Many thanks, Sir !
Sometimes I find myself reading a newspaper – avidly - I come to a certain news item which causes me to look for the date of that newspaper edition, only to find that it was printed last year…
Part of the feeling of remorse was caused by Brer Buhari looking so bright-eyed and healthy in that video, causing me to think "Looking as fit as fiddle and smiling. Is this the man that was reported dead or on his deathbed and dying just a few weeks ago? Fake news. Slander and libel. The enemy media must have been misreporting, as usual, maliciously" And so I felt a new surge of sympathy for him and even more distrust of e.g. the Naija Village Square…
On the other hand, you know that somehow, a very sick man begins to think of the Hereafter, starts begging God to show some of His Infinite Mercy towards him, starts offering prayers and dealing more charitably and more compassionately with his fellow human beings; but when I heard Mr. President say, "Nigeria's unity is settled and not negotiable. We shall not allow irresponsible elements to start trouble and when things get bad they run away and saddle others with the responsibility of bringing back order, if necessary with their blood." - it was then that I realised that Mr. President wasn't feeling so ill after all…
Just as we offered prayers for President Buhari, so too we could pray for Brother Nnamdi Kanu's well-being, that the Almighty will fortify his spirits, wherever he may be...
Time to make other corrections: Mr. Prasad my Telugu neighbour in Ahoada was from Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, not Hyderabad, Uttar Pradesh.
He obtained an MSc from Osmania University
Time for The Eight Beatitudes
On Thursday, 28 September 2017 14:12:37 UTC+2, Okechukwu Ukaga wrote:
In the interview, both the President and his interviewer seem to be implying that he has only been in office for about 3 months; so this may not be a recent interview as you suggested.On Sep 27, 2017 7:52 PM, "Cornelius Hamelberg" <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:--This documentary I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO was shown on Swedish TV two days ago. Just imagine, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Africa's own Brother El Hajj Malcolm X were cut down in the prime of life before they were even forty years old, fighting for our rights
It's only a few hours since I wrote the above and now I'm feeling remorseful after watching this recent interview with "the honest general". Muhammadu Buhari is a man I love and after all he has been my man since 31.12.1983, through his several unsuccessful bids for the presidency and right up to this very moment.
Whilst it may be true that in some cases "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel", I and I knows that Brother Buhari is very far from being a scoundrel - on the contrary, everyone who hates corruption should love him. In South Africa today there has been a nationwide workers demonstration against corruption… there was someone holding a placard proclaiming " Corruption is a crime against humanity!"; unlike Brother Buhari's, wiping out corruption does not appear to be on President Zuma's agenda.
Given the exigency of the national situation - vis a vis the idea of Biafra splitting from Nigeria from his own ardent, patriotic point of view, being at the helm of Nigeria's affairs, he will surely be thinking , " No Sir, it is not under Muhammadu Buhari's watch that my beloved nation is going to disintegrate or go to the dogs" and thus the imperative to keep Nigeria ONE!"
In Iraq, in the Kurdish Referendum, 92 % of the Kurds voted YES they want to secede from Iraq and are prepared to undergo some hardships. Predictably – in fact even before the vote, Erdogan was already foaming at the mouth and threatening hell fire, ditto Iraq's PM sitting in Baghdad. Don't know with what kind of venom Iran is reacting yet. The good news is that New York's Schumer has just declared his support for a Kurdish State…. I know that he probably wouldn't be in Brother Buhari's good books if he declares ditto for Brother Buhari's non- negotiable Biafra…
The country Iraq is older than Nigeria - well, inspired by Lawrence of Arabia the Arabs rebelled against the Ottoman Turks and eventually got their little Sheikdoms. The fault lines that were there in Iraq during the time of Shah Nader when the Persian Empire included vast swathes of Iraq - necessitating his convening a debate between the Sunni and the Shia in 1746 – a verbatim transcript of which is available in an English translation " Documents of the Right Word" published by WAQF Ikhlas in Istanbul which is in Hanafi country, Turkey, those fault lines still there in Iraqi politics and in the Iraq-Iran interface. Shah Nader wanted to unify his empire under a single unifying system of Islamic jurisprudence, Sunni or Shia and the Sunni debaters won that round of debate. I thought that I could have done better. I asked Sheikh Hassan's son, Sheikh Professor Sadiq of Najaf – who I was temporarily teaching English at the time in exchange for him teaching me Shia traditions ( his English was already perfect) - I asked him what happened and he told me " Sheikh Nadir was an evil man" I wonder what he would say about Brother Buhari after the massacres of the Nigerian Shia
( A short note here about the Shia alim opening argument, based on a hadith in which the Prophet of Islam ( S.A.W.) says to Ali ( A.s/ r . a) " You are to me as Harun ( Aaron) was to Musa (Moses) except that no prophet will come after me". Tons could be written about the Aaron- Moses relationship – suffice it to say that Aaron passed away few years before Moses and that in front of all Israel that was assembled, Moses appointed Joshua as his successor and leader of the Jewish people, just before he ( Moses) passed away….
At this point my main beef with Brother Buhari is - even given the national exigency about preserving Nigeria's unity, what sounds like his clamping down on media free speech about Biafra. Arab-Israel members of parliament cannot be pushy about a Palestinian State in the Israeli Knesset ( check it out) but of course are free to do so – it's the life's endeavour in the Fatah – Hamas dominated Parliament. Similarly, I wonder to which extent the Igbo members of Nigeria's legislative bodies are not already compromised as members of such legislative bodies, assuming that they were not elected on a platform of Biafra first...
On Wednesday, 27 September 2017 18:00:36 UTC+2, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:Thinking aloud about SKC Ogbonnia's piece " The World Ridicules Buhari on Biafra"
Ah, freedom of speech! Freedom to even dare think the thought !
I is angry!
Check out Nick Cannon - Stand For What
King of the jungle! At the 72nd Session of the UN's General Assembly we heard Mugabe the old lion king of Zimbabwe telling Trump how to blow his trumpet, calling him to order, something that we must admit Commander-in-chief Prez Muhammadu Buhari was not prepared to do at this time of the world's precarious collective existence, with Trump threatening to wipe out not Boko Haram or IS, but the entire North Korea, by a nuclear Holocaust.
Addressing the United Nations General Assembly is one thing, and as we have observed it's there that some president can sound a little weaker and more conciliatory, talking about other kinds of change - climate change etc, but when it comes to addressing their own nations , that's where some of them are much more powerful and it's quite another thing. At home the UN mouse suddenly becomes more Trump-like, becomes a roaring lion.
In President Muhammadu Buhari's national broadcast on Monday, August 21, 2017 this much was clear about the military aspect of his thinking and this time, obviously not dressed in the gown of Gowon, there's the chilling approach to what he obviously viewed looming on the horizon as a threatening second round Biafra insurrection being instigated by a once relatively unknown quantity by the name of Nnamdi Kanu . Where is he? We want to know...
Once upon a time - in 1970 to be exact - Eboe Hutchful, my neighbour in South Legon , Ghana, confided in me that his head of state Kofi Busia "must have left his brains in Oxford!" Perhaps, we are now facing, somewhat the same kind of dilemma with Brother Buhari , the only area of uncertainty being, exactly where - London or his hometown Daura ? In fact I was thinking about this a few days ago, along with with fond thoughts of heavenly blessings on Professor Falola the generous, here leading by example, in connection with the Falola scholarship award to "Sandra Onyemaechi ( graduate of Baptist Girls Model Secondary School, Agbor) to study medicine in the United States— funded for $20,000 per year for five years" - that she must be an exceedingly exceptional student too good to study medicine in Nigeria and with more of her kind studying and returning home to man the Nigerian Healthcare system, it should not be necessary for the gentrified , the old or nouveau riche , for their own survival, to go seeking medical attention outside of the national borders of the Federal Republic of Nigeria...
Reporting back to duty, after his long absence, his one-hundred-and- three-days sick leave , a leave of absence spent in Lugardland's costly headquarters ( n.b. with time, the old colonial office having morphed into "the ministry of overseas development" which in turn saw its heyday under Hilary Benn as "the Department For International Development " during which absence we prayed with our hearts, for his speedy recovery, on his feet again the old lion of Nigeria the sleeping giant now roars, threatening the use of lethal force against any illegitimate thinking that could translate into insurrection and civil disobedience rearing their ugly heads:
2. "...but I was distressed to notice that some of the comments, especially in the social media have crossed our national red lines by daring to question our collective existence as a nation. This is a step too far."
Daring to think outside of the box, indeed daring to think out of the cage called the national space, to think beyond the nation's stratosphere - just now I'm thinking of what must be viewed by Mr. President as Chidi's sometimes unlawfully treasonous thoughts and treasonable poetry, thinking of some of those demonstrations around the hemisphere sometimes calling for "Death to America!", thinking of Ginsberg's incestuous thoughts in "America" and " Death to Van Gogh's ear" - and Dylan's line
"And if my thought-dreams
could be seen
they'd probably put my head
in a guillotine
but it's alright, Ma,
it's life, and life only " ( It's alright ma ( I'm only bleeding)
True . As Mr. President said,
"8 The National Assembly and the National Council of State are the legitimate and appropriate bodies for national discourse."
In the free speech nation, some philosophers and social commentators DARING to question "our collective existence as a nation" was or is, "a step too far".
But even Nigerian English Language buff Farooq Kperogi would not be the last to agree with me, that it is not only within the National Assembly and the National Council of State that ""Things fall apart" may be lawfully discussed. That would be placing boundaries on Sartre's definition of an intellectual like him, that "Freedom is the definition of man" etc - to think without boundaries, limits...
President Buhari : 4. "Nigeria's unity is settled and not negotiable. We shall not allow irresponsible elements to start trouble and when things get bad they run away and saddle others with the responsibility of bringing back order, if necessary with their blood."
And that was not the end of the story.
So many issues arising, to take up, but it's getting kinda long, and I am kindly considering some people's attention deficit syndrome, far too long for everybody's attention span, so I'll sign off here, leave you with Chief Ebenezer Obey's Aimasiko
TO be continued.
Sincerely,
Cornelius,
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