Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: News Release: The Attempt By The Government Of Nigeria To Re-Arrest Nnamdi Kanu

I came up with Escobar to show that "name recognition" does not make sense in some situations.

Even when you speak of courage, I remember the legendary "Nwakpuda" of Umuahia(Kanu's place of birth), who, when train first  passed through his community, stood on the way of the train to stop it from passing! As to what happened to him, your guess is as good as mine. That too is courage, but without wisdom.

Anyway, your man is in a fix, he over mobilized the marginalized Igbo masses with "Biafra". The problem now is how to demobilize to make room for meaningful dialogue. So all those "Biafra or nothing" posturings are self preservation gimmicks. A tactful activist would not have boxed his/her self into such a fix.

Well, good luck to him!

CAO.

On Aug 31, 2017 8:45 PM, "Cornelius Hamelberg" <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:

Chidi,

Like the United Nations, Nigeria united or disunited,

let's keep him centre stage : Nnamdi Kanu

Here's another one and this is his name : Courage

I am sad that Brother Nnamdi the catalyst having done his best to raise pro-Biafra consciousness/ awareness , you do not stand up stoutly in his defence but seem to be prepared to throw him to the dogs...

( Not to be confused or conflated with "the dog and the baboon that's gonna be drowned in the Lagos Lagoon")

As we say in Nigeria, "Think positive!" You don't have to be cynical! The very minimum that you can do is to show a modicum of appreciation and respect for Brother Nnamdi Kanu who in his own limited way , in all his ways, is fighting courageously for not just the dream or idea but to actualise the reality of what was and will be BIAFRA - even as a province of Africa

But what do we have instead? In your shopping, bag searching for an appropriate symbol of name recognition you can only come up with an unsavoury character such as "The Medellin drug cartel lord; Pablo Escobar"? What about Manuel Noriega? In the same breath and along a very different trajectory a more positive one, you could add your own Ibrahim Babangida...

I love inter-acting with you because you are a public poet and an appreciator of words - so these relevant lines come to mind about name recognition

"Friend to the martyr, a friend to the woman of shame
You look into the fiery furnace, see the rich man without any name...

Resting in the fields, far from the turbulent space
Half asleep near the stars with a small dog licking your face..." (Jokerman)

Still haven't read that Press Release - only zapped through ( a few seconds) so much else to do... but I did talk briefly with Baba Kadiri yesterday evening and he intimated me about another interesting twist to the heroic Nnamdi Kanu saga - that he has challenged the authorities to come and arrest him in Igbo land proper, if they dare...

Which suggests to me that he is already taking the sovereignty of Biafra as fore-granted, even before the referendum and the formal declaration of Biafran Independence with the improbable preamble "When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another...

In which case we have the comic situation of a state within a state... if Brother Kanu's hideout is not within the jurisdiction of Naija's Federal Police authority...

The trial of Nnamdi Kanu would have been something to look forward to since it should have given him ample opportunity to put up a spirited defence of his ideology ( the reasons /raison d'être for the proposed Biafra) just as we find in The Testimony of Steve Biko

" The Testimony of STEVE BIKO - Black consciousness in South Africa ( Panther Books 1979, reprinted 1984) : " We are looking forward to a non-racial, just and egalitarian society in which colour , creed and race shall form no point of reference"

Fortunately, culture and diversity being something wonderful to celebrate, the ideal will not be worded " in which colour creed and ethnicity /tribe shall be no point of reference"

Sincerely,

Cornelius

We Sweden

On Thursday, 31 August 2017 00:27:58 UTC+2, Chidi Anthony Opara wrote:

Mazi Cornelius,
The Medellin drug cartel lord; Pablo Escobar had and still has national and international name recognition.

Mazi Okafor,
Try and read "Ahiara Declaration". It looks like you haven't.

CAO.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/usaafricadialogue/A999hy7PQ2c/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.