Oba Obi,
Like music to my ears: "Ah, my brother! You're of course my brother, having lived among "my people" and shared that holy gruel from the palm with others at the rise of the sun in that land."
I miss Nigeria: the Delta Creeks, Nembe, Port Harcourt, Owerri, Aba, Umuahia, and Buguma...
Indeed, the holy gruel from the palm - borei pri hagafen!
Uninitiated my ess! C'mon Papa Doc, you are a sophisticated man, after all that jazz, Joyce, Pound, Yeats, world literature, or must we only engage with the loins of your masculine riddim like Aime Cesaire, Tchicaya U Tam'si, Syl Cheney-Coker? And in the philosophy department, of course Kwame Anthony Appiah and Lewis Ricardo Gordon? Where should stiff upper lip go for comedy?
I guess that Emeka Ojukwu's version of the Biafra War would have sounded like scripture to you, especially if written posthumously, with a vantage view – maybe quite another perspective after meetings with both Igbo and Federal victims of the Biafra War on the other side. But Biafra is not one of my favourite topics of discussion. I am as morally outraged as you, but I am much better informed about the Second World War and the Holocaust, of which I am reminded each time I go to the library, since I go past this Holocaust Memorial Wall which leads to the front door and I am a voracious reader.
Like all the Holocaust victims whose names are engraved on the wall, I am also mortal – flesh and blood, very much so, and so is everyone in my household, my children, grandchildren, my parents, grandparents, great grandparents and great great grandparents and that's why I'm puzzled that in your last two posts you keep on harping about being "merely" mortal. Today, you talk about "uninitiated mere mortals like me" and yesterday too it was "mere mortals like me". I may sometimes sound a little like Benjamin the donkey in Animal Farm but seldom like Bilal ibn Rabah, Islam's first muezzin who (in his own words) even after liberation from slavery, maybe as an act of humility would keep on referring to himself in the past tense...
"Mere mortal like me", If it were an Igbo Lady going on like that I would think that she was being coy as in
"Then I think you're playing far too rough
for a lady who's been to the moon"
Your last posts show me how mortal you are too, especially after listening to you here. You could give me a call sometime so that you can verify how very mortal I am. You could be pleasantly surprised.
By the way (1) Kadiri is a nice chap. He keeps me laughing with all those "chicken growing teeth" Yoruba jokes and he's a cultural chauvinist of course (he thinks that Soukous is like "Spanish music" not like Apala.... Don't mind him....
By the way (2) Archbishop Desmond Tutu & his daughter Mpho were also going on about forgiveness in this program ...they leave me wondering how much of that spirit and the insights from Mr. Soyinka's The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness have been relevant to post- Biafra healing processes.
On Sunday, 28 September 2014 16:38:34 UTC+2, Rex Marinus wrote:
" You are making a big mistake. You are at liberty to repeat your mistake declare a new Biafra and see what happens this time too and then you can compose some Jeremiah-like lamentations about "the responsibility for your own suffering but not those who levied war against you""
-Cornelius Hamelberg
Ah, my brother! You're of course my brother, having lived among "my people" and shared that holy gruel from the palm with others at the rise of the sun in that land. And yes, Ishmael Reed did say something about that Hoodoo man coming from the stock of the "Long juju of the Arno (Aro) in Eastern Nigeria" in Mumbo Jumbo. But sir, it takes great art to understand your "signifying" and for the uninitiated mere mortals like me, it might finally take a visit to Ihu Chukwu N'Aro. I say this with great humility.
And to the above: I do not write to "declare a new Biafra." I have not recovered from the old Biafra yet. I write this rejoinder only in salute to the great wisdom of the Igbo sages who said: "the real problem with the world is when the old see and do not talk, and the young hear, but do not listen." I think you misread my intentions. My true intentions have been to "refute" Salimonu Kadiri's revisionism. It is linear, and I do not mind to say, irresponsible too. There you have too!
Obi Nwakanma
Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 19:06:06 -0700
From: cornelius...@gmail.com
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Tribute: General Benjamin AdekunleObi,
It's half past three in the morning and there you go again! I hope that title Obi is big enough, to cover the aura hanging over your head.
Next you'll want to give me a reading list from the thousands of books about Biafra and expect me to understand them all. I think that you are talking to the wrong Yoruba man this time. Fortunately for me I know nothing about any Abam Masquerade or Oko Jumbo, so I dunno what you are talking or trying to talk about or if your Oko is standing on its own two hind legs like Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo or if you are transmitting directly from mother tongue Igbo. Obviously you can´t understand my simple prose, but I'm not going to say to you, what you said to Mr. Kadiri that "it is either you do not understand the English language well enough" etc
"for mere mortals like (you?) to grasp its tail not to talk of its head"?
That's how smart you really are. The monkey (not a mortal) knows the difference between his head and his tail and that is no fault of mine. "It's only that I understand the man that the monkey can leave behind." (JT)
It's a popular Jewish prayer, to be the head and not the tail. Perhaps you think that is far, far away from humility?
You are making a big mistake. You are at liberty to repeat your mistake declare a new Biafra and see what happens this time too and then you can compose some Jeremiah-like lamentations about "the responsibility for your own suffering but not those who levied war against you"
Some words - just as "metal on concrete" jars your drink lobes" indeed.
Prodigal, and what about the "watery presence"?
You "don't know about "common understanding"? Well, common understanding is that water for example is wet, blood is red, birth is the beginning and death is the end, not the beginning of some mumbo jumbo about "eternal life"
Mr. Kadiri mentioned some gradgrindian facts – what happened - (did Jesus die on the cross or not) not the various interpretations of events, or your hermeneutics about signs and wonders. If you want to go anywhere with this issue – you could start by refuting the facts that are documented and commonly accepted by the likes of Achebe, Adichie, Ojukwu himself and other "victims of the war in Biafra "
Quoting one Dr.Mensah, you say that Mr Kadir should "show some respect to historical truth" He probably is not aware of such a "fact" and the fact is that sometimes one historical truth head-butts another "truth" - yes indeed Dr. Mensah's report corrects an omission from an earlier report – and you may kindly leave my "mind" out of it - since none of those events depend on my having a "mind" or not.
My heart is not made of stone. I lived with your people for four years you know, so, am I not your Brother? I've have met a few Igbo warriors from that war in and out of Nigeria, and after hundreds of hours of discussion I should say that I have a fairly good idea about what happened and that perhaps if I had accepted the invitation to join the Arochukwu society, I would have learned a little more.
As I gathered later, the Biafra cause was very popular in Sweden - in fact when we finally moved to Sweden in October 1971 – I once got a lift on someone's moped over Västerbrön to Reimersholme where we lived and when we got over the bridge the guy who had given me the lift took me to a kiosk , where he bought me a litre of milk and insisted that I drink up. He told me that he understood that I was from Biafra and that is why I was looking so thin. So I drank up.
In addressing Mr. Kadiri, you could lay more emphasis on this your loaded question: "should Ojukwu have surrendered in the face of a federal onslaught that, from July 29 1966 made it clear that its aim was to selectively annihilate the Igbo, and did not do anything in the period to reassure the Igbo of their safety in the federation?"
And why should I believe Madiebo's account when pitted against Adekunle's? (N.B. I'm a sceptic, I don't even believe in the so called " Gospels ". You may even prefer Dante's Inferno for all I care ( I give you permission) - he will be remembered long after Obi Nwakanma and some of his favourite priests are forgotten - and there you have it...
CH.
On Sunday, 28 September 2014 02:04:32 UTC+2, Rex Marinus wrote:Cornelius, you've spoken too much like the Abam Masquerade - Oko Jumbo:) it is speech that moves far too much about on two left legs, for mere mortals like me to grasp its tail not to talk of its head. I reframed Kadiri's statement in order to reiterate and amplify its intentions, and of course dispute it. What he communicates clearly to me ( I do not know about "common understanding") is that there is only one acceptable interpretation of the cause, and the effect of that Biafra war - that is, that the victims of the war in Biafra bear the responsibility for their own suffering but not those who levied war against them. Mr. Kadiri should please show some respect to historical truth, that is all I ask. I mean, take for example your reference to the report of the International Observer team of 1968; but how about the report of the International Committee for the Study of the Crime of Genocide of the International Commission of Jurists led by the Ghanaian Dr. Mensah in 1969. I quote here its conclusions, and particularly its reference to the work of the International observer team of which you and Salimonu Kadiri make great hay:
"Further, in the International Observer Team's Report it is stated that observers have encountered difficulties in obtaining access to certain parts of the Port Harcourt Region in Occupied Biafra. The Team wished to go to Elele and other villages near Port Harcourt to investigate a report of mass extermination. They were refused access by the Military Commander on the grounds that he had no instructions to allow them to enter the area and they had to return to Lagos where they took the matter up with the Federal Government. This resulted in their obtaining permission to enter the area two weeks later, and not immediately. This could indicate a deliberate attempt by the Federal Government to cover up incriminating evidence. During my visit, I must say, I did not encounter any such obstruction, but it is obviously in the interest of the Federal Government, subject to genuine requirements of military security, to allow independent observers free access to the occupied areas. Finally, I am of the opinion that in many of the cases cited to me hatred of the Biafrans and a wish to exterminate them was a foremost motivational factor" (31-32).
This report by the International Commission of Jurists clearly raises doubts on the accounts and conclusions of the report of the International Observer Team of 1968, but not in your mind or in Mr. Kadiri's mind. And by the way, if you do not like the accounts of Waugh & Cronje, because they are "third rate" and they are "2nd hand," then read Madiebo, Commander of the Biafran Army, whose first rate account of the war is a classic, and puts to question Salimonu Kadiri's claims. And pleas, sir, stop quoting Pope or some obscure neo-classical or late renaissance poet to me; they "jar my drinking lobes;" I prefer such as Senghor or Okigbo, with the muscular rhythms. I salute you.
Obi Nwakanma
Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 11:19:00 -0700
From: cornelius...@gmail.com
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Tribute: General Benjamin AdekunleRex Marinus,You know that you and Mr. Kadiri are never going to agree about these mattersAway with this type of sophistry! Please be a little more respectful to Mr. Kadiri. There is no room for "it is either you do not understand the English language well enough to register and recognize your own intentions, or you do not know exactly the nature of your intentions"
Are you hereby pandering to Pope's mischievous irony that
"A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ..."
?
My understanding and the common understanding is that Mr. Kadiri did not say " This is the story of the Nigerian Civil War as this writer wishes to see it" Did he say that? NO! So, as Mr. Kadiri says so indignantly, you have reframed his sentence to convey your own message.
Please let your message stand on its own legs (not Mr. Kadiri's) and on your own facts / story / understanding...and yes, as you rightfully (righteously?) say, Mr. Kadiri's "intention is to put the responsibility of the suffering in Biafra squarely on Ojukwu and Igbo leadership and to absolve Awo and Adekunle of the responsibilities for war crimes." Mr. Kadiri does not oppose this understanding, so what is all the fuss about? I would have thought that the matter had been brought to a successful conclusion with this paragraph from Mr. Kadiri (faintly reminiscent of Hamas using human shields in Gaza):
"In the history of warfare, the Federal Military Government led by General Yakubu Gowon at the time in question has been highly commended for inviting International Observer Team to the war fronts to follow and report on the conducts of the Federal troops. The International Observer Team were from the United Nations, the Organization of African Unity (present day African Union), Britain, Canada, Sweden and Poland. The International Observer Team issued its first interim report on October 3, 1968, in which it established that there was "no evidence of any intent by the Federal troops to destroy the Ibo people (as they were then known) or their property, and the use of the term genocide is in no way justified." The Polish representative in the Observer Team, Colonel Alfons Olkiewiez, at a press conference said that the Team had spoken to 'thousands and thousands of Ibos, soldiers, missionaries and relief workers but had found no trace of mass-killings of Ibos.' The Swedish member of the Observer Team, Major-General Arthur Raab, was quoted by Carl Gustav von Rosen, a Biafran sympathiser as having said that after seven months of observations, 'we have still not seen any signs of the mass anihilation which Ojukwu claims is threatened by the Federal side. Ojukwu is deliberately transferring military headquarters to schools, hospitals, churches and so on. In which case, can one call these civilian targets?' Conversion of civilian establishments into military base was confirmed by Chinua Achebe in his Swan song - There Was a Country - when he wrote on page 172 that his ancestral house was forcibly converted into a military base by the Biafran Army and the residents woke up in the middle of the night by artillery exchanges between the Biafran and Nigerian forces."
During the war many of us were not neutral - as we understood it, Biafra had a moral case but the way things were going the best outcome would have been for all hostilities to cease immediately. We were among the first to append our signatures when Professor Eldred Jones was petitioning for Wole Soyinka's release.
It's been said that "In war, truth is the first casualty"
With regard to Biafra, is this true or false?
The good the bad and the ugly vs. the beautyful ones are not yet born?
I think of you, I think of the Biafra War, the gravity of what some still call "the Biafran Holocaust" and the verisimilitude of the bildungsroman, of how rapidly one bloody event succeeded the other in the disparate stream of events that culminated in Biafra, the war whether inevitable or not and the loss of Biafra, even if after the tragedy, the dream lives on.
How different is the story of Biafra from the history of Biafra? The difference is surely not that between fact and fiction. Perhaps, it's the same difference between addressing you in poetry and addressing you in prose? The difference between the national epic/mythopoeia and the cold prose in which is written the history of Hitler...except that in the history of Biafra and in the history of Nigeria there is no Hitler, so there is no need for your Deutsche Dogge attitude towards Brother Salimonu Kadiri about exhorting him to read some second hand books and third rate accounts written by the guys you mentioned (all published in 1969) when, as Ikhide Ikheloa so recently laments in his latest piece, it's " most curious and disheartening that the late Chief Ojukwu failed to give us what would have been the most comprehensive account of Biafra."
There's a great difference of course between reading those kinds of books and actually being in the thick of it (in action, in the field). Whether it's about what happened in Ghana on February 24th, 1966, or after the elections in Sierra Leone on March 17, 1967 or indeed with Biafra from May 30th 1967.
Is it any wonder the Junior Jesus / J J Rawlings' second coming was on 31st December 1981 and Muhammadu Buhari's coup was on 31st December 1983? Perhaps a good time to strike when everybody is tipsy and a festive 'appi New Year mood?
There is a domino effect theory – that some of the military officers from former British colonial West Africa were trained at Sandhurst and Aldershot where the camaraderie started, and that's why we find that a coup in Ghana is followed by a coup in Nigeria, is followed by a coup in Sierra Leone - and when it comes to the latter I don't need to read Cox's "Civil-Military Relations in Sierra Leone: A Case Study of African Soldiers in Politics" or W Scott-Thompson's "Ghana's foreign policy, 1957-1966" (which I finally found in an antiquities bookshop in Cairo of all places) to learn the genesis of those books or to learn exactly what happened, since you are not going to find the essence of exactly what happened in e.g. Cox's book.
(I guess that it's the difference between being at the foot of Mt. Sinai at Shavuot - and reading the learned rabbis commentaries and songs about the event a few thousand years later...
C.H.
On Tuesday, 16 September 2014 06:20:22 UTC+2, seguno2013 wrote:Benjamin Adesanya Maja Adekunle, a hero, a man who loved his country and gave his life for unity and peace of Nigeria. The "Black Scorpion" as he was popularly called who put smiles on our faces at the end of the civil war. A no nonsense warrior of his time. A man of great honor to the Black race.A man who stood to challenge racists because he believed in equality of all races because all human beings are created equal by God.The country owes him a great honor and it should be given to immortalize him.
May his soul rest in perfect peace as he has joined his ancestors and may the family and friends receive the most generous hands of comfort from the ancestors and that Olodumare grants them the fortitude to bear the irreparable loss of this great hero. Aase.
Segun Ogungbemi Ph.DProfessor of PhilosophyAdekunle Ajasin UniversityAkungba-Akoko, Ondo StateNigeriaCellphone: 0803304137108024670952Benjamin Adesanya Maja Adekunle, a hero, a man who loved his country and gave his life for unity and peace of Nigeria. The "Black Scorpion" as he was popularly called who put smiles on our faces at the end of the civil war. A no nonsense warrior of his time.A man who stood to challenge racists because he believed in equality of all races because all human beings are created equal by God.The country owes him a great honor and it should be given to immortalize him.
May his soul rest in perfect peace as he has joined his ancestors and may the family and friends receive the most generous hands of comfort from the ancestors and that Olodumare grants them the fortitude to bear the irreparable loss of this great hero. Aase.
Segun Ogungbemi Ph.D
Professor of Philosophy
Adekunle Ajasin University
Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State
Nigeria
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