Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Why Obasanjo May Be Heading to Hell

Mighty  Biko of Nigeria,

Except for when the library is closed in the summertime, I've been going through this alley on average several times a week since 1995.

By genocide, is meant something deliberate, planned, even systematic, and not merely accidental.

In my personal library, I guess that I have some fifty books about The Holocaust...but I still don't have the stomach to watch documentaries. I tried once, it was about Treblinka - but couldn't: I haven't even seen "Schindler's List", or "Blood Diamond" (there are several true stories that parallel the events in Blood Diamond) or any of the few hours of bloody footage from the Sierra Leone civil war – I was given live videos of the carnage a thousand times more bloody than Sorious Samura's "Cry Freetown" - I turned over one such video to our (Sierra Leone) national goalkeeper Kelfala Marrah.

 To some extent I'm probably feeling just like you, I know that the anger about justice delayed accumulates and gets worse. It's not good for the liver or if you have a peptic ulcer. Worse thing I know is watching TV news about Syria, ( personally,  I don't believe that Iran would condone Assad doing a repeat of what Saddam did in Halabja) more heartaches watching atrocities in  Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan and at the height of the last Intifada, all that bloody footage from Israel.

Here, as elsewhere, I'm making points all the way:

Yeah, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." (The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King) and we all agree.

And it's yeah again, "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

I did say that I intend return to the more serious issue of the Biafra Genocide in my next response to your blog post and I'll do just that, but would like to transfer all future communication on the Biafra Genocide to another thread heading and not continue under this "Israel and Egypt, how do we begin to compare these two democracies?"

Before we do that I'd just like to clear up some outstanding issues in this thread – just for the record:

1.      The cause of my Better Half's surgery was congenital – her older sister a professor of medicine (same mother and father) had to undergo the same surgery...

2.      Basketball was being popularised in Sweden when I worked at the Swedish Basketball Association as a certified youth leader in 1973: our task was to spread the basketball culture. I guess basketball is now being globalised - in my day in Sierra Leone our national sports were football and gentlemen's cricket (a Commonwealth pastime) my favourite sports were, the English mile,  table-tennis and volley ball (more Diaspora news: even in Sweden, which is not a member of the Commonwealth club, the Caribbeans still have their matches and annual Cricket dances).

Having just mentioned the Commonwealth let me ask you: What has Igboland's outstanding son Emeka Anyaoku said so far about the Biafra Genocide? As a former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth he has a very strong advocacy position from which to throw much light on what we are stomping about, right now.

3.     You have made a number of religious citations and references which have inevitably activated some pavlovian responses somewhere in me:

A lot of criminologist talk about Lucifer, the devil, Hitler, hell, prayers of repentance, forgiveness (forgive and forget?) – all the bullshit neo-colonial escapist vocabulary about immunity from prosecution, a general amnesty and forgiveness for all ( if you are Christian) all in the name of  the blood  of Jesus,  which gets people off the hook when they should be taking responsibility for their acts of perfidy

You mentioned Ola Rotimi's "The gods are not to blame" , even the word beatitude is suggestive of the ideals in the  Sermon on the Mount  versus the realities of the human nature that we are endowed with (part of  our mortal flesh)  Jacob Neusner in that his long talk, tears it to pieces and Zik himself cannot beat that, but Zik's beatitude to youths is more practical than that, I'm sure.

 Reality: Universal soldier

About Lucifer/ Satan objecting to man being created this is what the Quran says

And about hardness of heart

The Bible tells us about the first murder and it's still a matter of the victims' blood and the voice of the Almighty is still saying, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground!"

Still have one more posting to make on this thread and it's not about the Biafra Genocide but about other matters arising from your blog post.

 Latest update on Israel and Egypt, how do we begin to compare these two democracies?"

We Sweden

 

On Thursday, 22 August 2013 00:54:05 UTC+2, Biko Agozino wrote:

Bros,

I agree with you, Baba will be saved by the Grace if not by our prayers and by his good deeds: The first and only Nigerian ruler that handed over to a successor following an election (although it was always an arrangee selection), not once but twice; appointed more ladies into office than any other ruler, made peace with Cameroon over a few millimeters of colonial boundary rather than wage a wasteful war, set up the EFCC and jailed a sitting Inspector General of Police and a few Governors for the first time in the country, resolved a few coups in neighboring African countries with a few Ghana Must Go bags (some say).

But na him dey crucify himself over the overall records of his one-fifth dominion on the independent presidency. My puzzle is why he had to drag Nyerere and Biafra into the fact that he claimed to have spent $12 billion on electricity and yet we still live in darkness, as Obi Igwe alluded. Why will 20 ships not rust away when the farmer went to the village market and handed ovder 30 billion dollars to dodgy creditors when that kind of money could have given us a fast railroad between East and West, turned our universities into prominent institutions, invested in health research and health care, built 100,000 low cost homes across the country, started medium scale farms for unemployed graduates so that it is noty one man who wants to boast that he is feeding the whole world, funded Nollywood productions, started a bicycle factory and still have some change to pay welfare checks to the deported destitutes in 'no man's land.' My hunch is that he still has nightmares about Biafra for he may have taken GMG bags to Nyerere to buy his betrayal of Africans facing genocide and the Mwalimu told him where to stick the filthy lucre, but I might be wrong.

I join you in praying that the Baba will repent and confess the wickedness of ordering the shooting down of a relief plane that was bringing in supplies to our starving and diseased people rather than continue bragging about that in His Command. Nothing stops him from publicly apologizing for his role in the genocide against our fellow country men and women, children and collective psyche. Sorry is such a hard word for some people to say but it is not even necessary because the Igbo have forgiven people like him and returned to provide essential services for their fellow citizens despite the risk of the continuing massacres that grow on the soil fertilized with genocidal blood.

We are one people really, Kru, Kri, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Ijaw, Akan, Ashanti, Zulu, Kikuyi, Luo, Congo, Jew, Arab, Oyibo, Indian, Chinese, Mexican, Aboriginal, we are all the children of one African woman. If any mad man takes a chain saw and cuts down three million threes in the rain forest in 30 months, Rainbow warriors will be on his case. If a lunatic starves three million dogs to death and claims that all is fair in warfare, he will be doing more time than Michael Vic. But we are talking about three million lives of innocent fellow Africans genocidized by wanna be leaders! Where is the outrage?

Biko

---

From: Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
To:usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Cc: "cornelius...@gmail.com" <cornelius...@gmail.com>; Biko Agozino <biko...@yahoo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, 21 August 2013, 16:28
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Why Obasanjo May Be Heading to Hell

Corrected:

Mighty Biko of Nigeria,

Many thanks for the valuable info that,

  "The Beatitude to Youth is a chapter in Renascent Africa, the compilation of Azikiwe's editorials in the Accra Morning Post that was published in 1937 after he beat the rap for sedition following his publication of the satirical dissing of colonialism in an article by Wallace Johnson, 'Does the African Have a God?' According to Nkrumah, that sedition trial was what inspired him to go to Zik of Africa and ask him where he got the knowledge and courage to challenge the British empire and win for he would like to get some of that ginger to spice up his own swagger. There and then, Zik gave him a letter of recommendation to Lincoln University and the rest is history. Later, the Beatitudes became the catechism of the Zikist Movement in the 1940s."

 Indeed, the rest is history.

As for my beloved (not to be confused with the jealous Almighty who has the same title, albeit with a capital B), she can handle six European languages fluently and can also handle me – has been doing great things since then.  The trinity of Zik, Kwame and Wallace is quite a meaty bone to chew you must agree, but the focus of that thesis was "The West African Youth League" and not any extended hagiographical accounts of the in-puts of Zik, Kwame and I.T.A.  a local idol who I often went past on  Westmoreland Street  where I lived, ( no 37  - opposite the Cotton Tree and the Sierra Leone Museum) -  I'd greet  him  with a reverential nod  and then one day we got the terrible news  about that car crash  in Accra, that took him away from all of us. So if Mr. Wallace-Johnson  was still with us in 1970, I would have introduced my Better Half to him personally, and that could have only been all to the good.

Since then Leo Spitzer the author of "The Creoles of Sierra Leone" together withLaRay Denzer have authored ""I. T. A. Wallace-Johnson and the West African Youth League"

About the posthumous fate of the ex-grand Oba of Nigeria, General Olusegun Obasanjo,  since he is a Christian it's possible that  he will be saved by grace alone, by the one and only merciful Almighty , and just as we don't live by bread alone, so I pray that the Almighty will take into consideration some of Mr. Obasanjo's prayers for the nation  and other and his  good works, such as his farming so that more people of Nigeria will be fed– even as the masses pray, " give us this day – our daily bread"  and more good works of his such as the Obasanjo Foundation .  Would Biko like to crucify him for that also?  

Some more of his handiwork: "In 1979, we had 20 new ships specially built for Nigeria. When I came back 20 years after, the national shipping line had liquidated"

I was told by some Yoruba Krio Oga from Sierra Leone, that Bra Obasanjo is really a "Yoruba Krio". Don't know how true that is. The same guy told me that Ironsi's father was a Krio guy. The midwife who delivered me, Mrs. Chukuma Davies was married to an "Igbo Sierra Leonean" - and one of my best friends from way back in Sierra Leone, now mostly a facebook& telephone friend Samuel Archer- Davies is also of Igbo extraction, so you see, I'm biased , way back, twelve tribes of Israel.

In light of the recent fallout from Fani-Kayode's thoughts about the Igbo claims to some alleged " no man's land" in Lagos ( Yoruba's Judea and Samaria)  we should take a closer look at "Tribalism: A Pragmatic Instrument for National Unity"

One last thing before I tuck in to some fried plantains – probably from Mr. Obsanjo's farm (fried in palm oil) as a side dish for dinner – I agree with you that it's not only the Chinese who think that we all look the same - all of those who come from the planet of the apes – but let me tell you this: I was exactly 3 cm taller than Glenn Berry in 1973...

So who better than you to ask help me locate Kenneth Ofodile who looks exactly like a big Yoruba man?

No laughing matter:  Will return to the more serious issue of the Biafra genocide the next response to your blog post.

Sin-cerely,

We Sweden

 

 

On Wednesday, 21 August 2013 15:31:01 UTC+2, Biko Agozino wrote:

Bro Corne,

I did not know that you are the devil's advocate. Please note that, as Fela would yell, 'no be me talk am o'. The man take him own mouth curse himself. If we do not have any leader to commend then we (i.e., the rulers) are all going to hell. I agree with you that we should pray for the old man so that his sins may be forgiven on the condition that he repents of the crime against millions of our people. As I said in my opinion, God is a merciful God ever willing to forgive repentant sinners. But first, he must repent, he cannot play 419 with God.

You are right that no one is completely evil. Even Lucifer was the arch angel whose capital offense was hubris in opposing the democratic motion from God: 'Let us make man in our own image.' Oh no, opposed Shetan, why don't you make him like all the other dumb lower animals lest he becomes like us and plot to do a coup against us and play God himself? Bad mistake to oppose God. Even Hitler was said to have achieved something no one else has ever managed - full employment albeit in his killing machine - but few will dispute that he is burning in the fire and quite rightly so.

Instead of offering a plea in mitigation on behalf of Ekwensu, my favorite perspective is that of Malcolm X who nearly lost his faith when he learned that his revered leader was also a bit of a player. That was until the son of the leader sat him down to peruse the Bible and reach the conclusion that all the great men in the bible did something incredibly naughty and yet they were forgiven by a merciful God especially following repentance. Let us pray that Baba Iyabo and his fellow gangsters will repent and ask Ndigbo for forgiveness or he may be heading to the fire of the devil that he deserves, according to his own mouth. Listen to Baba K; 'And them dey do bad, bad, bad things, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen, Amen, Amen. By the grace of Almighty Allah, Amen, Amen, Amen.'

Sorry about the miscarriage of justice on your beloved. You should have considered suing her university for putting her through all that torture. Did her supervisors not know anything about narrowing down her topic to a manageable scope? Each one of those giants was worth the focus of more than a few doctoral dissertations and yet they let her bundle all that together to scatter her brain and mess up her swagger. Kpele.

The Beatitude to Youth is a chapter in Renascent Africa, the compilation of Azikiwe's editorials in the Accra Morning Post that was published in 1937 after he beat the rap for sedition following his publication of the satirical dissing of colonialism in an article by Wallace Johnson, 'Does the African Have a God?' According to Nkrumah, that sedition trial was what inspired him to go to Zik of Africa and ask him where he got the knowledge and courage to challenge the British empire and win for he would like to get some of that ginger to spice up his own swagger. There and then, Zik gave him a letter of recommendation to Lincoln University and the rest is history. Later, the Beatitudes became the catechism of the Zikist Movement in the 1940s.

So how can a short man devil like you coach basketball and be flattered that your Calabar mask-like face looks like Arthur Ashe? I know, in Sweden, they say that all Africans look the same.

Biko

---

From: Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
To:usaafric...@ googlegroups.com
Cc: Biko Agozino <biko...@yahoo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, 21 August 2013, 7:17
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Why Obasanjo May Be Heading to Hell

In this long sentence (but not from the Chief Justice of Nigeria):

That was impeccable Biko Agozino and although you concur with Alagba Soyinka's advice to the then president, el-Generalissimo Olusegun Obasanjo to "go – just go" and you feature Obi Igwe a gospel light disciple of Jesus of Nazareth and Biafra singing in Igbo, why do you not have it in your heart to pray for Mr. Obasanjo or say Pa, say it ain't so? We know that after catching so much hell here on earth, the suffering masses don't want to catch some more fire in hell after they die and Obasanjo knows even better than most of us about the resurrection, and obviously hopes, since he has hopefully repented of all his sins and entered graduate school in theology to turn a new leaf  - his phase two here on earth  - phase three is the cemetery  - but  just before that to prepare for eternal life in the hereafter after his stint at the steering wheel as president of the complex federation of Nigeria!

Don't forget that Brer Obasanjo saying that we (including the penitent himself) are all deserving of the hell fire was conditional – at least according to how it is reported in Nairaland, he said that "if Nigerians were yet to commend a leader after 53 years of independence, "Then we are jinxed and cursed; we should all go to hell" – and there is much virtue in that "if" - if not, then we're all going to go...

Obasanjo himself did a lot of good things, so did Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Sir Ahmadu Bello, Muhammad Murtala, Muhammadu Buhari & Tunde Idiagbon, in fact so did Tai Solarin and so did Chief Obafemi Awolowo and so did Fela, Dr Sir Warrior, these are contemporary Nigerian leaders among many others in Nigeria that I pray will never go anywhere near what Muslims call "the fire"

I am terribly excited that you mention Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe's  "Beatitude to the Youth"  - terribly excited because I had never heard of such a poem before,  and  my Better Half Ebba, was staying with my parents, in London in 1971 and was specialising in African history, was in her third month of research in the colonial archives at the British Museum in London,  gathering material for her thesis on " Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe , Kwame Nkrumah, I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson  and the West African Youth League" when she had to undergo a brain operation and a miscarriage...and since then I have avoided mentioning any of the three. But, please how do I get hold of Dr. Azikiwe's "Beatitude of Youth"? (By 1973 I myself had become a youth leader in Sweden and was working at the  Swedish Basketball Association, with people like the national coach Ali Strunke (Yugoslavian) and his assistant, Egon Håkansson...) around that time an African -American brother  Glenn Berry was the best basketball player in all Sweden and  he used to tell me that I looked like Arthur Ashe – looked like, not played like...the first time he told me that, Arthur Ashe had just beaten Bjorn Borg, here in Sweden ...)

The role of the youth,  in the future of Nigeria, Africa cannot be overemphasised...

Will get back to you and your essay a little later, am being a little overwhelmed by this report about Egypt , thinking about it about you about Obi Igwe and that sort of Boko Haram scenario in Nigeria right now.  Later.

Peace and love,

We Sweden

 

 

 

On Wednesday, 21 August 2013 00:45:15 UTC+2, Biko Agozino wrote:

http://massliteracy.blogspot. com/2013/08/why-obasanjo-may- be-heading-to-hell.html

Personally, I do not agree that Nigeria is cursed, for as Femi Osofisan would put it, The Gods Are Not to Blame. There are historical and structural reasons why people of African descent are suffering the incompetent leadership that we are burdened with today.  As Obi Igwe put it in one ofhis gospel songs, what we need are leaders (Ndi ndu, also literally, forces oflife) and not rulers (Ndi ochichi, ;also literally, forces of darkness). There are some concrete steps we can take to reverse the ineptitude at the leadership level and uplift our people from avoidable penury in the midst of plenty...

Please follow above link to continue reading and or leave a comment

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