It was Oliver Cromwell who, soaked his hand with the blood of Charles the 1st to demonstrate that the royal blood was not blue but red like all other human beings. I respect all human beings except hypocrites who occupy high offices and utilize their positions to exploit and oppress people. Justice brings peace and peace triggers progress.
Whatever is dirty and sacrilegious in our culture should be abandoned. No one is advocating that people should procreate indiscriminately since it was never like that in our culture, at least, up to the time Emir Mohammadu Sanusi was born. It was an era in which money must be earned through the sweat of one's brow and in realistic magnitude to one's production. In the Nigerian era of Emir Sanusi, life has become a lottery in which government officials consider themselves as lucky winners. Thus, officials are not satisfied with their huge incomes and allowances, they have to cart away funds meant for industrial development of the country that should bring succour to citizens. The Western system of government that Nigeria adopted has not only been bastardized by the generation of Emir Sanusi but even our culture. You quoted him thus, "Those of us in the north have all seen the economic consequences of men who are not capable of maintaining one wife, marrying four. They end up producing 20 children, not educating them, leaving them on the streets, and they end up as thugs and terrorists." In the good olden days, a man's capability of maintaining a wife was determined by a joint intermediary set up by the parents (families) of the bride and the bridegroom. Sexual intercourse before marriage was an abomination. Then, if a man who has 20 children wants to educate them according to the desire of Emir Sanusi, is there any school he can enrol his children? On the 26th of February 2017, the Nigerian Guardian online wrote that the purpose of mass wedding of 1,520 widows, divorcees and spinsters in Kano State by Governor Abdullahi Ganduje, was to combat rising rates of divorce, births out of wedlock and the number of impoverished widows and divorcees in the State. In Nigeria, where it is usual for employees of the federal, state and local governments to be owed six months or one year salary, what alternative has a man with a housewife than to divorce or abandon the wife and children? If the rate of births out of wedlock in Kano is very high and rampant, how then would Emir Sanusi's Islamic marriage law enforcement prevent births out of wedlock?
Although, Benue State is geographically counted as part of the North, the marriage problem there is quite different from that of Kano State. The wife of the Governor, Mrs Eunice Ortom, recently appealed to the traditional ruler of TIV land to reduce bride price for TIV women due to the fact that many young girls cannot find husbands because of high bride prices in TIV land.
https://guardian.ng/news/reduce-bride-price-for-tiv-women-governors-wife-pleads/ Even if the bride price in Tiv land has been distorted and heavily commercialised, the effect of the bride price cultural practice indicates that he who cannot pay it, cannot maintain a wife and therefore, cannot marry. Traditionally, in Nigeria, a man is solely regarded as the breadwinner of the family, even where the woman has her own income which, in exceptional cases, can be higher than the husband's. Not everything that we do in Nigeria, traditionally and culturally, is bad and not everything done in Europe and America is good. Serial Monogamy as practised in Europe and the US, mostly, is nothing but latent polygamy. In fact, there are many children born out of wedlock, especially, among the upper class in Europe and the US.
S.Kadiri
Skickat: den 27 februari 2017 01:06
Till: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Emir Sanusi on Polygamy, Procreation, and Poverty
Ogbeni Kadiri,
I have great respect for the person of the Emir of Kano and for his high office. I'm not being diplomatic, I'm just telling you the simple truth.
You are forewarned just in case, unawares you should like to take your lack of diplomacy too far : Freedom of speech has its limits at Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park . In that corner you may let off all the steam that you want but you are not permitted to abuse Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II as we say in West African English, " in any shape or form" or in any kind of Language whatsoever.
I read your encomium about the Yoruba word "BÀBÁ. One of the things that I am most proud of about our Yoruba culture is the reverence for parents and great respect for elders. It's the mark of a great people and a great civilisation. Decadence (of which some of us are sometimes most guilty) and the subsequent fall of great civilisations is its reverse.
On reading your encomiums about the Yoruba word "BÀBÁ", the following came to mind - a must read : the entire section from the Shulchan Aruch on Honouring Father and Mother . Consider how much is wrapped in this one sentence excerpt from that code: "One must be extremely careful to fear and revere one's father and mother, for the Scriptures compare it to the honour and fear of the Holy One, blessed be He." (A seminal document : Honour and fear your parents - I know that time is precious that's why I entreat you to please read it.
("They tell you, 'Time is money' as if your life was worth its weight in gold." (Ogbeni Dylan)
Among the Sufis - the humble/ modest state of the faqih / faqir/faqr/ spiritual poverty - dependence on the Almighty , is a good state. Is this perhaps what Jesus meant by " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven " - nothing to do with the guy who wanted his money to be buried with him so that he could - (say astaghfirullah) - so that he "could" try to "bribe" the Almighty?
The Holy Quran tells us that Allah is the rich and ye (mankind) are the poor
"The rich seduce the poor and the old are seduced by the young." ( Ogbeni Dylan)
Personally, I don't think that the Emir's proposed legislation will get through the Senate, any time soon. What are the lower limitations of poverty that should disqualify a poor man from marrying a second wife going to be? Is the state going to fix the legal minimum amount of the mahr/ dowry/ "bride-price" which is sometimes only a symbolic sum? Hasn't he said that he's against the centuries old tradition of "child marriage" ? More wrath from certain quarters. It's not going to get through any time soon, first of all because such legislation may not be popular and the senators - at least the Muslims among them know that they may have to face the wrath of their respective constituencies in their vast electorate, through the secret ballots...
On the other side of the Emir of Kano's proposal, corresponding women's rights will surely have a place. The education of the Muslim girl? So he could be more popular with Muslim women, less so with the Nigerian Taliban. But I'm thinking primarily of the women who are already married, two or three or four, to a poor man. Should a future law apply to them and their families, retroactively? And their children, what redress should they expect? I notice that the Emir mentions only boys in that little section in which he is quoted verbatim : "Those of us in the north have all seen the economic consequences of men who are not capable of maintaining one wife, marrying four. They end up producing 20 children, not educating them, leaving them on the streets, and they end up as thugs and terrorists."
And what about the children who are girls, what happens with them? They get married to rich men/ poor men who can't afford them?
(In India some Hindus have been converting to Islam. In India, Hindu parents have to pay a dowry to marry off their daughters, whereas in Islam it is the man who pays the mahr.
(Ogbeni Kadiri do you know that I still consider myself an expert on the marriage laws of Islam according to the five schools of Islamic jurisprudence? (In my research on Nigeria, to my distress I found out that relative to other ethnic groups who have embraced Islam in Nigeria, there is/ was a higher rate of divorce among the Hausa, a result of several factors)
I intend to phone you tomorrow before noon, to ask you about - according to you, the circumcision of eight days old males among the Yoruba...
Best Regards,
Ogbeni Hamelberg
On Sunday, 26 February 2017 20:04:13 UTC+1, ogunlakaiye wrote:
Sorry Cornelius, I am not diplomatic but I am never rude to anybody irrespective of his/her class or rank in life. The Emir cannot undo us and be our sympathizer at the same time.
S.Kadiri
Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com > för Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 26 februari 2017 00:41
Till: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Emir Sanusi on Polygamy, Procreation, and PovertyThat is not the way to address the Emir Of Kano.--
All he did was to make some serious suggestions as to how to help solve a problem that's surely looming over his country. You could disagree with him, but politely...
On Sunday, 26 February 2017 00:23:22 UTC+1, ogunlakaiye wrote:Bubonic plague wiped out 33 per cent of European population in the 14th century and a century later Europe was overpopulated to the extent of exterminating the American, Australian and New Zealand aborigins and planting Europeans in those non-European territories. Yet, overpopulated Europe never practised polygamy. Thus polygamy has nothing to do with overpopulation. Family pattern in Europe of that time was not firmly established on a wife and a husband co-habiting as men challenged fellow men to duel on the right to copulate with available woman. The survivor of such duel was automatically embraced by the woman on whose duel was fought and after copulation and pregnancy, she was abandoned by the man who was out to look for another prey to copulate with.
In Africa, marriage between a man and woman was systematic and the practice of polygamy preceded the incursion of Islam in Africa. Marriage to more than one wife was not caused by a male's desire just to satisfy his sexual appetite but to procreate. In his racist tuned book titled : The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, Lord Lugard could not help observing the following, "The custom, which seems fairly general among the negro tribes, of suckling a child for two or three years, during which a woman lives apart from her husband, tends to decrease population." The implication of what Lugard meant with 'during which a woman lives apart from her husband,' is that the man never had sexual intercourse for two or three years with the suckling mother. Polygamy, in reality, ensured that every female was mated. Even where a man was monogamous and the wife attained menopause, the wife would take initiative to get a wife that was still productive for the husband since she considered that continuous copulation of the husband with her at a menopause age constituted wasting of his sperm. In the culturally unpolluted Africa, sex was never considered a leisure time engagements but solely to procreate. There were no prostitutes in pre-colonial Africa. Sanusi probably fills his harem with 30 wives while advocating that other men should limit the number of their wives to one or two. What did he produce and sell in Nigeria to get the financial and economic power to marry more than a wife? He should love his neighbour as himself and in the absence of that, he should shut his mouth and keep a low profile.
S.Kadiri
Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 25 februari 2017 16:28
Till: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Emir Sanusi on Polygamy, Procreation, and Poverty--As the late great Cardinal Rex Lawson put it : Nah so a see am o!
Some obvious problems in the way
Re- Population control by not having so many wives and siring so many children - China is a practical example of population control by state legislation.
Should it be only the rich who should be permitted to have many children?
From the point of view of the Divine injunction to fill the earth, we are to suppose that on that score, the Almighty is happy with the sleeping giant, Nigeria and Nigerians. Despite decimation by the slave trade, war, famine, poverty and disease,Wallaahu rau'oofun bil ibaad - by the grace of our merciful God, the human race will not be extinguished in Nigeria. On the whole the statistics for population increase in Nigeria is encouraging: In 1960 Nigeria's population was about 33 million souls and in 2017 the challenge will be exceeding 185 million mouths to feed, clothe, provide potable water and electricity, shelter, educate , employ, as useful citizens etc.
In this forum there's often the good wishes extended from one person to another with these words :
Since Nigeria practices some form of representative democracy and governments are elected through the ballot box, one man one vote, every citizen over the age of eighteen eligible to cast their ballot - this means that given the fact that ethnicity, regionalism and religion are important factors, there must therefore be a conscious will for ethnic and religious groups in all the regions to want to increase their populations and thereby their influence through the ballot box. To tell Muslims that they must abandon the sunnah of polygamy/ being allowed a maximum of four wives if they can afford them - "and those that their right hand possess" should be counter-productive should they believe that this is a smart move by non-Muslims to severely curtail their potential for political power, even dominance - as indeed would be the case if Palestinians were told to please start having fewer babies (for whatever reason)
The solution of course is the evolution of the various part/ mansions of the federation into the consciousness of being one indivisible nation, i.e. that we are all in the same boat.
There's the catholic church and their laws and teaching about abortion, contraception etc., but since Catholics don't practice polygamy which is a main focus in this discussion it's worthwhile knowing a little about
Prophet Muhammad on coitus interruptus .
A well known hadith is Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wa salaam being asked about contraception and replying that those souls that are destined to be born will be born, no matter what.
On Saturday, 25 February 2017 01:10:41 UTC+1, ogunlakaiye wrote:A bat cannot be classified purely as a bird or as a mouse just like Nigeria cannot be classified purely as a Republic or as a Monarchy. That there are monarchs in the Federal Republic of Nigeria is just a demonstration of the political insanity reigning in the country. Emir Sanusi, the monarch of Kano is not entitled to talk on polygamy, procreation and poverty either in his emirate or in Nigeria as whole. He cannot undo us and be our sympathiser at the same time.
As late Chinua Achebe observed in his, Ant Hills of Savanah, the colonial master met two twins in Nigeria, and made one a president and the other a shit carrier. Expanding further on his observation, I would add that the one that was made President had seen to it that the families from the generation of his twin brother remain shit carriers while the President's families are prosperous. All Nigerians, from the beginning, were poor or rich but now Nigerians are divided into impoverished masses and a few minority rich.
Tradition or culture in any society is a function of industrial and economic development. That is why tradition and culture change with industrial and economic development. Despite large numbers of Western educated Nigerians, the traditional and cultural belief in rearing children as insurance towards old age that typified agrararian society still exist today. The more children you have, it is believed that, at least, one will succeed economically to take care of the family, both near and extended. Emphasis on procreation is even more pronounced in Nigeria today because pensioners from states and federal government do not get their pensions when due.
Family Planning Council of Nigeria (FPCN) was formed in 1964 and during the military era, the name was changed to Planned Parenthood Federation of Nigeria (PPFN). Donor agencies to PPFN are United Nations Population Fund (UNPF), European Union, Department For International Development (DFID) of the British Council and Shell Petroleum Development Corporation (SPDC). PPFN has 75 clinics spread over 36 states in Nigeria. Under the pretext of combating invented soaring maternal mortality, the PPFN aggressively conduct abortion, sterilization of women and operation of contraceptives into women. The new name for family planning in Nigeria, as in many third-world countries, is Reproductive Health Care.
In 1987, General Ibrahim Babangida's led federal government, through his Minster of Health, Professor Olikoye Ransom Kuti, and the United States Agencies for International Development (USAID), spent N228 million on Babagida's government population policy of one-woman-four-children. Throu
gh his Minister of Health, Professor Eyitan Lambo, President Olusegun Obasanjo introduced a new population policy of one-man-four children. Neither Babangida nor Obasanjo's government population policy was obeyed by the educated elites not to talk of illiterates that make up majority of the population of the country. Nigeria, at moment, is not suffering from overpopulation but unjust distribution of our collective patrimony. In the Northern part of Nigeria, particularly, the Governors are used to collecting revenue allocations from the Federal government, but instead of investing the funds on education and welfare of their people, they steal the entire federal allocations. Most of them travel to Mecca every week for Friday's prayer. When their people complain of poverty, they respond : Allah Ta Rago, meaning God is the defender of the poor. Not less than 17 former Governors from Northern Nigeria, have been arraigned and charged to court for plundering their states of billions of naira. In fact, 12 of these Governors are from Sharia ruled States but they are not being tried in Sharia courts where they would have had their hands amputated long time ago.
Kenneth wrote, "When we refuse an inoculation for our child, thinking we are protecting it, we endanger all children." I read through the article of Moses, to which Kenneth is responding, and I could not find anything relating to refusal to inoculate our child. Can you please help me solve the riddle, "we refuse an inoculation for our child?"
S. Kadiri
Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>
Skickat: den 22 februari 2017 18:58
Till: usaafricadialogue
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Emir Sanusi on Polygamy, Procreation, and Poverty--It's very difficult for many people to see issues outside their own narrow cultural orbit.
It also takes a small amount of facts to determine how overpopulation impacts the larger community, the state, the continent, the world. We have a finite world, with far too many people in it, given our resources. We'll go own increasing demands for energy and food, demands on water, and go on hearing meaningless responses, like, look how much land there is. that's like saying the earth is flat because it looks that way.
When we refuse an inoculation for our child, thinking we are protecting it, we endanger all children. We need to think in community terms on a planetary scale. Arguments in favor of ethnic or cultural exceptionalism only damage everyone.
Lastly, arguing to a muslim that they can't take more than one wife accords with the qur'an which states you can't marry more than one woman unless you can afford to pay all the necessary expenses. If people ignore that injunction, they violate a reasonable law, as if they are somehow exceptions.
If we think of ourselves as belonging to one large family, then we have to accept the demands of the whole family, not just our immediate family.
That means u.s. wealth and western wealth can't go just to our citizens; it also means what one member of the family decides to do impacts all of us.
Ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/
people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "meoc...@gmail.com" <meoc...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday 22 February 2017 at 11:51
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Emir Sanusi on Polygamy, Procreation, and Poverty
Emir Muhammadu Sanusi of Kano recently caused controversy by proposing a new Islamic family law to regulate polygamy, which he linked to unregulated procreation, poverty, juvenile delinquency, and terrorism.
In principle, I agree with the emir of Kano's pronouncement on polygamy, procreation, and poverty. However, there is need to proceed with caution on the legislative intervention he is proposing. I am not Muslim or Hausa so I may not be able to speak to the theological and cultural issue at stake. However, I do know that our societies in Africa are driven by patriarchy and notions of masculine pride and dignity. This culture tends to mediate how people see these things.
Like the emir, I used to display an unqualified intolerance for people who want to bring many children into this world despite lacking the means to care for them. I used to preach vehemently and somewhat haughtily against unbridled procreation among my own poor extended family.
Then I decided to scold this stubborn member of the family, a primary school teacher who insisted, as he put it, on having as many children as God would give him, despite clearly not having the means to care for them. Several people in our family had spoken to him to no avail.
Because I was occasionally supporting him financially I felt that I had some leverage and sway with him and could convince him to see what every other person was seeing and drop his policy of unrestrained procreation. The first time I talked to him, he listened to my long speech and politely promised to look into the matter.
A couple of years and another child later, I decided to confront him again on the issue. Everyone felt that he would only listen to me. This time he was ready for me, fuming while listening to me. Because he is much older than me, I took his fuming to be a response to my tone and decided to persuade him rather than scold him for his choice.
When my sermon was over, he cleared his throat and declared that he too had something to say to me. He said essentially that as a man, a man of our ethnic group, there are two things that one aspires to possess in abundance: wealth and children. These two possessions or at least one of them, he said, made one a man. He said he didn't have money and could never be wealthy, having become too old for wealth to happen to him. All he had left to demonstrate his masculinity in order not to be considered a failure in life was to have as many children as he could have and to be remembered for being blessed with children when he is gone. He said people like me who "have money" would not understand, since we already had the ability to possess the two gold standards of manly success. He said if he had money like me, my advice would make sense and he would not need to have many children.
Folks like him, he said, will have lived unremarkable, vain lives if they did not procreate liberally when they were on this earth. With my wealth (he saw me as wealthy) I was already guaranteed respect as a man, and regardless of how many children I have, I was assured of maximum cultural capital as a man, as well as a legacy. He then tried to appeal to my clan pride. He said I was a small boy, that I didn't know that our lineage had been depleted by untimely deaths and needed to be repopulated, and that I should appreciate and support his effort to assure the lineage of continuity and human capital in the future. Finally, he asked if I didn't think it was mean and selfish of me, a successful man assured of recognition and respect, to stop him from fulfilling his manly destiny the only way he could still do so. He was accusing me of trying to stop him from getting to where I was--a place of masculine accomplishment as defined by our culture. He was accusing me of trying to kick away the proverbial ladder that got me to the place of respect he imagined me to occupy.
I was humbled. I piped down. He had successfully emotionally blackmailed me. He had turned the leverage I thought I had on him against me. I came into the conversation on the offensive. He had put me on the defensive. I now had to reassure him that I was not out to keep him from building a legacy of masculine accomplishment. Even though I still disagreed fundamentally with his rationalization of his unbridled procreation, he made sense from a purely cultural perspective, the most dominant frame of reference available to him.
We agreed to disagree on the issue, and I told him that he would see my point in the future and that I hoped that he would not regret shunning my advice.
Even though we parted on a note of disagreement, I came away with a better appreciation for where he was coming from, for his masculine anxieties, and for the unspoken patriarchal cultural pressures against which he was struggling, and which were unfortunately determining his procreation decision.
I knew that he was speaking from a well established cultural script. In my village in Benue state, a man considered successful in the old days would boast that he had money and he had many children, meaning that he was complete. I connected what he had said to this manly tradition of success and fulfilment.
I realized that as personal as this issue may seem, it is deeply interwoven with our society's notions of masculinity and masculine pride, and that unless the culture evolves persons operating solely within it may never be persuaded to act outside of its dictates.
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