Re: What you said in this thread
Wofa Akwasi B. Assensoh,
Sure, the liar also sometimes wants us to believe that he is "speaking in good faith". I am also speaking in good faith.
First of all I pray that if it be the Divine will, that Brother Obama will visit Madiba in hospital, in Pretoria, tomorrow...
I hope that calling you my honourable uncle (Wofa) is not a misplaced title – as could be thought by the biologically created creatures known as the literalists. In a similar vein, I always feel a little thrill of appreciation for Rabbi David Lazar and his socially advanced vocabulary when he addresses me, as he usually does, as "Brother". He is a very, socially good-willed and culturally aware rabbi, in this world in which we live. Modern rabbinical vocabulary, from the melting pots of Israel and California. Of absolute relevance.
I should like to include my honourable self among the "some of us (who) are itching to read (or enjoy) Alhaji Bangura's "I Have Been to the Mountain Top" Lecture at University of Lagos (Unilag), Akoka."
As to your sniper observation in which you say that "Being a Muslim I am sure that our learned colleague and brother was spared of any threat by Boko Haram when he was in Nigeria!" I can only second your emotion. It was with that sort of reality in mind that I asked Chidi Anthony Opara the precautionary question - for survival reasons - whether or not he thought it was safe for me to be invited to Owerri. But the Boko Haram operations / atrocities/ are still being carried out/ perpetrated far from the areas occupied by the former Biafra, most probably because the Boko Haram people even if anxious or hungry for the virgins of paradise to be acquired through suicide martyrdom operations – are also painfully aware that the Igbo reprisals would be swift and the rewards cannot be all that immediate or guaranteed if after death it turns out that the virgins are not there, waiting to be subservient to the martyrs – in fact that they simply do not exist outside of their vain own hopes, fantasies and beautiful imaginations.
But back to Alhaji Bangura. And a not so important question: has he been on hajj – to Mecca? Only qualified by such a pilgrimage can he wear such a title. Such a title cannot be bought by money or conferred by the kuffar. Nothing less than physically being present at the hajj will do the trick. That's why the honourable title of the former president of Sierra Leone was Alhaji Dr.Ahmad Tejan Kabbah - the title was not sarcastic, he had been on hajj to Mecca.
It's probably the sort of lecture that Alhaji Bangura would have much preferred that Presidential Brother Barack Obama deliver in Abuja if the White House had decided to include a state visit to Nigeria in their summer itinerary. No sour grapes here, Brother Obama would probably attract a crowd of more than 1,000 people who would attend such a Distinguished Lecture, not to mention the the government ministers, the civil society representatives, the religious leaders, the United States Embassy personnel, the news media representatives, and the many Afrikan Family Members who would come from other parts of the country, the radio and TV interviews, and the TV Continental show that would be broadcast across the Motherland, the BBC, CNN, CBS, C-Span and other prime time news coverage outlets. This is what happens when the president of the United States of America speaks: the whole world listens.
But I'm sure that if Brother Barack Hussein Obama the first and current Black President of the United States of America were to deliver a lecture on the same subject, a glimpse of which we may catch here, the contents of Brother Obama's lecture on the same topic would be slightly different - the content would be variations on the theme of his presidential address to Africa, delivered from the podium in Accra in July, 2009 and from the podium of the University of Cairo, in Egypt on June 4th 2009 - that which in my opinion lit the fuse to what is still being called "The Arab Spring". Lately Brother Obama has been telling the post- colonial Afrikans who fifty years later are still complaining and blaming it all on "masssa". Brother Obama says: Don't blame colonialism. Stop it! Take responsibility, now!
Lastly, Sheikh Bangura advances a notion which according to my understanding is close to a foundational argument for Islamic government in Islam-dominant worlds although he dresses it up in the preamble of the new missionary position that we have been hearing about since before Africa was granted or regained what's known as "Independence" namely about "evolving an Afrocentric socio-political structure of governance" versus " the western-defined democracy structure which, according to him, has been foisted on countries and has proved to be alien to them with its unattainable tenets and codes"
About that issue for today, I think that you'll agree with me the last word must be granted to this section of the news report, about the need for the rule of law as a force that would govern African democracy:
"It is sad that the rule of democracy are more often than not sidetracked or totally disregarded on the continent. This situation has made the dividends of democracy to remain a dissolving mirage in many African countries such that a majority of the people live below $1 a day," said Babawale.
While admitting recent reports of economic growths recorded in parts of the continent, the CBAAC chief opined that to sustain the tempo of economic growth, there was need to strengthen democratic institutions by way of a focused leadership in political offices.
Babawale in calling for a new paradigm in administering democracy in the continent, said it would ultimately ensure that basic infrastructure and needs are provided by the political office holder, which democracy at the basic level also ensures in the western countries of practice.
"We must make our democracy more inclusive in concrete terms and confront frontally the hydra-headed monster of corruption. My view is that one avenue to achieve the above is to adopt a new paradigm of the democratic developmental state which will help us do away with the problems of elected autocracies and enable us to meet the basic needs of our people," he posited."
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