Dear Ogbeni Kadiri,
It's 4.30 a.m. in Stockholm. Which "Bread of deceit" are you talking about?
The Siddur note on "good prophets" reads:
"The theme of the Haftarah blessings is the integrity of the prophets and their teachings. Even when it is their mission to criticize and threaten, they are good to the Jewish people. "
I always bear this in mind when I think of the battle of Khaybar
Whilst some of you guys were busy obtaining your highest degrees, I spent some time studying, among other matters, the history of anti-Semitism . It's a long history. Check the daily news.
What's the point of ascribing to me words and ideas that are not mine and that I never uttered? Just like you so too Cornelius is fully aware that at no point in time was Nazi Germany in any shape or form a twin partner of Nigeria or that the discrimination of Nigerian citizens that are of Igbo stock is or was exactly the same as the murderous anti-Semitism of the Third Reich which culminated in the Holocaust. So, spare me that kind of bull and stop going out of your way to foist such false ideas on me.
Next you'll be telling me that I think that the Igbos are the Tutsi or the other guys. Or that the Igbos are the Israelis and that Gowon was Chairman Arafat. I never said any such things or made any such comparisons and if you think that I did, please show me exactly where.
Each tragedy, each genocide has its own particular history. For instance the history of the Jewish Diaspora is - you will agree, not the same as the history of any other Diaspora people. The Jewish citizens of Germany and other European Jewish victims of the Nazis were not Igbos - at least you must agree that I understand that – and that the Jewish people were murdered by the Nazis because they were Jews. So please stop this hue and cry that I am "belittling" the Holocaust and for once and for all please try to get it in your head that likewise far be it from me to belittle the tragedy that befell the Igbo people before, during and after the Biafra War or indeed the tragedy that is befalling innocent Nigerians that are still being murdered by Boko Haram right now, today.
You are now telling this forum that "The persecution of the Jews in Germany came after they have acquired properties and not before." – by which of course you mean the Nazi persecution of the Jews
The persecution of the Jews in Germany
What are you suggesting here? Transposing that parallel to the Nigerian context should your sentence read: (a) "The Pogroms against the Igbos in Nigeria came after they had acquired properties and not before" or (b) should it read "The Pogroms against the Igbos in Nigeria came before they had acquired properties and not after they had acquired properties "?
I guess going way back to before the temerity of your good friend and role model – the one you are still fighting for, stiff upper lip Baron Lugard welded everybody so willing together in holy national matrimony in 1914. As Emeka Ojukwu said time and again, we shall have to visit the very foundations.
Now what are you going to say ?
I'm waiting, patiently
Cornelius
On Tuesday, 24 November 2015 02:20:06 UTC+1, ogunlakaiye wrote:
Dear Menahem Hamelberg!! You continue to shoot in the dark and you are missing your targets by wide margin. After stating that I could well ask the same question about Jews of Nazi Germany and the rest of Europe, you queried, 'how could persecuted, oppressed and marginalised and unjustly treated Jews in Europe have been able to acquire properties?' Your query is intended to support your earlier stand that persecuted and oppressed Igbo in Nigeria could acquire properties just as the Jews did in Germany, but you are wrong. The persecution of the Jews in Germany came after they have acquired properties and not before. If they have been persecuted in the real sense of the word, they would not have been able to acquire any properties. If we limit ourselves to Germany, I am yet to read in history, where Jewish officers in the German Army staged a coup d'état killing German Chancellor and officers in the Army to take over the government of the country. In fact, Hitler's extermination plan for the Jews as published in his Mein Kampf was premised on the intellectual, industrial and commercial success of the German Jews. In Nigeria, a coup that was initially planned by nationalists was infiltrated and turned into ethnic revolution, whereby non-Igbo politicians and army officers were killed and their positions were filled by Igbo army officers and civilians at the federal level. That was the origin of the July 1966 counter coup and the so called pogrom in the North, as well as subsequent secession of Biafra and the civil war. Igbo situation in Nigeria before and during the war cannot be compared or equated to that of the Jews in Hitler's Germany. Hitler did not start the war to keep the Jews German and the Jews did not declare a portion of Germany as a republic of the Jews. After the civil war in Nigeria, persons of Igbo ethnic group have been Vice President, President of the Senate, Speaker of the House, Minister of Finance, Governor of Central Bank, Minister of External Affairs, Permanent Representative at the United Nations, etc. As of today the fate of ordinary Igbo man in Nigeria is the same as for all other ethnic groups in the country. The exploitation and impoverishment of the Nigerian masses are perpetrated by the amalgamation of all ethnic politicians and civil servants at federal, state and local government level. Thus, it will be absurd to pick a single tribe as a victim of the system in Nigeria. Based on this, I say emphatically that Igbo are not Jews in Nigeria. Much as you are free to feed your Biafran pals with bread of deceit, I am obliged to remind you of the contents of Proverbs 20:17, "Bread of deceit is sweet to man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel."...
S.Kadiri
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2015 07:40:54 -0800
From: cornelius...@gmail.com
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's QuoteA-MENDED!PS
In anticipation of what you're going to say, I should like to point out the following, but not in order to pre-empt you:
You keep on harping on the difference between the situation for the Igbos in pre-Biafra Nigeria with the anti-Igbo pogroms in the North etc. and the situation of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany (The Nuremberg Race Laws etc.) and the perennial anti-Semitism in other parts of Europe before WW2.
About the Igbos, you asked, "how could persecuted, oppressed, marginalised and unjustly treated Igbos in Nigeria have been able to acquire properties?"
Dear Salimonu, you could well ask the same question about the Jews of Nazi Germany and the rest of Europe: "how could persecuted, oppressed, marginalised and unjustly treated Jews in Europe have been able to acquire properties?"
One little last thing about abandoned properties. After staying in hotels for three months @ £60 per day (bill footed by the Rivers State Got) Mr. Harry (at the ministry of education Port Harcourt) eventually got me accommodation in Port Harcourt - in the course of scouting for a accommodation some discussion of abandoned properties) - he got me the top floor of an apartment with all modern facilities but (it's called empathy) I gave the apartment to a Ghanaian friend Reuben Atilley – a choreographer and dance teacher because he had a large family and I was only expecting to be joined by Better Half and son. At the end of the day (I already knew too many people in Port Harcourt, chief of whom best friends George, Ernest, Cromwell, Emma Wopara, Bassey) thought that social life in that city was going to be too hectic and that's how I arranged with Lady Ngozi ("take it easy Cornelius") – nice & easy, God bless Nigeria and was content with the little bungalow and work in Ahoada. Btw I much prefer the pastoral African village life (Makeni, Magburaka in the Sierra Leone forests) to the hustle and bustle of city civilisation. But on weekends it was back to city civilisation, Prince David Bull at Romeo Hotel , the Salt& Pepper disco in Port Harcourt, Kofi Sammy in Aba, Dr. Sir Warrior & Oriental Brothers @ the White House in Owerri etc.--- you only live once, and that was a grass bachelor's life, nothing to regret.
N.B. I am not a Lugardist at heart.
Always Yours Sincerely,
Cornelius
Stockholm,
We Sweden
On Sunday, 22 November 2015 20:20:13 UTC+1, ogunlakaiye wrote:With eloquently crafted Oxford English, you narrated below that you met Alfred Papapreye Diete-Spiff, the former Governor of Rivers State and even Chief Justice of Rivers State but none of them spoke to you about Biafra or abandoned properties. I wonder why a Biafran hugging liberal like you did not seize the opportunity of your association with the aforementioned friends of yours to discuss abandoned properties of the Igbo in Port Harcourt.
In your item 2, you exclaimed, "Yes indeed, the Nazis looted Jewish property," as if I had disputed it. What I have cautioned you not to do is to equate the persecution of the Jews in Europe, up to the end of World War II, with the fate of the Igbo in the Nigerian civil war. Only a Biafran extremist will equate Igbo situation in Nigeria to pre-World War II situation of the Jews in Europe.
In the same item 2 you wrote, "And when it comes to Biafra, IBK would probably be the first to say that 1981-1984, I have been soaked and marinated in Biafra propaganda." The impression I get from reading the foregoing is that you were in Nigeria, Rivers State, between 1981 and 1984. If that is true, it means that your statement in item 1 (Many different people pointed out some of these houses and others of impeccable integrity mentioned the facticity of allegedly abandoned properties) was an Igbo folklore developed from their myths on the civil war. By 1981 when you arrived in Nigeria Igbo had fully been re-integrated into Nigeria after the war that ended on January 15, 1970. The vice President of Nigeria was Dr Alex Ekwueme and the Speaker of the House was Edwin Ume-Ezeoke. Igbo were in all parts of Nigeria in large numbers. Your informants on abandoned properties probably saw you as a semi-arian race and sold the folklore to you with the intention of attracting your sympathy and handouts of money. Your mission in Port Harcourt was not to investigate thirteen years old abandoned Igbo properties and there was no reason for anyone to come and complain to you about his/her abandoned properties unless he/she could get some pecuniary gains from you. It is amusing to read from you that oppressed, persecuted, marginalised and unjustly treated could be allowed by their oppressors and persecutors to acquire properties. Very soon, you will say Palestinians are acquiring properties, not in Sadam's Iraq but, in Netanyahu's Israel.
As if the Igbo must sing the same song as the Scots and Catalans, you asked, "What is the motivation of Scots and Catalans?" If the Scots and Catalans sing, Divided we stand, United we fall to the United Kingdom and Spain respectively, why must Igbo sing the same song to Nigeria? Are you saying everything done by the Caucasians is good and should be copied by Africans? Intoxicated with the wine of every man gotta a right to determine his own destiny, you want every village in Nigeria to be a country because in Sierra Leone, a tree makes a forest!! I disagree with you.
S.Kadiri
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2015 14:32:19 -0800
From: cornelius...@gmail.com
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's QuoteDear Ogbeni Kadiri,
Before any of these most recent forum discussions of Biafra you have told me time without number that you are not against Biafra per se - (We are all Nigerians etc.) and I believe you.
Many different people pointed out some of these houses and others of impeccable integrity mentioned the facticity of allegedly abandoned properties. I don't feel called upon to reveal their names. In my first week in Nigeria, I had dinner with the former Governor of Rivers state Alfred Papapreye Diete-Spiff at his residence, but we did not speak about Biafra and I did not return to visit him because I saw some nice mademoiselles at his residence and as if by precognition did not wanting to get even remotely involved or to get too close to any of them or their ogas, so that later when things go wrong my ass does not becomes grass. . Nor did the Chief Justice of Rivers State who I met the first week and finally two days before I felt Nigeria ever breathe the word Biafra in my ear. In London, Port Harcourt, Owerri, Aba and Umuahia I met and stayed with other Ogas who were much closer to Biafra…
Yes indeed, the Nazis looted Jewish property. Now please stop being pompous and overly self-righteous. Even if you don't know any better, I know that in saying that in no way was it meant to be "an extreme belittlement of the Jewish sufferings in Nazi Europe and over-exaggeration of Igbo sufferings during the civil war in Nigeria to equate the two un-identical events in history as one." By the way in 1969 someone looted a painting worth £15,000 Sterling belonging to me and my Better Half ( I wrote to Professor Simon Ottenberg about this a few years ago )
You know that I don't doubt or have any reason to doubt your absolute honesty, integrity, sincerity, high moral ground or that your points of view are partly informed by your own experience of the Biafra War and that you would not like to see a repeat of either the Biafran death toll, some
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