Brother (Onua) Cornelius:
Thank you very much for your detailed observations. Many of us, who listen carefully, do appreciate your detailed analyses.
Professor Chinua Achebe said it best for all of Africa when, in reference to Nigeria, he made it abundantly clear in his slim but powerful book (about what was wrong with Nigeria) that lack of leadership was, principally, what was wrong with the country (and, in my view, also in most of Africa). That is why I hesitate to agree that having the environment, land or resources solves the multitude of Africa's problems. One recent posting also had it well s \aid that Lagos may have oil in abundance (like other places in Nigeria), but there is need for decent leaders, who won't "run away' with all of the oil resources or revenue.
I smiled at the "Winner-takes-all" reference in your enlightened piece. Kenya, indeed, showed the way in Africa with a shining example in the pre-Uhuru Kenyatta elections, which brought the Kibaki-Odinga political marriage into being. Can't other African nations "ape" that scenario? I have heard many Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians saying that if Ghana did similarly in its 2012 presidential elections, the main opposition won't be at the Ghana Supreme Court trying to unseat a government that is already in high gear. In fact, what Kibaki and Odinga did in kenya, in many ways, deserved an "African Peace Prize", if not a Nobel Peace Prize (because it happened in Africa)!
Alhaji Bangura is a respected brother, whose many credentials remind me often of what my old Nigerian landlord of the late 1960s (Baba Ijebu) used to say about his own beloved nation of Nigeria: Baba said there were too many citizens with both "book long" and chains of academic degrees that end with "D", i.e. Ph.D., M.D. Ed.D., DD (for Doctor of Divinity), DOD, etc. I, too, see some of the good that Alhaji could have done further with his "Lecture of the Century" at University of Lagos. Well, we can't cry over spilled milk, just as our old "colonial" school masters used to tell us when we had youthful disappointments in elementary school.
For comic relief, I want to ask Alhaji Bangura, who is originally from Sierra Leone, if it is true that, in old Kreo Language, aircraft is called "flying ship" back in Freetown? I remember the time that President Siaka Stevens visited the President of Liberia, when I was a newspaper Editor in Monrovia. At an airport press conference, Mr. Stevens opened his press conference with words like: "When my flying ship touch down at Liberia's Roberts airport, I knew I was in a brotherly country."
A.B. Assensoh.
Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2013 7:42 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - To Wofa Akwasi B. Assensoh, about Black star Africa (2)
Dear Wofa Akwasi B. Assensoh,
Still on the subject of "The Democratic Project and the Human Condition across the African Continent"
Thus far for a layman like me, it's people like Jeffrey Sachs with his " The End of Poverty" together with George B.N Ayittey and his still controversial but critically acclaimed " Africa Unchained – The blueprint for Africa's Future" that have been two of the guiding lights about how to go about solving Africa's develop-mental dilemmas.
In many ways – in spite of kalabule, Modern Ghana has still not ever descended into the hell-hole other nations have known as insurgencies, civil wars, fratricide and genocides.
Why Ghana? It was in Ghana that I found myself and obtained a real education, mostly through the company that I kept.
About parliamentary elections etc, I still have slight reservations about the "winner takes all" dispensation, especially as there is a tendency towards our having bad losers and it's particularly worrying to read in Chido Onumah 's article that the Boko Haram " insurgency" cannot but be linked to the upcoming Nigerian Presidential elections in 2015.
Perhaps the Alhajis will call for a consultative national constitutional conference before then and all concerned will agree about the role of rotation of the presidency?
We are yet to get a full glimpse of Alhaji Bangura's so called "mother of all distinguished lectures" and that partly accounts for my irritation with first of all the abysmal absence of even a passing reference to the Boko Haram Muslim terrorism which is currently bedevilling the peaceful development of Nigeria and Nigerians - and of course the threats which continue to issue from the new Kalabari Muslims such as Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo Asari & Co.
Since Nigeria was the venue of the lecture and Alhaji Bangura is a Muslim – and as he says, he "has written over a dozen books on Islam", one would normally expect that he would use the opportunity to give some moral advice to his terrorist brethren-in-Islam when given the golden opportunity of doing so. The learned researcher should have told them plain and simple - in Arabic if need be, to cease forthwith with all acts of wanton violence and start behaving like good Nigerians or else eternal damnation in the hellfire.
Also irritating in the extreme are the trite sociological generalisations and what sometimes sounds like banalities issuing from Sheikh Bangura, such as "'we have the answers in Africa, all what we need is the context and environment to make it work." Isn't Africa herself the context and isn't it the corrupt environment that has to be changed? As to the glorification of cultural ideals – the " human and cultural well-being" , " Human development" and the grinding poverty that has made many flee to the greener pastures and other kinds of Human development to be found "overseas" , very concretely, and avoiding any highfalutin or learned or highly mystifying vocabulary, on behalf of the victims of mismanagement and corruption, Fela has dubbed it as the culture of Shuffering and Shmiling
I've heard Europeans ( Obroni / Oyinbo) in particular marvelling about how Africans have a higher tolerance/ threshold for pain and are more capable than other mortals, of smiling, in spite of all the suffering and pain that they are experiencing. And also, how Africans have rhythm.
Some of the woolly philosophical abstraction to be found here and other theoretically expressions which he does not pin down to the concrete reality of mass suffering, are also irritating in the extreme.
And apparent contradictions such as that Nigeria should develop her Afro-centric structure of government (no mention of overhauling the totally immoral culture system of corruption) and that if Nigeria fails to do so then the South Africa of which he says "unfortunately for that country only Nelson Mandela is holding it together as when he passes on it might be on the brink of a civil war" would have forfeited the chance to "lead" the way. Realist and optimist that I am, I find it difficult to believe that only Madiba is holding South Africa together. "Only Nelson Mandela is holding it together" opines Alhaji Bangura. Equally difficult to swallow: Alhaji Bangura's dire prophecy / warning to mankind that South Africa may break into a civil war when - inevitably - Madiba passes into the Hereafter, and that our very complex country itself currently in the midst of a low intensity terrorist civil war, if South Africa can't, "Nigeria should therefore lead the rest of Africa in evolving this rather ideal system ".
"The Howard University lecturer also charged Nigeria which would naturally address our problems that we already know" to take up the leadership position of Africa, adding that it has the resources to do so. He said failure to do so, South Africa might overtake her in the leadership race on the continent. "(Before Nigeria breaks into a religious civil war?)
Indeed South Africa's Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng has articulated that view that Madiba Nelson Mandela is a unifying force but as he also made clear in this morning's BBC Hardtalk there is a hope that nelson Mandela and the South African Constitution will continue to live in the consciousness of all South Africans.
In My view, I think that an infinitely less complicated GAMBIA could show the way of good democratic governance and the fruits thereof: development – just as Israel is that beacon of light, in the Middle East!
Happening in Stockholm this weekend
Unfortunately, I won't be able to be there. THE SABBATH!
Tomorrow I must update my blog. Too much has been happening.
Best Regards,
http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/corneliushamelberg/
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