or Paris. In the same way, a witch stays in her house in Lokoja or any other town, stirs water in a pot, or conjurs(sic) a mirror, and can monitor any targeted person or object in London, Athens, or Sydney. In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic. A witch can also stay in South Africa or the United Kingdom and break the leg of an effigy spiritually programmed to represent a person domiciled in the United States, and the person's leg will break mysteriously there. The scientist or intellectualist may not see or accept these as real based on his training, but they happen daily and are factual. There are spirits attached to walls, plants, leaves, found in bushes, on people's clothes, etc.; and there are roving spirits that move about especially between 12 noon and 2.00 pm, and at night. Some of these spirits are benevolent, while others are malevolent. It is the malevolent spirits that constitute threats to humans. They can project sickness into people's bodies, change people's star or destiny, or change the sex of a baby in the womb, remove the baby completely or turn it into a stone, or tortoise, snail, horse, snake, or a disabled [person]. If it were possible to carve out a block of the air for spiritual analysis, we can find several arrows, and many other dangerous pollutants, spiritual weapons of mass destruction flying in various directions 24 hours of the day."

 

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

May 6, 2019, 1:00 am
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I also need to add that Prof. Nwolise must have taken the Comaroff's advice on anthropological research. In "Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction," they advised that the encounters between the global (i.e. the cultural manifestations of neoliberalism) and the local (i.e. the enchantments of witchcraft and pentecostalism) should challenge us "to do ethnography on an 'awkward' scale, on planes that transect the here and now, then and there." 

This is good advice that will not scream doom.

Adeshina Afolayan, PhD
Department of Philosophy
University of Ibadan

+23480-3928-8429


On Monday, May 6, 2019, 1:04:39 AM GMT+1, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:


Question:

 

Is the professor expressing a belief system or affirming a belief system? If expressing a belief system, there is nothing new in what he has said. If he is affirming it, can you and I deny him of his faith? Pentecostalists tend to believe in magic and witchcraft. There is a clue in one sentence:

"In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic."

 

Suppose the professor is a practicing Muslim who is observing the Ramadan and he talks about Allah and the rewards of heaven, is this not similar to his ideas on Nigerian religion?

 

And what about he a Christian, do we accept his faith-derived statement? A fundamentalist Christian can win the Nobel Prize in medicine.

 

I am not sure that one can win the argument in many parts of Africa that it is possible to disconnect this kind of belief from the work they do. In many Nollywood movies, the medical doctors tell their patients to forget about modern medicine and see the "native doctor".  The campuses are littered with sacrifices, and when I was at Ife, one was put in my office.

 

There must be an examination of his essays and books to conclude on the degree to which his faith as affected his findings. Human beings can "fragment" one part of the brain to write the most brilliant essay today and another part can see witches the next day.

 

The assumption that human beings are rational all the time is actually not correct. Indeed, they are not, in the secularist understanding of faith.

 

In any case, I hope the professor is reading this so that he can teach Moses a lesson by breaking his two legs!!!

TF

 

From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meochonu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 4:56 PM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

 

This message is from an external sender. Learn more about why this matters.

 

 

I am reading Professor Ebenezer Obadare's brilliant new book, Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (Zed Books, 2018), and I came across the quote below, one of those he advances as touchstones for his central argument.

 

It is not lifted from a sermon or a facebook post. It is not extracted from a theological or hermeneutical document. 

On the contrary, ladies and gentlemen of Facebook Nigeriana, it is an excerpt from the inaugural professorial lecture of a certain Professor Osisioma B.C Nwolise, a Professor of Political Science (a social science that teaches logic, empirical proof, rigor, verifiability, and rational analysis) at the University of Ibadan. 

 

This is the most important lecture of his academic career, delivered in a university to an academic audience. And yet if I did not know its context I would have surmised that this was a sermon delivered in one of the parishes of my home church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God.

 

Here is an academic lending his professorial weight to the Nigerian pastime of spiritualizing sociopolitical, security, and economic problems--our culture of conflating piety and politics, or neglecting political action for pietistic escapism. 

 

We try to pray away our problems when we should be acting against them. Now, our professors who should know better are uncritically legitimizing and trying to intellectualize this culture of fatalistic spiritualization of secular, practical problems.

 

Farooq Kperogi is right; our problem is not just leadership but also a national scourge of illiteracy (literal and figurative) and irrationality. How can a country whose professors profess such nonsense make progress or solve its problems?

 

And how can a people challenge their oppressors and tormentors in power when even their professors subscribe to such drivel, such spiritual causality for everything, including election rigging, bad governance and incompetent leadership?

Read and weep for what remains of the diminishing country called Nigeria.

 

"When we want to watch our television, we switch it on with our remote control by pressing a button. Then we can stay in Ibadan and watch a football match being played in Athens, Sydney or Paris. In the same way, a witch stays in her house in Lokoja or any other town, stirs water in a pot, or conjurs(sic) a mirror, and can monitor any targeted person or object in London, Athens, or Sydney. In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic. A witch can also stay in South Africa or the United Kingdom and break the leg of an effigy spiritually programmed to represent a person domiciled in the United States, and the person's leg will break mysteriously there. The scientist or intellectualist may not see or accept these as real based on his training, but they happen daily and are factual. There are spirits attached to walls, plants, leaves, found in bushes, on people's clothes, etc.; and there are roving spirits that move about especially between 12 noon and 2.00 pm, and at night. Some of these spirits are benevolent, while others are malevolent. It is the malevolent spirits that constitute threats to humans. They can project sickness into people's bodies, change people's star or destiny, or change the sex of a baby in the womb, remove the baby completely or turn it into a stone, or tortoise, snail, horse, snake, or a disabled [person]. If it were possible to carve out a block of the air for spiritual analysis, we can find several arrows, and many other dangerous pollutants, spiritual weapons of mass destruction flying in various directions 24 hours of the day."

 

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

May 6, 2019, 1:07 am
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My wife attends the "Sacred Order of Cherubim and Seraphim" church. In one of their Church services, one of the prophets told her that her husband has "matched poison" and recommended spiritual cleansing to remove the poison. The prophet further warned that my right leg would swell and after sometime, that the left leg would also swell.

When my wife told me this, I waved it off and went about my normal business, as I do not have any problems whatsoever with my legs.

When my right leg started swelling, I had to follow my wife to her church, the spiritual cleansing was done and I am getting better!

CAO.

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Poetic Thoughts

May 6, 2019, 1:51 am
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They blaze the land again.
The children of Abraham
Blaze the land again.

The land they call
Their father's land
They blaze again.

(c)Chidi Anthony Opara

#2019Poeticthoughts


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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 - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

May 6, 2019, 3:11 am
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Oga TF,

As a person of faith myself I have absolutely no problem with people believing in whatever they choose. That is their right. However, there are two issues here. One is that this was an inaugural lecture delivered to an academic community and later self-published as an academic book. An inaugural lecture is supposed to be the capstone of a professor's research enterprise and academic contributions, which if not publishable, should at least be worthy of submission for peer review. Can this mishmash of Pentecostal and African traditional religious beliefs be submitted for academic review in any serious academic culture?

Secondly, here is what Nwolise wrote: "The scientist or intellectualist may not see or accept these as real based on his training, but they happen daily and are factual." The Professor of political science is passing off his witchcraft claims as factual. He is both professing and affirming witchcraft remote controls and the instrumental and causative agency of malevolent spirits as factual, but what is the basis for this? Where's the proof, the demonstration, the logic. I would not have a problem if he had stated that he was outlining the prevalent beliefs in Nigeria. No, he advanced these unproven and unprovable beliefs and spiritual opinions as factual. This is what I expect to hear and hear all the time from the pulpit in my church. I've never heard it in an academic lecture unless the academic is quoting or paraphrasing someone in order to analyze the claims or beliefs. Professor Nwolise would have delivered his spiritual thesis to an audience of Pentecostal Christians. Conjectures, faith, opinions, and beliefs cannot substitute for academic rigor, scholarly skepticism, and analytical tentativeness and distance in matters that are beyond empirical proof and rest on faith, piety, and belief.

Some of my Facebook friends posited that I should at least give the man credit for putting his imagination to good use and for giving us something in the magical realism genre. But the man is not a novelist. He is not even a Professor of literature. My favorite fictional niche is actually magical realism, two of my favorite novels being Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Ben Okri's The Famished Road. I also love Tutuola's The Palm Wine Drinkard and Fagunwa's Forest of a Thousand Demons. But these are works of fiction and folklore, not academic lectures/books purporting to explicate and solve a problem in society as Nwolise claims to be doing in regard to human (in)security.

The full title of Nwolise's inaugural lecture is: Is Physical Security Alone Enough For the Survival, Progress and Happiness of Man?"~O.B.C Nwolise- (Inaugural Lecture 2012/13, University of Ibadan). 

By the way, what does Nwolise proffer as a solution to his claimed ubiquity and multivalent instrumentality of evil spirits? He says Nigeria needs to take "spiritual security" and "Strategic Spiritual Intelligence" seriously and that Nigerians should counter this ubiquity of spiritual threats with what he calls "Divine Security Insurance."

At any rate, several of my Facebook interlocutors raised the questions you're raising here and I will save myself some effort by reproducing my responses to them below.


 Eric Terfa Ula-Lisa, Believe whatever you want. I am a Christian and believe similarly as you. It is your right and prerogative. Other people, including atheists, have their own opinions and beliefs. Find a church or the appropriate venue to peddle and profess those beliefs. Beliefs and mere opinions are not admissible as factual in academic discourse, period. I can believe if I want that lizards are capable of giving birth to humans. I will probably find an audience somewhere that is receptive to it, and I have the right to that opinion. But I would be laughed off the stage in a serious academic culture were I to try to pass it off in a lecture as factual. Piety and belief have their place. Academic rigor and analysis have their place as well.

 

 

 Eric Terfa Ula-Lisa but how can we proceed when there is no verifiable, empirical basis to do so? If I come to your church, the Christian that I am will take your word for your "empirical experience with witches." But in my terrain of academics, how can you convince me except by merely inviting me to accept your word for it. Academia has its rules and that is not how it works. The gentleman in question is a professor and was giving an academic lecture to an academic audience. And yes, as an academic theory or argument, the quote deserves nothing but ridicule. He should have been laughed off that stage, but I'm sure they clapped for him and praised him. However, if he had expressed those sentiments in a church, I would not have ridiculed him at all.


To the Facebook follower who posted a link to an academic study of witchcraft, I had this to say.

 

 

This is a study of witchcraft. Academics have been studying witchcraft and associated beliefs for centuries. But they don't advance them as factual. They maintain a critical distance from the belief system and practice. They don't pass off these unproven and unprovable phenomena, beliefs and practices as "factual." They don't lionize or legitimize the beliefs.

 

 

 I don't have the energy to even engage this type of academic, but you mentioned opinions, which we all have. He wasn't just expressing an opinion on Facebook or to his friends in a conversation. This is his inaugural professorial lecture, which should be publishable or at least worthy of submission to a journal in his field. Tell me, can this paper be submitted to any journal let alone be considered for publication in a journal in his field? Is it even worthy of an academic debate? Can it provoke academic debate? I am a practicing Christian. I have my beliefs in that regard. But I will not deliver an ACADEMIC lecture at a university, let alone a professorial inaugural, that is basically a rehash of my Christian or theological beliefs. If I desire a forum and platform to propagate a theological theory of spiritual causation, I will look for a religious audience, preferably in my church. I have no problem with people believing what they believe, but religious beliefs or opinions or convictions do not constitute academic theories. He actually says in the excerpt that his witchcraft scenarios are "factual," as actual as the science behind TV transmission and remote control technology. Where is the proof for this? Where is a demonstration of this? In scholarship, you do not make claims or assertions without demonstrating them. I am a little disappointed that you're dignifying a mishmash of traditional African religious and Pentecostal spiritualist explanations as a social scientific theory. The man is a political scientist for crying out loud. I can say a tree can learn a language. I have a right to that opinion but would I not be laughed off the stage and humiliated if I were to go before an audience of academics and express that opinion and posit it as fact?

 

All peoples have their beliefs, superstitions, metaphysical claims, and cosmologies. The difference is that you don't find their professors of political science delivering academic lectures claiming, without proof, that they are factual.

 

 

Scholars study all phenomena, including religious and superstitious beliefs but they maintain a scholarly distance and/or engage critically with them. They don't advance such unproven and unprovable phenomena as "factual" without proof or verifiable methodological demonstration. And stop with excusing poor, inept, and uncritical scholarship with claims of a decolonizing agenda. That's how some Nigerian academics who cannot write simple English sentences will claim that their poor writing skills are a form of rebellion against the white man's colonizing language and that they are trying to Africanize and decolonize African scholarship.


Anyway, perhaps I should not waste energy and time on nonsense and heed the advice of my brother, Professor Adeeko, below.

 

 

Adeleke Adeeko Moses Ochonu My friend, please leave witch hunters alone! Why bother to debate people who choose to equate the being of electronic remote devices and the being of beliefs. How can you begin to understand the structure of a moral framework that cedes complete control to forces beyond understanding, an allegedly moral (?) system that accepts as justified the killing of children as witch, a system that fails to question the sexism that restricts witch convictions to women, a system that equalizes belief and proof. Moses, please leave these people alone. How can you talk to them?


On Sun, May 5, 2019 at 7:04 PM Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Question:

 

Is the professor expressing a belief system or affirming a belief system? If expressing a belief system, there is nothing new in what he has said. If he is affirming it, can you and I deny him of his faith? Pentecostalists tend to believe in magic and witchcraft. There is a clue in one sentence:

"In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic."

 

Suppose the professor is a practicing Muslim who is observing the Ramadan and he talks about Allah and the rewards of heaven, is this not similar to his ideas on Nigerian religion?

 

And what about he a Christian, do we accept his faith-derived statement? A fundamentalist Christian can win the Nobel Prize in medicine.

 

I am not sure that one can win the argument in many parts of Africa that it is possible to disconnect this kind of belief from the work they do. In many Nollywood movies, the medical doctors tell their patients to forget about modern medicine and see the "native doctor".  The campuses are littered with sacrifices, and when I was at Ife, one was put in my office.

 

There must be an examination of his essays and books to conclude on the degree to which his faith as affected his findings. Human beings can "fragment" one part of the brain to write the most brilliant essay today and another part can see witches the next day.

 

The assumption that human beings are rational all the time is actually not correct. Indeed, they are not, in the secularist understanding of faith.

 

In any case, I hope the professor is reading this so that he can teach Moses a lesson by breaking his two legs!!!

TF

 

From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meochonu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 4:56 PM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

 

This message is from an external sender. Learn more about why this matters.

 

 

I am reading Professor Ebenezer Obadare's brilliant new book, Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (Zed Books, 2018), and I came across the quote below, one of those he advances as touchstones for his central argument.

 

It is not lifted from a sermon or a facebook post. It is not extracted from a theological or hermeneutical document. 

On the contrary, ladies and gentlemen of Facebook Nigeriana, it is an excerpt from the inaugural professorial lecture of a certain Professor Osisioma B.C Nwolise, a Professor of Political Science (a social science that teaches logic, empirical proof, rigor, verifiability, and rational analysis) at the University of Ibadan. 

 

This is the most important lecture of his academic career, delivered in a university to an academic audience. And yet if I did not know its context I would have surmised that this was a sermon delivered in one of the parishes of my home church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God.

 

Here is an academic lending his professorial weight to the Nigerian pastime of spiritualizing sociopolitical, security, and economic problems--our culture of conflating piety and politics, or neglecting political action for pietistic escapism. 

 

We try to pray away our problems when we should be acting against them. Now, our professors who should know better are uncritically legitimizing and trying to intellectualize this culture of fatalistic spiritualization of secular, practical problems.

 

Farooq Kperogi is right; our problem is not just leadership but also a national scourge of illiteracy (literal and figurative) and irrationality. How can a country whose professors profess such nonsense make progress or solve its problems?

 

And how can a people challenge their oppressors and tormentors in power when even their professors subscribe to such drivel, such spiritual causality for everything, including election rigging, bad governance and incompetent leadership?

Read and weep for what remains of the diminishing country called Nigeria.

 

"When we want to watch our television, we switch it on with our remote control by pressing a button. Then we can stay in Ibadan and watch a football match being played in Athens, Sydney or Paris. In the same way, a witch stays in her house in Lokoja or any other town, stirs water in a pot, or conjurs(sic) a mirror, and can monitor any targeted person or object in London, Athens, or Sydney. In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic. A witch can also stay in South Africa or the United Kingdom and break the leg of an effigy spiritually programmed to represent a person domiciled in the United States, and the person's leg will break mysteriously there. The scientist or intellectualist may not see or accept these as real based on his training, but they happen daily and are factual. There are spirits attached to walls, plants, leaves, found in bushes, on people's clothes, etc.; and there are roving spirits that move about especially between 12 noon and 2.00 pm, and at night. Some of these spirits are benevolent, while others are malevolent. It is the malevolent spirits that constitute threats to humans. They can project sickness into people's bodies, change people's star or destiny, or change the sex of a baby in the womb, remove the baby completely or turn it into a stone, or tortoise, snail, horse, snake, or a disabled [person]. If it were possible to carve out a block of the air for spiritual analysis, we can find several arrows, and many other dangerous pollutants, spiritual weapons of mass destruction flying in various directions 24 hours of the day."

 

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academicsare Culpable

May 6, 2019, 3:32 am
$
0
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Biko.

As Moses maintains OBC (Nwolise) overstepped the boundaries this time.  I have been familiar with OBCs work for about four decades now from when I taught Adult Education courses at the University of Ibadan under (prof) Okedara.

It's one thing for an academic to infer there might be some truth to the suppositions of animistic.    propositions, it is altogether a different kettle of fish for the same academic to write with unproven certitude that those suppositions are in fact correct giving unsubstantiated  examples that spirits roam between noon and 2pm.  How did he come by that knowledge and how can it be demonstrated?

Religious knowledge faith is different from religious scholarship.  When Hiram tried to substantiate the fact that the house of David may have existed as narrated in the Bible he produced an archaeological artefact that referred to the house of David dated to around the period King David.  The same evidence was used to verify that the wall of Jericho indeed existed and wasn't simply the figment of imagination of biblical writers.

What OBC did was nothing of that order.


OAA. 



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
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Date: 06/05/2019 01:10 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academicsare  Culpable

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The Professor was analyzing a core belief of most Nigerians and that is what social scientists do. He is not alone in identifying that Nigerians believe that juju is factual. Awolowo stated the same thesis of Juju as Science for killing enemies (1939) in opposition to Azikiwe who called for the scientific method to be applied to healthcare in Renascent Africa (1937). In his series of essays on 'How I survived Ebola', Biodun Jeyifo observed that medical doctors and Physics professors still believe in divine intervention even when they follow the scientific method. Professor Nwolise may have been arguing the same thesis as Obadare but from a different perspective, from the perspective of the believers.

Without reading the entire lecture, we should not judge his entire scholarship or those of all Nigerian professors based on one paragraph taken out of context. He may have been hypothesizing, like Obadare, that in a country where rulers call for prayers as the solution to every problem, how is a political scientists to be taken seriously if he fails to address this mindset? His argument may be that psychological health is indeed part of national security and so if the average Nigerian goes about with the belief that there are witches and wizards out to cause every kind of mischief, it will be a mistake for social scientists to call them imbeciles without risking irrelevance. That was why religion was called the opium of the people, the soul of a soulless world, and the heart of heartless conditions.

Even after the society guarantees the security of electricity supply, pipe-borne water, hospitals and schools for all, motor-worthy roads, fast railways, safer airlines, food and housing, jobs with living wages, the people will continue to reserve the right to believe in spiritual curses as realities sui generis. The trick is to be tolerant of all spiritual beliefs that are not oppressive of others and focus public policy on things that can be solved without mysticism while researchers should not be ridiculed for trying to understand the magical thinking of most human beings.

The Japanese and Chinese still pray at the shrines of their ancestors for blessings, Israelis still pray at the Wailing Walls, a religious party dominates India today, Arabs still fast, pray and believe that there are evil forces of Shetan, Americans still believe in the inerrancy of the Bible and many think that elected officials are the representatives of the Divine, while the British still have a state church. No one is weeping for them because they also have huge funding for research and development by their STEM specialists who send people to the moon, build enough weapons to wipe out life on earth, tackle incurable diseases, and make millions speculating on market trends. 

Instead of weeping for our colleagues at home, we should be humble and acknowledge that some of them, like OBC Nwolise himself, are busy advocating for the Nigerian Diaspora to be given a role in Nigerian foreign policy, addressing the insecurity in the country, peacemaking in West Africa, analyzing the implications of the Arab Spring, and advocating gender sensitivity in public policy. 

Did Obadare have recommendations on how to solve some these problems that Nwolise has been addressing? Pentecostal Republic is a narrow title anyway because adherents of traditional spirituality, Catholics, Rasta, and Islamists all buy into the idea of spiritual warfare around the world and not only in Nigeria.

Biko

On Sunday, 5 May 2019, 17:56:28 GMT-4, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:



I am reading Professor Ebenezer Obadare's brilliant new book, Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (Zed Books, 2018), and I came across the quote below, one of those he advances as touchstones for his central argument.


It is not lifted from a sermon or a facebook post. It is not extracted from a theological or hermeneutical document. 

On the contrary, ladies and gentlemen of Facebook Nigeriana, it is an excerpt from the inaugural professorial lecture of a certain Professor Osisioma B.C Nwolise, a Professor of Political Science (a social science that teaches logic, empirical proof, rigor, verifiability, and rational analysis) at the University of Ibadan. 


This is the most important lecture of his academic career, delivered in a university to an academic audience. And yet if I did not know its context I would have surmised that this was a sermon delivered in one of the parishes of my home church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God.


Here is an academic lending his professorial weight to the Nigerian pastime of spiritualizing sociopolitical, security, and economic problems--our culture of conflating piety and politics, or neglecting political action for pietistic escapism. 


We try to pray away our problems when we should be acting against them. Now, our professors who should know better are uncritically legitimizing and trying to intellectualize this culture of fatalistic spiritualization of secular, practical problems.


Farooq Kperogi is right; our problem is not just leadership but also a national scourge of illiteracy (literal and figurative) and irrationality. How can a country whose professors profess such nonsense make progress or solve its problems?


And how can a people challenge their oppressors and tormentors in power when even their professors subscribe to such drivel, such spiritual causality for everything, including election rigging, bad governance and incompetent leadership?

Read and weep for what remains of the diminishing country called Nigeria.


"When we want to watch our television, we switch it on with our remote control by pressing a button. Then we can stay in Ibadan and watch a football match being played in Athens, Sydney or Paris. In the same way, a witch stays in her house in Lokoja or any other town, stirs water in a pot, or conjurs(sic) a mirror, and can monitor any targeted person or object in London, Athens, or Sydney. In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic. A witch can also stay in South Africa or the United Kingdom and break the leg of an effigy spiritually programmed to represent a person domiciled in the United States, and the person's leg will break mysteriously there. The scientist or intellectualist may not see or accept these as real based on his training, but they happen daily and are factual. There are spirits attached to walls, plants, leaves, found in bushes, on people's clothes, etc.; and there are roving spirits that move about especially between 12 noon and 2.00 pm, and at night. Some of these spirits are benevolent, while others are malevolent. It is the malevolent spirits that constitute threats to humans. They can project sickness into people's bodies, change people's star or destiny, or change the sex of a baby in the womb, remove the baby completely or turn it into a stone, or tortoise, snail, horse, snake, or a disabled [person]. If it were possible to carve out a block of the air for spiritual analysis, we can find several arrows, and many other dangerous pollutants, spiritual weapons of mass destruction flying in various directions 24 hours of the day."


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