Sunday, April 30, 2017

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RIP Ben Obumselu

May his soul rest in peace!

On Sun, Apr 30, 2017 at 6:45 PM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:








When the Nigerian civil war began in 1967, Ben Obumselu left his home in eastern Nigeria to join the Biafran cause.
When the Nigerian civil war began in 1967, Ben Obumselu left his home in eastern Nigeria to join the Biafran cause. Photograph: Ernest Obumselu


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USA Africa Dialogue Series - RIP Ben Obumselu









When the Nigerian civil war began in 1967, Ben Obumselu left his home in eastern Nigeria to join the Biafran cause.
When the Nigerian civil war began in 1967, Ben Obumselu left his home in eastern Nigeria to join the Biafran cause. Photograph: Ernest Obumselu


USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Fw: "How I Lost Re-election To U.S., UK, France and Local Forces", says former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan

https://www.google.se/search?q=leon+thomas+oum+allah&client=firefox-b&oq=Leon+thomas%3A+um+allah&gs_l=mobile-heirloom-serp.1.0.30i10.20409.73829.0.76384.38.28.1.4.4.2.241.3107.7j19j1.27.0....0...1c.1.34.mobile-heirloom-serp..12.26.2609.Nixj3Cv5mJg#spf=1 Enjoy the reminisces below!
>


>


>
>
> From: Sunshine Nigeria <om...@goodbooksafrica.com>
>
> Sent: Friday, April 28, 2017 8:34 AM
>
> To: Assensoh, AB.
>
> Subject: "How I Lost Re-election To U.S., UK, France and Local Forces", says former President Goodluck Jonathan
>
>  
>
>
>
> Against the Run of Play: How an incumbent president was defeated in Nigeria By Olusegun Adeniyi.
>
> Two years after, former President Goodluck Jonathan has spoken on the loss of his Presidency. He said he lost the 2015 elections to local and
> international conspiracies. He named the United States, Britain, and France as the conspirators.
>
>  
>
> He blamed it all on former United States President
> Barack Obama, ex-British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande for aiding President Muhammadu Buhari's victory.
>
>
>
> Dr. Jonathan also said he was disappointed by the conduct of the immediate past Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, in the weeks preceding the elections.
>
>
>
> He, however, claimed that he did not take disciplinary action against ex-Minister of Petroleum Resources Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke because the evidence against her was weak.
>
>
>
> He plans to reveal the nature of his relationship with ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo soon.
>
>
>
> Jonathan reminisced on his defeat in a new book, "Against The Run of Play", which is authored by the
> Chairman of ThisDay Editorial Board,
> Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi, who is also an accomplished Politics Editor.
>
> [END]
>
> Jonathan also revealed that he was betrayed by those he relied on to defeat Buhari.
>
>
>
> He said: "President Barack Obama and his officials made it very clear to me by their actions that they wanted a change of government in Nigeria and we're ready to do anything to achieve that purpose. They even brought some naval ships into the Gulf of Guinea
> in the days preceding the election.
>
>
>
> "I got on well with Prime Minister David Cameron but at some point, I noticed that the Americans were putting pressure on him and he had to join them against me. But I didn't realise how far President Obama was prepared to go to remove me until France caved
> in to the pressure from America.
>
>
>
>
> Read more: http://www.goodbooksafrica.com/2017/04/how-i-lost-re-election-to-us-uk-france.html
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Virus-free.
> www.avast.com

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Celebrating Prof. Akin Mabogunje on his election into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Congrats for this achievement Prof. 
Wish you more strength to attain several others. 

On Apr 30, 2017 6:00 PM, "Tunji Olaopa" <tolaopa2003@gmail.com> wrote:
Akinlawon Mabogunje and the Cartography of Honour and Achievements, By Tunji Olaopa - Premium Times Opinion
http://opinion.premiumtimesng.com/2017/04/30/akinlawon-mabogunje-and-the-cartography-of-honour-and-achievements-by-tunji-olaopa/

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Google/ISGPP African Experts Roundtableon Internet Policy and

Timely and a right stride towards a laudable advancement. 

Kudos Doc. 

On Apr 30, 2017 3:46 PM, "Tunji Olaopa" <tolaopa2003@gmail.com> wrote:
Boxbe This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (tolaopa2003@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info

ISGPP partners with Google on internet revolution - Top Nigeria News
http://www.topnigerianews.com/isgpp-partners-with-google-on-internet-revolution/

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Celebrating Prof. Akin Mabogunje on his election into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Akinlawon Mabogunje and the Cartography of Honour and Achievements, By Tunji Olaopa - Premium Times Opinion
http://opinion.premiumtimesng.com/2017/04/30/akinlawon-mabogunje-and-the-cartography-of-honour-and-achievements-by-tunji-olaopa/

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Google/ISGPP African Experts Roundtable on Internet Policy and

ISGPP partners with Google on internet revolution - Top Nigeria News
http://www.topnigerianews.com/isgpp-partners-with-google-on-internet-revolution/

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Saturday, April 29, 2017

USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: "How I Lost Re-election To U.S., UK, France and Local Forces", says former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan

Enjoy the reminisces below!


From: Sunshine Nigeria <omoba@goodbooksafrica.com>
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2017 8:34 AM
To: Assensoh, AB.
Subject: "How I Lost Re-election To U.S., UK, France and Local Forces", says former President Goodluck Jonathan
 

Against the Run of Play: How an incumbent president was defeated in Nigeria By Olusegun Adeniyi.

Two years after, former President Goodluck Jonathan has spoken on the loss of his Presidency. He said he lost the 2015 elections to local and international conspiracies. He named the United States, Britain, and France as the conspirators.
 
He blamed it all on former United States President Barack Obama, ex-British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande for aiding President Muhammadu Buhari’s victory.

Dr. Jonathan also said he was disappointed by the conduct of the immediate past Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, in the weeks preceding the elections.

He, however, claimed that he did not take disciplinary action against ex-Minister of Petroleum Resources Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke because the evidence against her was weak.

He plans to reveal the nature of his relationship with ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo soon.

Jonathan reminisced on his defeat in a new book, “Against The Run of Play”, which is authored by the Chairman of ThisDay Editorial Board, Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi, who is also an accomplished Politics Editor.
[END]
Jonathan also revealed that he was betrayed by those he relied on to defeat Buhari.

He said: “President Barack Obama and his officials made it very clear to me by their actions that they wanted a change of government in Nigeria and we’re ready to do anything to achieve that purpose. They even brought some naval ships into the Gulf of Guinea in the days preceding the election.

“I got on well with Prime Minister David Cameron but at some point, I noticed that the Americans were putting pressure on him and he had to join them against me. But I didn’t realise how far President Obama was prepared to go to remove me until France caved in to the pressure from America.




Virus-free. www.avast.com

USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: Sharing Professor Oladipupo Adamolekun's FUOYE Convocation Lecture


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Oladipupo Adamolekun <dipo7k@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, Apr 27, 2017 at 4:22 PM
Subject: Sharing
To: "dipo7k@yahoo.com" <dipo7k@yahoo.com>








USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Fw: PROF OLUKOTUN'S COLUMN

To be sure, there are minimum requirements when it comes to occupying "higher moral ground"

"Grab them by the pussy"? Bro Buhari would lose the presidency if he expressed himself like that even off camera


On Saturday, 29 April 2017 17:01:36 UTC+2, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:



> A cursory look at the Press
> Freedom Index confirms that freedom of the press/ free speech is
> relative, ranging from the US where we had some pre-election
> difficulties between Mr. Trump and various female members of the
> journalist and political cadre - at one point we read - and heard
> Trump describing a nauseous scene involving a "her" in
> which he said, "There
> was blood coming out of her... wherever " by which he meant
> that she was passing through her difficult monthly menstrual phase
> (the curse of Eve) - ranging from that and the reports about
> pussy-grabbing and Trump's early press conference in which Trump
> determines who can ask questions and who can not and must shut up
> and sit down - to something like the always decorous even if risible
> - as - from my point of view the innocuous statement by President
> Buhari for which he took so much flak - that more properly speaking
> his wife "belongs"
> in the kitchen. (Thinking just now of Theresa Mayhem)
>
> And now this matter of Punch Reporter Olalekan
> Adetayo now unceremoniously persona non grata to Aso Rock since
> one of the jealous (and zealous) guardians of the president of Aso
> Rock, Bashiru Abubakar
> perhaps believed
> that Adetayo's
> article Fresh
> Anxiety in Aso Rock over Buhari's poor health was
> a mischievous article in fact a violation of journalistic etiquette
> because whatever it's
> intention or
> motivation, in effect
> it has increased
> national anxiety by insinuating
> the existence of a Cabal that is holding Mr. President to ransom -
> and that kind of speculation does not auger well for national
> security or stability.
>
> When President Buhari
> returned from his sick leave in London, he did say that he was going
> to be in the background for an extended while - until - hopefully he
> recovers and is strong enough to execute his duties full time.
> So,
> why now this hue and cry about his " invisibility" ?
> At least it's not as
> bad as that Walcott case:
>
> "Submarine,
>
> the
> seven-foot-high bum boatman
>
> loose, lank and gangling as a frayed
> cheroot,
>
> once asked to see a ship's captain, and refused,
>
> with
> infinite courtesy bending, inquired
>
> " So what the hell is
> your captain?
>
> A fucking microbe? " (Another
> Life )
>
>
>
>
>
>
> The pressure is
> mounting, people want to see their President.
>
> Nobel Laureate
> Soyinka is the latest to add his powerful voice :
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Declare
> your health status, Soyinka tells Buhari …says President is public
> property
>
>
>
>
>
>
> So,
> the President is now "public property". National property.
>
>
> I
> guess that if it was a she president and she was pregnant the nation
> would now be chiming, " We are pregnant"
>
> Next
> question would be, "When is she going to put to bed?"
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thursday, 27 April 2017 18:49:46 UTC+2, ayo_ol...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.
>
> From: Margaret Solo-Anaeto <soloanaet...@gmail.com>
> Sent: Thursday, 27 April 2017 08:37
> To: Joel Nwokeoma; Prof Ayo Olukotun
> Subject: PROF OLUKOTUN'S COLUMN
>
>
>
>
>
>
> DEMOCRATIC RECESSION
>
>
>  
>
>
> by
>
>
>  
>
>
> Ayo Olukotun
>
>
>  
>
>
> The
> term democratic recession may be somewhat fuzzy and hard to pin down; but
> thanks to University of Stanford, Professor, Larry Diamond, it has found its
> way into academic and popular discourse on democratic backsliding. It was only
> two years ago that Diamond in an update of an earlier seminal article published
> in the influential Journal of Democracy,
> the piece, Facing up to the Democratic Recession.  There is of course debate not just about the
> concept but about the underlying assumption regarding the extent to which
> democracy, globally, has retreated.
>
>
>     This is
> not the place to settle these academic controversies, nonetheless, it is
> pertinent to recall in the Nigerian context that one of Diamond's key insights
> concerns what he called, "the subtle and incremental degradations of democratic
> rules and procedures." In other words, the slow almost imperceptible veering
> off, in the end tally into authoritarian regression and the breakdown of
> democracy. Such matters for example as the hounding of journalists and free expression,
> targeting of the opposition and those who fund them, denial of fundamental
> human rights such as the right to bail, may at first blush look like minor
> infractions or negligible errors but over time, they harden and billow into
> democratic rollback.  That is why for
> example the recent withdrawal of accreditation to the Punch State House
> correspondent, Olalekan Adetayo by the Chief Security Officer to President
> Muhammadu Buhari, Bashiru Abubakar warrants comment. As some observers have
> commented, that singular and reprehensible action brings up echoes of the
> infamous Decree 4 under which Buhari in his first incarnation as military
> president perpetrated a siege to free expression and detained journalists at
> will.
>
>
>      True, Buhari has not on the whole in the period
> since 2015 been hostile to free expression but it needs to be clarified whether
> the recent clampdown constitutes a one off or signals a new direction.  It should be mentioned that Adetayo's alleged
> offence was no more than an article he did in Sunday Punch on April 23, 2017 entitled, "Fresh Anxiety in Aso Rock
> over Buhari's poor health." As Adetayo narrated his ordeal, the CSO who
> summoned him "was visibly angry about the story…which was about how the
> president had not been seen in public in the last two weeks except when he made
> brief appearances at the mosque inside the presidential villa for Jumaat
> services." To demonstrate his fidelity to journalistic ethics, Adetayo had
> included in the story, the reaction of Special Adviser to the President on Media
> and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, who indirectly confirmed Adetayo's perspective
> by saying that the president was recuperating and that many were praying for
> him to fully recover.
>
>
>     Fast forward to a few days later and
> observe that Buhari was pointedly absent at the scheduled weekly meeting of the
> Federal Executive Council, pleading that he needed to rest. This points up the
> fact that the Sunday Punch story is
> far from being a fictionalised account or the output of the hyperactive
> imagination of a journalist.  The underlying
> truthfulness of the report did not prevent Adetayo from receiving a lecture by
> Abubakar and to endure the humiliation of having his accreditation tag seized as
> well as being escorted by a DSS official to fetch his personal effect from the
> press gallery and barred henceforth from the villa. Predictably, Abubakar's
> harsh reaction has elicited condemnations from a wide spectrum of civil society
> activists and some state officials including Adesina who claimed ignorance of
> the putdown and dissociated himself from it. 
> It is interesting to put on record however that at the point this
> article was being finalised no apology had been tendered and Adetayo remains
> barred from the Villa.
>
>
>      Authoritarian
> and jackboot instincts run deep in our polity and primordial culture. But having
> operated a democracy for 19 unbroken years our leaders ought to have lived down
> the slippery and high handed ways that have led us to the current downturn.  If it needs to be restated, the media
> implement remote sensing and surveillance functions on behalf of society, to
> the extent that they can warn both leaders and citizens of clear, present and imminent
> dangers.  The story about Buhari's
> possible deteriorating health and the attempt to cover it up constituted not an
> act of rebellion but of patriotism carrying an alert that should prompt all concerned
> to wise steps.  It is a pity and deeply unfortunate
> that it was not seen in this light and has therefore elicited the contemptuous and
> demeaning reaction from a state official. To reverse and heal up the wound
> which this incident has inflicted on the national psyche, Buhari should
> reinstate the persecuted reporter and put his aides on notice that he will not
> tolerate or be silent about blatant violations of the citizens' right to free
> expression.
>
>
>      In a related connection, this columnist
> laments that shortly after the Emir of Kano, Mohammadu Lamido Sanusi,  raised critical queries about public policy hints
> were dropped in the public space that the finances of the Emirate would become
> a subject of inquiry and that like his grandfather he might soon be deposed. Indeed,
> the governor of Zamfara state, Abdulaziz Yari who was berated by Sanusi for
> saying that the outbreak of meningitis is traceable to the sins of the people, is
> reportedly leading a caucus to press for Sanusi's ousting.
>
>
>    The health of a democracy is often measured
> by its tolerance of opposition and opposition views. It is precisely this
> factor that distinguishes a democracy which privileges robust debates from non-democratic
> and tyrannical forms of government in which the leader is always right. If we
> go down memory lane we will realise that constructive critics even in their
> most lacerating, tend to see more than the rest of society. To bring this
> truism home, Sanusi was excoriated by some when he blew the whistle about the
> monumental sleaze and corruption in the president Goodluck Jonathan administration.
> How right later events proved him to be! The point therefore is that the
> hounding of public intellectuals who speak truth to power stifles societal and
> political development and reinforces a culture of mediocrity in which those at
> the top cannot be disproved or be wrong. 
> This is not to say that if Sanusi is found to have mismanaged his turf
> the matter should not be investigated, but we should stop giving the impression
> that as soon as someone disagrees with established positions, state agencies
> and power mongers should begin to put the spotlight on him for the purpose of silencing
> him.
>
>
>     It is a symptom of democratic recession that
> this administration is becoming more intolerant of critical opinions and views
> that depart from the mainstream. It is also ironical because the administration
> is made up of star opposition figures who advanced the democratic imperative by
> rigorously interrogating official shibboleths and cant. I do not buy the argument
> that Sanusi's outspokenness lowers the bar with respect to his revered traditional
> office. I think that the nation is lucky to have someone like him who departs
> from the telling silences and business as usual positions that have put us all
> in trouble.
>
>
>      The country is groping for redirection and
> the administration should stop giving the impression that it resents criticisms
> of any sort.
>
>
>  
>
>
>   
>
>
>  Olukotun is the Oba (Dr.) Adetona Professorial
> Chair of Governance at Department of Political Science, Olabisi Onabanjo
> University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State.
>
>
>  
>
>
>  
>
>
>  
>
>
>  
>
>
>  
>
>
>  

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Today's Quote

On Friday, 17 March 2017 22:27:50 UTC+1, Chidi Anthony Opara wrote:
> I have been in the business of positive change before the "change" fraudsters surfaced in 2014. I however intend to continue on the "alternative governance platform"(being a "Public Poet" and news information provider).
>
>
> CAO. 
>
> --
>
>
> Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet and Publisher of PublicInformationProjects

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - News Release: Afreximbank Grants $300 million to National Bank of Egypt to Support Industrialization

Link: http://chidioparareports.blogspot.com.ng/2017/04/news-release-afreximbank-grants-300.html

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Fw: PROF OLUKOTUN'S COLUMN

A cursory look at the Press Freedom Index confirms that freedom of the press/ free speech is relative, ranging from the US where we had some pre-election difficulties between Mr. Trump and various female members of the journalist and political cadre - at one point we read - and heard Trump describing a nauseous scene involving a "her" in which he said, "There was blood coming out of her... wherever " by which he meant that she was passing through her difficult monthly menstrual phase (the curse of Eve) - ranging from that and the reports about pussy-grabbing and Trump's early press conference in which Trump determines who can ask questions and who can not and must shut up and sit down - to something like the always decorous even if risible - as - from my point of view the innocuous statement by President Buhari for which he took so much flak - that more properly speaking his wife "belongs" in the kitchen. (Thinking just now of Theresa Mayhem)

And now this matter of Punch Reporter Olalekan Adetayo now unceremoniously persona non grata to Aso Rock since one of the jealous (and zealous) guardians of the president of Aso Rock, Bashiru Abubakar perhaps believed that Adetayo's article Fresh Anxiety in Aso Rock over Buhari's poor health was a mischievous article in fact a violation of journalistic etiquette because whatever it's intention or motivation, in effect it has increased national anxiety by insinuating the existence of a Cabal that is holding Mr. President to ransom - and that kind of speculation does not auger well for national security or stability.

When President Buhari returned from his sick leave in London, he did say that he was going to be in the background for an extended while - until - hopefully he recovers and is strong enough to execute his duties full time. So, why now this hue and cry about his " invisibility" ? At least it's not as bad as that Walcott case:

"Submarine,
the seven-foot-high bum boatman
loose, lank and gangling as a frayed cheroot,
once asked to see a ship's captain, and refused,
with infinite courtesy bending, inquired
" So what the hell is your captain?
A fucking microbe? " (Another Life )


The pressure is mounting, people want to see their President.

Nobel Laureate Soyinka is the latest to add his powerful voice :


Declare your health status, Soyinka tells Buhari …says President is public property


So, the President is now "public property". National property.

I guess that if it was a she president and she was pregnant the nation would now be chiming, " We are pregnant"

Next question would be, "When is she going to put to bed?"








On Thursday, 27 April 2017 18:49:46 UTC+2, ayo_ol...@yahoo.com wrote:


Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.
From: Margaret Solo-Anaeto <soloanaet...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, 27 April 2017 08:37
To: Joel Nwokeoma; Prof Ayo Olukotun
Subject: PROF OLUKOTUN'S COLUMN

DEMOCRATIC RECESSION

 

by

 

Ayo Olukotun

 

The term democratic recession may be somewhat fuzzy and hard to pin down; but thanks to University of Stanford, Professor, Larry Diamond, it has found its way into academic and popular discourse on democratic backsliding. It was only two years ago that Diamond in an update of an earlier seminal article published in the influential Journal of Democracy, the piece, Facing up to the Democratic Recession.  There is of course debate not just about the concept but about the underlying assumption regarding the extent to which democracy, globally, has retreated.

    This is not the place to settle these academic controversies, nonetheless, it is pertinent to recall in the Nigerian context that one of Diamond's key insights concerns what he called, "the subtle and incremental degradations of democratic rules and procedures." In other words, the slow almost imperceptible veering off, in the end tally into authoritarian regression and the breakdown of democracy. Such matters for example as the hounding of journalists and free expression, targeting of the opposition and those who fund them, denial of fundamental human rights such as the right to bail, may at first blush look like minor infractions or negligible errors but over time, they harden and billow into democratic rollback.  That is why for example the recent withdrawal of accreditation to the Punch State House correspondent, Olalekan Adetayo by the Chief Security Officer to President Muhammadu Buhari, Bashiru Abubakar warrants comment. As some observers have commented, that singular and reprehensible action brings up echoes of the infamous Decree 4 under which Buhari in his first incarnation as military president perpetrated a siege to free expression and detained journalists at will.

     True, Buhari has not on the whole in the period since 2015 been hostile to free expression but it needs to be clarified whether the recent clampdown constitutes a one off or signals a new direction.  It should be mentioned that Adetayo's alleged offence was no more than an article he did in Sunday Punch on April 23, 2017 entitled, "Fresh Anxiety in Aso Rock over Buhari's poor health." As Adetayo narrated his ordeal, the CSO who summoned him "was visibly angry about the story…which was about how the president had not been seen in public in the last two weeks except when he made brief appearances at the mosque inside the presidential villa for Jumaat services." To demonstrate his fidelity to journalistic ethics, Adetayo had included in the story, the reaction of Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, who indirectly confirmed Adetayo's perspective by saying that the president was recuperating and that many were praying for him to fully recover.

    Fast forward to a few days later and observe that Buhari was pointedly absent at the scheduled weekly meeting of the Federal Executive Council, pleading that he needed to rest. This points up the fact that the Sunday Punch story is far from being a fictionalised account or the output of the hyperactive imagination of a journalist.  The underlying truthfulness of the report did not prevent Adetayo from receiving a lecture by Abubakar and to endure the humiliation of having his accreditation tag seized as well as being escorted by a DSS official to fetch his personal effect from the press gallery and barred henceforth from the villa. Predictably, Abubakar's harsh reaction has elicited condemnations from a wide spectrum of civil society activists and some state officials including Adesina who claimed ignorance of the putdown and dissociated himself from it.  It is interesting to put on record however that at the point this article was being finalised no apology had been tendered and Adetayo remains barred from the Villa.

     Authoritarian and jackboot instincts run deep in our polity and primordial culture. But having operated a democracy for 19 unbroken years our leaders ought to have lived down the slippery and high handed ways that have led us to the current downturn.  If it needs to be restated, the media implement remote sensing and surveillance functions on behalf of society, to the extent that they can warn both leaders and citizens of clear, present and imminent dangers.  The story about Buhari's possible deteriorating health and the attempt to cover it up constituted not an act of rebellion but of patriotism carrying an alert that should prompt all concerned to wise steps.  It is a pity and deeply unfortunate that it was not seen in this light and has therefore elicited the contemptuous and demeaning reaction from a state official. To reverse and heal up the wound which this incident has inflicted on the national psyche, Buhari should reinstate the persecuted reporter and put his aides on notice that he will not tolerate or be silent about blatant violations of the citizens' right to free expression.

     In a related connection, this columnist laments that shortly after the Emir of Kano, Mohammadu Lamido Sanusi,  raised critical queries about public policy hints were dropped in the public space that the finances of the Emirate would become a subject of inquiry and that like his grandfather he might soon be deposed. Indeed, the governor of Zamfara state, Abdulaziz Yari who was berated by Sanusi for saying that the outbreak of meningitis is traceable to the sins of the people, is reportedly leading a caucus to press for Sanusi's ousting.

   The health of a democracy is often measured by its tolerance of opposition and opposition views. It is precisely this factor that distinguishes a democracy which privileges robust debates from non-democratic and tyrannical forms of government in which the leader is always right. If we go down memory lane we will realise that constructive critics even in their most lacerating, tend to see more than the rest of society. To bring this truism home, Sanusi was excoriated by some when he blew the whistle about the monumental sleaze and corruption in the president Goodluck Jonathan administration. How right later events proved him to be! The point therefore is that the hounding of public intellectuals who speak truth to power stifles societal and political development and reinforces a culture of mediocrity in which those at the top cannot be disproved or be wrong.  This is not to say that if Sanusi is found to have mismanaged his turf the matter should not be investigated, but we should stop giving the impression that as soon as someone disagrees with established positions, state agencies and power mongers should begin to put the spotlight on him for the purpose of silencing him.

    It is a symptom of democratic recession that this administration is becoming more intolerant of critical opinions and views that depart from the mainstream. It is also ironical because the administration is made up of star opposition figures who advanced the democratic imperative by rigorously interrogating official shibboleths and cant. I do not buy the argument that Sanusi's outspokenness lowers the bar with respect to his revered traditional office. I think that the nation is lucky to have someone like him who departs from the telling silences and business as usual positions that have put us all in trouble.

     The country is groping for redirection and the administration should stop giving the impression that it resents criticisms of any sort.

 

  

 Olukotun is the Oba (Dr.) Adetona Professorial Chair of Governance at Department of Political Science, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State.

 

 

 

 

 

 


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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Jeong Kwan, the Philosopher Chef by Jeff Gordinier

http://cafeafricana.com/wordpress/jeong-kwan-by-jeff-gordinier-the-new-york-times/

Jeong Kwan, the Philosopher Chef by Jeff Gordinier:

Images by Jackie Nickerson:

The most exquisite food in the world, say many celebrated chefs, is being made not in Copenhagen
or New York, but in a remote temple complex south of Seoul by a 59-year-old Buddhist nun.

''MY PLAYGROUND,'' Jeong Kwan says.

We have come to the edge of her garden on the grounds of the Chunjinam hermitage of the Baekyangsa temple, 169 miles south of Seoul. Kwan is revered around the world for her cooking, but she is first and foremost a Zen Buddhist nun, and this garden reflects the come-what-may equanimity of her spiritual practice. If insects want to land and feast here, they are welcome to — through a translator she tells me that she does ''nothing'' to dissuade them. ''That's why it's not pretty,'' she says. If a wild boar makes off with a pumpkin, well, so be it — the garden has no fence around it, and it seems to blur into the surrounding forest in a way that suggests the playground remains open to beasts of all types.

I have been at the temple for a day or so, having slept on the floor of a stark, cabinlike visitors' dormitory, and having awoken at around 3 in the morning to watch the monks of Baekyangsa chant and bow in the moonlight. By now I have listened in on several conversations about Buddhism and food: lively exchanges between Jeong Kwan and Eric Ripert, the French chef from Le Bernardin in New York City, a Buddhist who has made his second pilgrimage to the monastery to bask in the nun's presence — and eat her food.

A Zen Buddhist monk on the grounds of the Baekyangsa Temple in South Korea's Naejangsan National Park, where Kwan cooks transcendent vegan cuisine. Credit Jackie Nickerson
But even if you can talk about food for hours, there comes a point when you need to make contact with it. Which is why Kwan has led us to the garden. Here, she coos over pumpkin blossoms, green chiles and eggplant, and shows me how to pluck leaves of mint and perilla — gently, with a moist pinch between my thumb and index finger at a firm spot on the stem. The leaves are placed in a wide basket; shortly they'll be carried up the hill and incorporated into a meal. But for a moment I am encouraged to hold the leaves to my nostrils and breathe in their herbal fragrance.

Kwan believes that the ultimate cooking — the cooking that is best for our bodies and most delicious on our palates — comes from this intimate connection with fruits and vegetables, herbs and beans, mushrooms and grains. In her mind, there should be no distance between a cook and her ingredients. ''That is how I make the best use of a cucumber,'' she explains through a translator. ''Cucumber becomes me. I become cucumber. Because I grow them personally, and I have poured in my energy.'' She sees rain and sunshine, soil and seeds, as her brigade de cuisine. She sums it up with a statement that is as radically simple as it is endlessly complex: ''Let nature take care of it.''
All of which puts her in the same camp as some of the most influential leaders in international gastronomy — chefs like Michel Bras and Alain Passard, Dan Barber and David Kinch. There is a crucial difference, though. Jeong Kwan has no restaurant. She has no customers. She has published no cookbooks. She has never attended culinary school, nor has she worked her way up through the high-pressure hierarchy of a four-star kitchen. Her name does not appear in any of those annual round-ups listing the greatest chefs in the world, although Ripert will assure you that she belongs among them, as do a few contemporaries of hers at temples throughout Korea.
Kwan is an avatar of temple cuisine, which has flowed like an underground river through Korean culture for centuries. Long before Western coinages like ''slow food,'' ''farm-to-table'' and ''locavore,'' generations of unsung masters at spiritual refuges like Chunjinam were creating a cuisine of refinement and beauty out of whatever they could rustle up from the surrounding land. Foraging? Fermenting? Dehydrating? Seasonality? Been there, done that — Jeong Kwan and her peers at monasteries throughout Korea have a millennia-spanning expertise in these currently in-vogue methods that can make a top chef feel like a clueless punk.

I was pretty clueless myself. When I first heard about Jeong Kwan, in the early weeks of 2015, Eric Ripert had invited her to New York City so that she could introduce Korean temple cuisine to a group of people in a private room at Le Bernardin. I had no idea what to expect; some of my previous encounters with monastic repasts had involved watery bean soups and yams boiled to the very brink of solidity. When it comes to food, a monastery can sound like the sort of place where flavor is an afterthought and beauty a mere distraction. But Kwan's lunch left me humbled and exhilarated. Here were compositions on the plate that were so elegant they could've been slipped into a tasting menu at Benu or Blanca and no one would have batted an eyelash. Here were flavors so assertive they seemed to leave vapor trails on the tongue. Somehow, all of it was vegan. Korean temple cuisine is made without meat, fish, dairy or even garlic or onions (which are believed to arouse the libido), and tasting it for the first time convinced me that vegan and vegetarian chefs in the West needed to board immediate flights to the Republic of Korea for a crash course in plant-based virtuosity.
Korean temple cuisine is rooted in a principle that, from a chef's perspective, doesn't make any sense: You're not supposed to crave it. The way you find yourself almost aching for a gooey slice of pizza? Not here. Temple cuisine is engineered to provoke a different reaction, one that goes back to the Buddhist concept of nonattachment: You may relish it as you eat it, yes, but you should have no urge to stuff your face with another heap of it when you're done.

When Americans talk about Korean cooking, which has become tremendously popular in food-fixated circles over the past decade or so, they tend to talk primarily about barbecue — fatty strips of beef and pork sizzling on a hot surface. Temple cuisine forsakes these flavors, as well as the bloat and delirium that are usually associated with the party-down, soju-dizzy, every-dish-comes-at-once mode of Korean feasting. Instead, temple cuisine is all about delicacy. You're left with simultaneous feelings of fullness and lightness. You consume this food as a source of mental and physical clarity — as kindling for meditation.

Paradoxically, though, chefs in recent years have begun craving more information about temple cuisine. You might hear a young chef in Seoul cite it as an influence on his or her work (as does the buzzed-about Mingoo Kang, who gives Korean classics a haute-cuisine spin at his restaurant, Mingles), and you might be surprised to find out that René Redzepi, the trailblazing chef at Noma in Copenhagen, once took a trip through Korea to learn more about this centuries-old style of cooking. In Korea there is a growing nostalgia for this old way; temple cuisine is viewed as a fading echo of an era before rampant Westernization. Meanwhile, for high-end chefs in other parts of the world, like Ripert and Redzepi, temple cuisine (not only in Korea but throughout Asia) represents a sort of gastronomic Rosetta Stone: As more chefs become obsessed with the idea of ''vegetable-forward'' menus, Buddhist cuisine provides reliable instructions for how it can be done. If, as some believe, we're all headed for a vegan future, could this be cause for celebration?

The van ferrying us from Seoul to the monastery takes about four hours, eventually twisting up forested hills that could easily be mistaken for the Hudson Valley of New York. The country is in the midst of a heat wave, but beneath these tree boughs the air cools, and the noisy throb of Seoul is quickly forgotten. Here is one of those places where, when you breathe deeply, you notice the floral sweetness of the air and the slowing of your heart. The monastery itself is modest, a series of traditional buildings with a gravel lot between them, and clusters of oaks and maples around the perimeter. Amble a few yards in any direction and you're in the woods.

It doesn't feel like a place where anyone is trying to change the way the world eats. There is an unmistakable tourist-baiting grandeur to the main complex of the seventh-century Baekyangsa temple — gilded Buddhas, a gargantuan drum and a bell-like gong that are used to rouse the complex's 58 monks for prayer — but the area where the nuns live has the slightly lonesome feeling of a summer camp after all the kids have gone back to school.

Shortly after we arrive, we are ushered into a dining room for a temple lunch, the first in a series of meals that will repeatedly leave us stunned. We are served slices of Korean pear, glazed with a tart citrus sauce, and pickled herbs, handmade dumplings and mushroom caps filled with diced tofu, and rice that has taken on the yellow hue of gardenia seeds. We have kimchee that has been buried in a hole in the ground for months, and we have summer kimchee that Kwan makes fresh, with cabbage and radish and copious fistfuls of salt. She grates potatoes by hand for her pancakes, which she layers with chopped leaves of that fresh mint from her garden. She cooks rice wrapped in lotus leaves and stuffed into round knobs of cut bamboo that are boiled in a cauldron. (Before the rice heats up, she might place five beans on top of it to symbolize the five precepts of Buddhism, or a trio of beans that stand for the three jewels: Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.) We watch how she relies on alchemies of smoke and steam, soil and water, bacteria and air, and we learn that she likes to cap off a meal or a conversation with cocktails, even though here they are of course rigorously nonalcoholic. Whenever we meet with her we are given cups of something: a sweet orange-colored pumpkin punch studded with nibbles of rice, or an exquisitely delicate lotus-flower tea that, we are told, symbolizes the blossoming of Buddhist enlightenment.
If you wander the grounds of the monastery, it becomes clear that Jeong Kwan has another rare ingredient in her larder, one that rarely comes up in discussions about the latest hot chef: time. Cooking, for her, might be seen as the ultimate long game. She specializes in pairing what's freshly plucked with what's patiently funkified. On a roof at the monastery, just up the way from her garden, she keeps an open-air arsenal of urns and vats that teem with invisible activity. These are her secret weapons: condiments like soy sauce, doenjang (bean paste) and gochujang (chile paste) that have been fermenting and evolving in slow motion. Some of these age not for weeks, but for years. She grabs a spoon, opens a ceramic pot, reaches in and lets me taste a soy sauce that has spent a full decade inching toward deliciousness. Propped up with supports right outside Kwan's residence is a citrus tree, whose fruit is known as a taengja, or hardy orange. The tree is about 500 years old. It still bears fruit, and Kwan uses its sour juice in her cooking.

When Kwan talks a long game, she means it. In conversation, she suggests that, in accordance with her Buddhist belief in reincarnation and ''past-life karma,'' it's possible that she was deeply engaged with the art of cooking long before she arrived at the life she inhabits now. She grew up on a farm, and by the age of 7 she was making noodles by hand. The first time she set foot in a Buddhist temple she felt free, she says, and at the age of 17 she ran away from the farm. Two years later, she had officially joined an order of Zen nuns. Before long she realized that she was destined to spread the dharma by ''communicating with sentient beings through the medium of food,'' she says.
The paradox is that she does so for such a limited audience. There are only two other nuns meditating alongside her at the Chunjinam hermitage. They cook together; sometimes Kwan cooks for the monks, or for visitors.

And this seems like the most Zen idea of all: that one of the world's greatest chefs can often be found mapping out her meals in silence and solitude, plucking mint leaves in a garden that feels far, far away from anything resembling preening egos and gastronomic luxury. But she seems to know that positive energy has a habit of finding its way out into the wider world. One day, after we have toured the temple, she leads me down to a small bridge that crosses over a creek. We stand on the bridge and she touches her hand to her ear. She wants me to listen. So we listen: She and I simply stand there by the water for a couple of minutes, listening to the sound of the current. Then she smiles — it really is like a ray of light, this smile — and points to the creek and utters a single word in English, as she looks into my eyes.

''Orchestra,'' she says.


Funmi Tofowomo Okelola

-In the absence of greatness, mediocrity thrives. 

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