Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - My apologies please.

Oga Cornelius,

The prose-poetry of your eliminations! Man, you are something else, you are something else! I have never ever not met a man like you! 

*cycles away slowly*

On Aug 15, 2013, at 4:20 AM, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:

 

Oga Okwy Okeke ,

This is a true story - one of your minster brothers came into the nightclub with two beautiful German bitches, one hanging on his left arm and the other hanging on his right – whereupon some drunken German tourists started to hoot and make monkey noises and performed a whooping wild jungle dance around him mocking and taunting him – they must have thought that they were in the Berlin Club 1939. Brer Minister who was in his agbada and sporting a Zik type red riding hood went to the phone and ordered two military jeeps to come to the scene of the crime pronto - and there the German tourists were bundled into the jeep taken to their hotel to collect their passports and then put on the first flight to Bonn – after which he phoned the governor who also smiled at him, "You sef now, oh you do am oh!" There was no "diplomatic incident", no fallout. You didn't read about it in any Nigerian or German newspaper.  These things 'appen.

I agree with you about Adepoju.  Just the first verse here. Apparently, Adepoju would like some Igbo authority (maybe the National Council of the Igbo Elders?) to issue a licence (like a driving licence) to speak on behalf of Igbos. I wonder what kind of licence would entitle the loose cannon to speak on behalf of Nigeria or on behalf of humanity /i-manity or just "common decency" or to speak "responsibly", or will it do to merely say God sent me or the Angel Gabriel told me to warn them?

About Cardinal Rex Lawson , well, first thing I did, I made a pilgrimage to his grave and found some goats grazing peacefully in the grass that was  growing right over him, whilst you - you were merely watching the sacred crocodiles feasting and swashbuckling their tails in the sunset  and of course keeping your hands out of harm's way. (Please tell us some more sometime)

Had a similar experience when I left flowers by Carl Michael Bellman's grave by the Church opposite Åhlens  - I remember the birds chirping  - although he isn't buried there, he's buried someplace else. That night, I dreamed I was hanging out with Bellman in an inn in eighteenth century Stockholm - and it was rather crowded, and rowdy.  Here's Martin Best (an Englishman) at his best  doing one of my Bellman songs.  I wonder how Rex or the Seagull's Prince David Bull would have done it.   

About Cardinal Rex Lawson, well poets can be dead and still write or be read - and yes they can, can be dead wrong.  If Rex's mum was Kalabari then I'm a Yoruba man. If his mum was from some Igbo clan, I'm still a Yoruba man.  

Dead write or dead wrong as it may be, here's a re-posting, And the elements were so mixed in him,

About diversity, re- your words, "Only the simpleton fails to understand the wisdom of letting the weed and the grain grow, or for the eagle and kite to perch."

To everybody:

 OH how I love this: to see heaven in a wild flower,  the previous, The Crystal Cabinet, and the next : To Thomas Butts and the one before that : The Everlasting Gospel and  while you may demur  there are those who prefer Another Verse-ion  and the one after that: Broken Love  and all of them  and worse still , thinking about Egypt and Everything

 Have been mulling over this ever since Brother Obama's visit was announced   - now consult the short note I wrote: "Nobel Peace Laureate Barack cf. security not only around him cf. also terrorism" - and then yesterday I saw some of it in print: Sweden labelled 'high risk' before Obama visit

 At this point I'm afraid to turn on the TV to see what the hell is going on in Egypt.

I wish that like  Oga Ikhide I could cycle slowly away,

and say bye for now,

We Sweden

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Thursday, 15 August 2013 02:03:17 UTC+2, okwy wrote:

Hi Cornelius (hope you don't mind the first name),

The first referenced piece in your reply is mine, while the second isn't. John Does are not all the same, especially when one of them adds a title to differentiate himself from poor proletariats like me.

You are dead right on Cardinal Rex Lawson, and I am embarrassed given that I worked in the Akaso groves as recently as last year, watched the sacred crocodiles (even as they stopped us from our task), and played in those waters, story for another day.

On the matter of The Theory of What Should Be according to Toyin Adepoju, I demur, then I was raised to find value in everything, even the hunch-backed midget, or the crooked finger as you never know what the gods may demand for sacrifice tomorrow. Only the simpleton fails to understand the wisdom of letting the weed and the grain grow, or for the eagle and kite to perch.

Cheers,...Okwy

 

------------------------------------------
We face forward,...we face neither East or West: we face forward.......Kwame Nkrumah

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From: Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Okwy Okeke <okwud...@yahoo.co.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, 14 August 2013, 19:16
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - My apologies please.

Sir,

At least I've read your AnambraForum : Message: Okwy Okeke's Lessons: Defection to  

And your comment on The Sun News Soyinka has a covenant with Igbo people , so as to have an idea of where else you're coming from.

Well of course it matters. We care. There's a world of difference between  our believing that the alleged comment  were made at a meeting of the Igbo Union (whatever public or private organisation that is or was in 1945 or even in 2013) and  believing that the same comment was made at the licensed premises of  the  Ikoyi Club 1938/ Club 1938 or in camera at some secret society oath- taking ceremony in Owerri,  or some Lodge meeting of Freemasons at Aba or even an  Arochukwu Society  meeting in Umuahia or the tribal elders meeting in Enugu or the Igbo Chamber of Commerce in Onitsha or at a meeting of The Full Gospel Business Men  Fellowship of Nigeria in Abuja.

 You say that, "This show of shame, this ethnic baiting that dominates Nigeria's blogosphere and press does not mirror what I see and experience everyday in Nigeria" You mean that the same expressions of tribalism that the media feeds to the people  is not perpetuated and regurgitated by the people  who receive them ? They (the literate masses) do not adopt those positions, arguments, understandings? But they do vote en masse at the direction of their tribal leaders?

In any case, many thanks and we all say thank you for alerting us to the web of deceit and the seriousness of our very precarious situation, in which outright lies and distortions and misinformation predominate only to fan ethnic tensions, suspicions, "ethnic baiting" and old tribal hatreds. Some of us are sick and tired of having to put up with this almost all our lives – and that includes Middle East politics. In my own personal experience, wherever two or three Arab Muslims are gathered together in the name of Allah, there you will hear some fundamental bitching about the "yehudi " and  they refuse to call it racism  claiming that they too are Semites   but the victims, those who feel  know that it's anti-Semitism.

 In our neck of the jungle, whether it's the swamps and  the oil spills  in the ecological  disaster known as the  Niger Delta, or it's  the mortuaries of the  Boko Haram North of Nigeria, the  political metaphor  about " the homicidal bitchin' that goes down in every kitchen, to determine who will serve and who will eat or chop in Nigeria , is  also about tribalism such as when the North says,

 "2015 should be our time and our turn to chop!"

 North, South, East or West, it's tribal-ism really. In  Prince Nico Mbarga's  song " Tribalism "  which begins  " According to the Bible, all people be one oh oh and nah one God create everybody"  ( I know the lyrics by heart)  Prince Nico laments that Tribalism is a "Chronic disease" an  "everlasting sickness. "

 You say that "The elites are driving the country to the precipice yet again for selfish gains" ( our time to chop) , true – and tribalism is their main weapon and means it's  through tribalism they tap into their support base and they  do so even more effectively by demonising their enemy – the rival tribe or tribes.

Is there no press ethics committee in Nigeria, no minimum standards to which journalists should be held?

 In my still humble opinion, that's why the news reporters, journalists and public opinion shapers in particular have to live up to their civic responsibilities by at least being truthful before God and man, speak truth to power  even when such power resides in the loins of their own tribal chief or president . Since the opinionated press are the main sources of mass communication of news and interpretations of news that people believe to be true and when such news is deliberately and maliciously untrue and served through the media to the masses with the intention of maximizing (good John Mbaku term) with the intention of maximizing damage, such news can and does cause a lot of havoc. It was the prelude to the genocide in Rwanda through newspapers and radio broadcasts.  It is also one of the reasons why some people are ever on the alert about e.g. anti-Semitism which if left unchecked could fans the flames of anti-Semitism as Hitler's propaganda machine did and that could (God forbid) result in another Holocaust.  That's why it has to be nipped in the bud. It should be the s<same with tribalism. One seldom hears the voices of the fringe minorities in Nigeria – it's always the big tribes that occupy most of the media space.  Ken  (  Ogoni man Saro Wiwa of course got hanged  - I've got a Irish friend here in Stockholm, James Fleming who for many years worked as a representative for the Ogoni People.....)

In one of the threads, Toyin Adepoju wonders, "if Ndigbo do not need to enter into a collective self assessment and resolve to define who speaks for Ndigbo and how to defuse the negative utterances and actions of poor Igbo politicians and reinforce those of good ones."

And I too wonder whether it's each and every lone ranger loose cannon, Tom, Dick or Barry who shoots his mouth off that can be said to be speaking on behalf of the Igbo or any other people.

You mentioned  that one of my musical icons, Cardinal Rex Lawson, was not Igbo but was Ijaw. Not entirely correct.

 Since I'm interested in African art - both painting and carvings, sculpture, before arriving in Nigeria I had read "Kalabari sculpture" by Robin Horton - an Englishman (Oxford graduate etc, like Michael Crowder and Pope Hennessy who also fell in love with West Africa and stayed on.) Robin Horton fell in love with the wonderful  Kalabari people ( just as I did too)  and lived with them – in fact he only spoke the Kalabari language with the kalabari people  and would turn on his Oxford accent only if he had to and that would be in converse with those unfamiliar with the Kalabari tongue.

 Just as with Yoruba sculpture, so too with Kalabari sculpture there's an intimate link between Kalabari sculpture and Kalabari religion by which I refer to the Akaso cult of the goddess Akaso – the mother of mothers. (It may interest you to know that during the Biafra war it is reported that Akaso saved the Kalabari nation from much harm...

I lived in Buguma with a guy called Shirley Moore, for two months in 1983 (N.B. not gay) whilst Mr. Princewill ( ex FBC) the Principal of the Kalabari National College and I were looking for suitable accommodation but could not find any - during which time met relatives and friends and musical companions of the late Cardinal Rex Lawson. I know for a fact that his parents were both Kalabari and Igbo. As you may also know, many Kalabari men have Igbo mothers. It has been explained to me that since the Kalabari women do not practice FGM – some of the Kalaabri men have preferred to marry Igbo women who they believe  can therefore be more under their control / more controllable.. If an Igbo could commandeer a dozen war canoes he could also become a sort of chief, in Kalabari land, ruled by His Royal Highness the AMANYANABO , The King of the Kalabari.

 Am feeling very sad about the turn of events in Egypt. Who benefits by all this? Certainly not the Egyptian people.

Almost time for the news.

We Sweden

 

 

 

On Wednesday, 14 August 2013 11:49:36 UTC+2, okwy wrote:

Cornelius,

Not that it matters, but for the records, that comment was made at Ikoyi Club 1938, or Ikoyi Club for short.

It has been mis-quoted, wrongly ascribed, and put forward as proof for everything, so expect it to be put forward by others not just in beer parlors but in this group. If then chairman of Guardian Newspapers' Editorial Board could claim as recently as 2001 that Rex Lawson was Igbo (he is Ijaw) and that his song "Ewu N'ebe Akwa" that was released in 1964 mocked the killing of Ahmadu Bello in Jan 1966 and has not retracted same to date as justification for mass killing, what do you expect of his present day tawdry imitators?

Charles Dadi Onyeama was Nigeria's first judge at the International Court of Justice, and son of Eze Onyeama (Enugu coal mines are named after the later). Ascribing that story to Nnamdi Azikiwe is pathetic given the tense relationship between him and Eze Onyeama. The story, apocryphal I may add, goes that Nnamdi Azikiwe was in Charles Dadi Onyeama's court in show of support for a friend, not being one to miss an opportunity to get one up the other, Justice Onyeama looked at  him and asked whether he had seen him before on the premise he looked like someone he had jailed in the past, to which Zik replied in the affirmative, tongue-in-cheek though, and to help joggle the former's memory put the date on the day the Justice's father committed suicide, I digress.

This show of shame, this ethnic baiting that dominates Nigeria's blogosphere and press does not mirror what I see and experience everyday in Nigeria. The elites are driving the country to the precipice yet again for selfish gains.

Okwy Okeke 

 

------------------------------ ------------
We face forward,...we face neither East or West: we face forward.......Kwame Nkrumah

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From: Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
To: usaafric...@ googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, 14 August 2013, 3:17
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - My apologies please.

There's the saying, "Let the fool speak and the wise give no answer"  and I suppose that's why some of the wise mwalimu in this series did not even deign to challenge  "the domination of Nigeria and Africa by the Igbo is only a matter of time'' being wrongly attributed to ZIK who was most probably incapable of making such a prophecy / prediction. Such wishful thinking/ "unsavoury comments" were allegedly made as early as 1945, by one Mr. Charles Dadi Onyeama, a member of the Central Legislative Council representing Enugu in his address to the Igbo State Union. He must have been in a hopeful, exhalative mood, nothing dangerous. Looking slightly further ahead in time he could have added "and give us a little extra time and we will rule the world!"  - although I don't think that if he had said that it would have worried the Americans, the Russians, the Chinese or the Indians one iota – the wise men among them would check his prophecy against their own and  then it could be a matter of " let the fool speak and the wise give no answer", all over again. Charles Dadi Onyeama was only giving a pep talk to his brethren in the Igbo State Union. We shouldn't read more into it than that. If he stood up at the podium of the UN General Assembly and said that, " It's only a matter of time before the Igbos rule Nigeria , Africa and the world"  he would probably get a round of applause, if not a standing ovation....

The lyrics of this song apply to all of us. If we would all love our neighbours as ourselves, we would be living in the ideal world.

 even they are different....

Over here we're getting ready to welcome Brother Obama!

We Sweden

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