Why is it near impossible for some forum participants to see things through the ethnic prism only? "Falsehood" is a word that experienced, knowledgeable, and serious commentators know to use with great caution. To state that an assertion or claim is false implies the certainty that the truth is categorically different.
Commentators familiar with historical, literary, political, and religious conversations and discourse know to be slow to describe any expressed position as false. That one disagrees with another does not necessarily make another's position false. Both positions may in fact be partly false and partly true.
If one remembers that the truth is the first casualty in politics and war, one would be more hesitant to take an entrench position in related matters.
oa
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Segun
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 6:35 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)
I think some of our Ibo writers simply don't want to accept the truth apart from falsehood told by Achebe.
Toyin should end the conversation or the controversy for now. Let the fly know that the world goes on with or without it.
Segun Ogungbemi.
Sent from my iPhone
On Jan 10, 2013, at 12:41 PM, "Ifedioramma E. Nwana" <ienwana@yahoo.com> wrote:Actually some of the postings on this topic remind me of the little story about the fly that had perched on the horn of a cow that lay down chewing the cord. When the fly expected the cow to complain and did not get the privilege of one it shouted, 'Cow Cow if I am weighing you down so much please tell me when you would like to stand up'. Then the cow said to the fly, 'Oh dear I did not even know that you were there'. Some of these comments should not bother any one. They simply reveal the deep prejudice that rocks Nigeria, which is indeed the main problem with Nigeria.
Ifedioramma Eugene Nwana
From: "Anunoby, Ogugua" <AnunobyO@lincolnu.edu>
To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, 9 January 2013, 19:40
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)
"I was shocked to find that this man was so abysmally ignorant about a part of Nigerian history that has to be the most important since her birth. In that forum we were all as a group taken aback by the ignorance and the bigotry Toyin displayed with each posting."
ikhide
Ikhide,
You must know now that there are individuals who are completely oblivious of the limits of their knowledge, the depth of their ignorance, and their plain inability to be other than subjective, but will nevertheless jump body and soul into conversations that are roundly outside their learning, training, interest, and experience scales and scopes. They know that comment is free. They are determined to take full but misguided advantage of it. How else does one contemplatively understand the open season abuse and insult that has followed Chinua Achebe's new book?
It seems to me that a challenge of scholarship is the lack of awareness on the part of a "scholar" of the limits of their knowledge. True scholarship is underscored by disciplined specialization. Some scholars carry on as if there are no limits to their specialized knowledge and intellectual expertise. This causes such "scholars" to pulpiteereven in unconcealed ignorance sometimes. It also causes them to not know when and how to seek, find, and value edification that comes among others through humility, and deference to more knowledgeable and practiced scholars. There is no shame in not knowing. There may be however, when the one who does not know should know that the one does not know. It is preferable and more self-respectful that one has strong views on a subject that the one is well informed about.
Have you not noticed that most Nigerians public affairs' commentators are, to borrow a much belabored expression "jacks of all trade and masters of all"? Is it much surprise that Nigeria has the challenges and failures that she has?
oa
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Ikhide [xokigbo@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2013 8:35 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)Folks.
This is not addressed directly to Toyin Adepoju, he does not need it and I am convinced he is not in a position to be swayed by what I have to say. I first noticed his take on Biafra in another forum. His views, about the pogrom and the genocide were, in my view, evil and abnormal.
I was shocked to find that this man was so abysmally ignorant about a part of Nigerian history that has to be the most important since her birth. In that forum we were all as a group taken aback by the ignorance and the bigotry Toyin displayed with each posting.
Once Toyin started speaking about Biafra and spewing what are easily the most shocking statements anyone would utter in my presence about fellow human beings, I decided that there was a darkness there that was beyond his control. And I stopped engaging him.
Folks, if you think Toyin's views about Biafra are odious (they are) then I am not sure what you would characterize the views that got him expelled from the forum we both shared. No one should be exposed to that carcinogen that Toyin offered up. Believe it or not, his views about Biafra today are a lot more civil than those dark days when I shivered from the e-ethnic cleansing that he so gleefully executed on the Internet.
Curiously, the same accusations have been leveled against his "scholarship" on women. Misogyny is the word a noted scholar used to describe Toyin's world views against women when she declined Toyin permission to use her work on his blog or website. And understandably so, if you are familiar with Toyin's "work" on women's private parts. His "scholarship" on women's issues is beyond demeaning, I am surprised there has been no organized outrage. It is disgraceful actually. His Facebook page will convince you of the darkness that resides in him.
As for Biafra, I honestly believe it is not normal, what I read from Toyin. Let me put it this way, there are many people I disagree with on this forum when it comes to Biafra. I can however honestly say, they are disagreements. As for Toyin, to call his views wrong-headed would be to dignify a rabid dysfunction.
I have engaged Toyin a couple of times on this forum because I wanted to be on record as abhorring whatever he stands for. Nobody that I respect views his position as sane. And that is why you hardly see anyone publicly agreeing with him. There is no method to this madness.
- IkhideFrom: "G. Ugo Nwokeji" <ugo@berkeley.edu>
Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2013 07:16:39 -0800
ReplyTo: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)
Toyin,
I actually agree with the point you made in your response to my retort, namely, that it is not necessary to "enter into the game of counting dead bodies in terms of number and rank according to tribe." But that is exactly what you did when you wrote that the "[ coup plotters] killed one Igbo person- an officer who was not of high rank." And you now make it to sound that I started the counting?
I only reminded you that if you had to count (as you actually did), you had to do it right.
The correction I made matters because that claim (and variations of it) is the cornerstone of the argument that the January 1966 coup was an Igbo coup, and you deployed that argument precisely to drive home that point.
If you had not "counted the dead", I would not even have written anything. As usually happens, those who are quick to accuse people of tribalism should examine themselves first.
If you made your argument out of 'tribal" sentiment, you have no reason to put the same to me. You made a mistake that somebody who is spending much of his time on this matter should not make and which is convenient to your argument, and you were corrected. What does it tell you and anybody else reading that up to now, you are still waiting for "other members ... to collaborate" that Arthur Unegbe was the Quartermaster General of the Nigerian army? There was only one!
This goes to show the level of misinformation about the events of 1966 and ready willingness to ignore basic facts.
Your assertion that the correction "does not modify" the very point you made it to support just reveals how too willing you are to not let the facts get in your way.
Ethnic sentiment had no place in that correction. If I may add, the killing of Arthur Unegbe is personal to me; my mother never mentioned him (she called him Chinyelu) without tears in her eyes, but I don't let that color my analysis of the motives of the coup plotters. His colleagues who targeted him knew he was Igbo, but they claimed they killed him because of his political affiliations, which is identical to what they claimed about other victims from other ethnic group. The misrepresentation of his true identity by others -- which was deliberate at the beginning -- is an ever-present reminder to me how these facts are distorted.
Ugo
On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 5:16 AM, OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com> wrote:
Get real.
Death is horrible.
Even more gruesome is cold blooded murder of defenceless people.
The cold blooded murders that characterised the January 15, 1966 coup and the counter coup and pogroms are most regrettable.
One does not wish there were more deaths.
I can appreciate correcting a historical fact, but, in the name of decency, is bringing up this point with this associated fanfare and combative taunts necessary at this time since your point does not alter the configuration of the historical reality being discussed?
Are we to now lapse into further counting of dead bodies tribe by tribe?
Lay them side by side and weigh the rank of one against the other to further evaluate the social scope of the massacres?
Has that not been sufficiently done and the point made?
Even if you are correct on the gentleman's rank, your point does not tell us anything new about the character of the January 15,1966 coup and does not modify the point I was making.
Since you have brought that effort at correction to our attention, I will leave it for members and myself to corroborate but I will not expound on why that point does not change the configuration of the coup because I am tired of the sheer morbidity of this debate, based as it is on resurrecting ancient sufferings and struggling to project them into the future, in arguments where positions do not shift.
I will not let myself enter into the game of counting dead bodies in terms of number and rank according to tribe.
I am adding nothing more to my response because I am convinced that much of the capacity for illumination on these issues at this time has been exhausted.
I want to return to emphasising humanistic bonds, not dwelling on events of more than 40 years ago on which we have jaw jawed endlessly while positions hardly shift.
If you have something substantial, however, that throws new light on the issues or is capable of doing so, I am prepared to respond to it.
thanks
toyin.
On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 1:22 AM, G. Ugo Nwokeji <ugo@berkeley.edu> wrote:
Toyin Adepoju, you wrote:
"[The coup plotters] killed one Igbo person- an officer who was not of high rank."
I don't know if it is blind bias or pure ignorance or both that is driving your usual vitriol on the coup/civil war issue.
The officer killed was Lt. Colonial Arthur Unegbe, regarded as one of the most senior and most high-profile officers of then Nigerian army of one major-general, two brigadiers and a handful of full colonels.
At the time he was killed, Unegbe held a general staff position as Quartermaster-General, a position held these days by generals. Is it that you don't know the meaning of quartermaster-general?
He was as senior as Ojukwu and Gowon (unless they too were junior officers!), was I think the first indigenous Commanding Officer of the 5th Infantry and swapped positions with Ojukwu when the latter was posted the 5th.
You can keep all your biases, but you have no right to make up facts to support them. If it is ignorance, shouldn't you first educate yourself on the elementary facts first?
On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 8:58 PM, OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com> wrote:
They killed one Igbo person- an officer who was not of high rank.
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