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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if this is the lecture

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  by  O B C Nwolise 

Sunshine Publishers might have it

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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TF.

I will be quite convinced if Moses can come to share with forum the occurrence of inexplicable broken legs for which INC can claim responsibility but I know no such thing will happen.

The Vatican was once Christiandoms leading intellectual powerhouse rationalizing the truth of its observations to conform with religious teachings then came I in Galileo and Copernicus to upset the apple cart and nothing was quite the same again.

For Awolowo to say juju is science is the same thing as saying there is scientifically verifiable composition of the concoction which can be put at the arrow points fired at enemies to kill them because of the poison in the concoction.  This can be compared to a nuclear tipped missile system today. Awolowo was referring to historically verifiable biological warfare in Yorubaland in which attacking enemies with lleprosy featured

That is totally different from saying if you take a slice of air( whatever that means) at noon you will find arrows in them!

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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From: Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu>

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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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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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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beautiful debate.

i see Nimi Wariboko's name has been invoked.

are Wariboko's theology and philosophies not very different from the quote from Nwolise?

are theology and social science-Nwolise's field- not quite different?

as for the revered Awo saying 'juju is science' if he did not qualify it is he not on the same page on uncritical assertions as Nwolise?

On Mon, 6 May 2019 at 12:21, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:

TF.

I will be quite convinced if Moses can come to share with forum the occurrence of inexplicable broken legs for which INC can claim responsibility but I know no such thing will happen.

The Vatican was once Christiandoms leading intellectual powerhouse rationalizing the truth of its observations to conform with religious teachings then came I in Galileo and Copernicus to upset the apple cart and nothing was quite the same again.

For Awolowo to say juju is science is the same thing as saying there is scientifically verifiable composition of the concoction which can be put at the arrow points fired at enemies to kill them because of the poison in the concoction.  This can be compared to a nuclear tipped missile system today. Awolowo was referring to historically verifiable biological warfare in Yorubaland in which attacking enemies with lleprosy featured

That is totally different from saying if you take a slice of air( whatever that means) at noon you will find arrows in them!

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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

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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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I am beginning to enjoy this debate.

What is "factual"? At Ibadan, my city, and yours, witchcraft is "factual"!!  The mission of Christ is "factual". It is the fact of faith, not the fact of science.

Years ago, in the company of others, when I told my mom that I did not believe in witchcraft, I sent her into panic and she began to look for remedies for me to stay alive. I don't believe that there are witches, but have the witches now left Ibadan because I don't believe in them?

TF

 

Toyin Falola

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The University of Texas at Austin

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From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meochonu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, May 6, 2019 at 7:13 AM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: 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.

 

And, by the way, yes, a "fundamentalist Christian" can win the Nobel Prize in Medicine but certainly not by advancing his religious beliefs as his oeuvre. Yes, we need an epistemology that engages with prevalent beliefs in supernatural causation in Africa because these beliefs are pervasive, inform devotional practices, and animate and constrain attitudes towards politics in African countries. That epistemology is already underway, with many scholars such as Nimi Wariboko, Obadare, Peter Gaschere, Elias Bombgba, Olupona, Asonze Uka, yourself, Are Adogame, and others already engaging critically with that world. However, it would be academically suicidal if these scholars where to attempt to pass off an uncritical endorsement of Nigerian religious beliefs as "factual" in the most important academic lecture of their career or in a book.

 

On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 5:11 AM Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:

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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Thank you for this update.  I want to draw your attention to the fact I quried how the money promised is to be disbursed and that unless I'm convinced it goes towards resettlement and it's utilization is monitored it will not solve the problem.  I said this won't be my own preferred solution.

At any rate the funds have not yet been disbursed and cannot be attributed to the latest atrocities.

I hope the Presidents advisers are monitoring the latest atrocities and will come up with adequate response.

One suggestion may be setting up military check points on the roads to major cities.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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

From: Funmi Odusolu <eleda.odusolu@gmail.com>

Date: 06/05/2019 09:18 (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>, Emmanuel Ajibade <era_ajibade@yahoo.co.uk>, Prof Rahim <praheemko30@gmail.com>, rita <rita@corporatemessengers.com>, razona@yahoo.com, rmafonja@gmail.com, "aopeodu52@yahoo co. uk" <aopeodu52@yahoo.co.uk>, Kunle Famoriyo <kunlf@aol.com>

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

The wizard of Buhari executive fiat gave Fulani herdsmen 100billion naira on Friday, May 3, 2019, and the attack narrated below took place on Ife-Ilesha road Sunday, May 5, 2019.

Are you asking why?

I just read this on Adegbenro Adebanjo wall and I have my mouth agape. Wahala tiwa de bai o. This happened right tonight on Ilesha/ ife - ibadan express. These murderers are now down south. This is now a very serious matter. Where do we go from here? Who is now safe in this God forsaken country? I am tired!

Please where are all my Ijesha brothers and sisters? We must condemn this in totality before the matter gets out of hand.  We say a big no to murderers in our town/ osun state.

Insecurity:We are all in Trouble

The call came in around 7:30 PM on Sunday, May 5,2019 ...Daddy , daddy , marauders suspected to be Fulani herdsmen attacked the vehicle my mummy and my brother were traveling in. Where , how? The caller, who is my first son, explained that according to information gleaned from his brother, who managed to escape with his phone the marauders targeted the travellers on the highway. From what I was able to piece together it was a clinical operation by professionals.

At about 6:45pm on the Ilesha-Ife-Ibadan Expressway a trailer loaded with some men suddenly blocked the road around Ikoyi town and some men jumped out and started shooting sporadically. Mayhem ensued as Vehicles rammed into one another while occupants exited through windows and other openings in desperate dash for safety in the bush. The marauders who spoke in Hausa unleashed mayhem on the hapless travellers demanding for money and other valuables. They pursued those who fled deep into the bush beating and harassing them in the process while shooting continuously to show that they meant business.

Some twenty minutes after help came through the Police who engaged the marauders in a shootout and succeeded in forcing them to beat a hasty retreat.

Mercifully most of the travellers including my wife and son who were bruised and battered both physically and psychologically live to tell the tale of the harrowing experience. Some have not been that lucky including Onukaba  Adinoyi Ojo a former Managing Director of the Daily Times who was killed in similar circumstances some years back .

There are countless tales of broken limbs and heads and mortal wounds resulting in deaths as Kidnappers and marauders of different hue and persuasion hold the country by the jugular. 

Nigeria , yes all of us are in trouble . The fact that military men are also abandoning the Kaduna -Abuja road to scramble for trains is indicative that we are in deeper trouble security wise.

This piece is not about politics. It is to jolt us to speak out and to TELL us that nobody and no road is immune from such devilish attacks .

But for God's  divine mercy and  intervention may be two members of my family would have become casualties of the growing insecurity in the land. 

Now is the time for concerted efforts to deal with the growing monster. The country's security architecture needs a surgical operation NOW.

- Adegbenro Adebayo

On Sun, May 5, 2019, 6:32 PM OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com wrote:

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

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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

<tadewunmi@isgpp.com.ng> wrote:

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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My concern is not so much about Prof Nwolise but with the logic of my good friend Prof. Ochonu.How can the utterance of one professsor spell doom for the entire academic arena?

I think Nwolise made the mistake of not substituting the word "angel " for witches and spirits.I don't think he would have escaped the scrutiny of Moses but there are a lot of folks in this forum who would have given him a free pass. In any case, I am disappointed that Nwolise's witches did not turn water into wine.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali

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From:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, May 6, 2019 8:17:30 AM
To:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academicsare Culpable

 

I really can't DISAGREE more with your defence of OBC here!

He is simply playing to the gallery of the priests coining it in on the insecurities of Nigerians and trying to fashion how the academia can profit from the gravy train.

He is taking too seriously banter from the likes of TF that academics are in the wrong profession because they are not turning into millionaires(unlike the priesthood) for all the efforts they put into their lives and work.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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From: 'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Date: 06/05/2019 12:30 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

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

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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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Witchcraft is a recognized religion in the West, one of the fastest growing perhaps.

There is a lot of overlap between modern Western witchcraft and Yoruba Iyami aje beliefs.

Occultism is big in the West.

A significant no of the claims made for witches in Africa are also made for occultists in the West.

Do Western scholars, including those who are openly witches and occultists, even when writing about about their belief systems in academic contexts, uncritically present those belief systems as factual and as equivalent to scientific technology, as Nwolise seems to be doing?

Relevant examples are Neville Drury, who crowned a lifetime as magical practitioner and writer on magic with his published PhD thesis   Stealing Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic ( Oxford UP, 2011).

In African Studies, a superb example of critical presentation of religious subjectivity in scholarship is John McCall's "Making Peace with Agwu",  his account of his initiation into Igbo dibia,   in which he is careful to delineate the fact that he is describing a subjective experience, not objective fact, as he carefully negotiates relationships between the mode of knowing offered by the initiation and the epistemic methods he has been trained in as an anthropologist.

A classic effort to develop an understanding of religion in terms of various accounts of religious experience is Rudolph Otto's The Idea of the Holy, demonstrating a rigorous balance between description and analysis.

At no point in these texts is bald statement of belief without critical contextualization ever presented.

Subjectivity has a place in critical scholarship, even the description of the subjectivity of the scholar, but it needs to be a critical,  reflexive subjectivity, not an uncritical one. 

That is an ideal, but the closer the scholar is to that ideal, the closer they are to the essence of scholarship in the Western tradition as an effort to understand reality rather than be mastered by reality, including the reality of one's  own subjectivity, an approach that empowers the human being in terms of balance between aspects of consciousness, the subjective and the critical, the intellectual and the emotional.

Nwolise needs to explain why he thinks the claims he makes are facts. Are they realities that are part of existence outside one's belief in them? To what degree are these claims about the nature of reality valid beyond their effects, if any beyond the psychological, on those who believe in them? 

What makes him convinced that witches can see across distances without conventional technology, can harm people at a distance and that spirits rove about in space"?

The quality of analysis or critical contextualization of one's beliefs represents the quality of one's scholarship. 

toyin. 

On Mon, 6 May 2019 at 14:40, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:

My concern is not so much about Prof Nwolise but with the logic of my good friend Prof. Ochonu.How can the utterance of one professsor spell doom for the entire academic arena?

I think Nwolise made the mistake of not substituting the word "angel " for witches and spirits.I don't think he would have escaped the scrutiny of Moses but there are a lot of folks in this forum who would have given him a free pass. In any case, I am disappointed that Nwolise's witches did not turn water into wine.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali

---

From:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, May 6, 2019 8:17:30 AM
To:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academicsare Culpable

 

I really can't DISAGREE more with your defence of OBC here!

He is simply playing to the gallery of the priests coining it in on the insecurities of Nigerians and trying to fashion how the academia can profit from the gravy train.

He is taking too seriously banter from the likes of TF that academics are in the wrong profession because they are not turning into millionaires(unlike the priesthood) for all the efforts they put into their lives and work.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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

From: 'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Date: 06/05/2019 12:30 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

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

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

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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