USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: A little ramble : Food for thought : “ He is 31 years old”

Mr.. Hamelberg, 

Again, thank you. It's always a pleasure to read your essays. Well, a mere 2% of Nigerians are more than sufficient to bring a new dawn to Nigeria. The so-called democracy in Nigeria is an aberration. 

Kanu and the Igbos are not the only one with grievances about Nigeria. Many Nigerians are tired of the current dispensation. 

While many Nigerians are languishing in poverty, the corrupt politicians, elders, and others are swimming in wealth, privileges and immunities. 

Yes, 2 million Nigerians should and must start a peaceful protest to start the agitation that enough is enough to incompetency, complacency, nepotism, old men/old soldiers in power, and suffering and smiling (sending love to the late Mr. Fela). 

Nigerians must organize instead of agonizing. 

I'm tired jare. I prefer to swim in positiveness. 

Have a wonderful evening, Mr. Hamelberg 

Funmi, Ondo, West Africa!

"On January 3, 1949, Oba Samuel Ladapo Ademola (1872-1962) the 7th Alake of Egbaland (1920-1962), abdicated the throne due to a strife with Egba women, led by Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (1900-1978) and her sister-in-law, Eniola Soyinka, mother of Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka (b. 1934) , on the issue of tax. The women were made to pay heavy taxes and were also maltreated. After days, months and years of protest, the Alake, who was regarded as a stooge of the colonial master, was removed and forced out of office and had to move to Ogbomoso (other records say Oshogbo) where he stayed till December 1950 before things came back to normal."

"Harriet Tubman was born a slave, managed to escape to freedom in the North, and devoted herself to helping other slaves escape via the Underground Railroad. She helped hundreds of slaves travel northward, with many of them settling in Canada, outside the reach of American fugitive slave laws. Tubman became well-known in abolitionist circles in the years before the Civil War. She would speak at anti-slavery meetings, and for her exploits in leading slaves out of bondage she was revered as "The Moses of Her People."

On Thursday, October 26, 2017 at 4:02:31 AM UTC-7, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:

Brother Okoth Osewe has a Fidel Castro quote emblazoned at the top of his Facebook page, a quotation that I assume is some kind of motto for an African's life's endeavours:

 'A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past" (Fidel Castro)

As we know, there are many revolutionaries among us, many of them, armchair revolutionaries, from on high on their bed of roses, in their lofty ivory towers, directing some of the troop movements on the ground. I used to go to a pub on Vasagatan and sit at a round table with a whole lot of East Africans, some of them Marxists and ex-Marxists who had studied planned economy in the then Soviet Union and at the time what I thought was most remarkable was that they were still talking as if the cold war wasn't yet over…

Okoth himself knows that revolution is not a bed of roses, as I remember almost thirty years ago, a much younger revolutionary Okoth,  a friend and comrade -in-arms of my son Nathan,  spending some time in bed at our home in Vasastan in Stockholm , recuperating from a broken leg, after some racist skinheads had attacked him viciously, brutally breaking his leg.

Okoth knows that  revolution is indeed not a bed of roses and that often, a man has to pay his dues in order to sing the blues. It is from that time that I started referring to him as "the young lion of Kenya" a title wholly unconnected with any Safari idea and well deserved when several years later he started an online petition that he needed his Kenyan passport . The authorities were dragging their feet, but they young lion was not denied his patrimony and he eventually got his passport...

What I remember most about this period of his recovering from a broken leg is that he was down in bed but his spirit was not down  and when I started telling him about the glories of the Holy Quran he sat up and pointing his finger me assured  me that the holy book was just  a "document" and subject to critical scrutiny just like any other document or book, and so , me, thinking of F.R. Leavis, I thought that we had better terminate any discussion about  revelation right there so that  he doesn't go to the next stage/ page of saying something like "and the author or prophet Mohammed is just a man" after which there could be the possibility of entering the territory of uncharted waters,  the unholy waters of blasphemy.

Recently, I asked someone the same question : "Are you a Muslim?" His answer which I thought was evasive, was:

" I am a human being!"

As some of the pious among us know, it was  St. Paul who  said, "When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things"

Among us also there is surely more than one person that belongs to  the category of "Big Youth", seasoned minds still young at heart...

Curiously enough, after reading this little topic below sent by an Edo brother this morning, it was not Alexander the Great but  The West African Youth League came to mind.

Anyway, without any further delay here it is for your perusal.

He is 31 years old

Austria today made history by electing the  world's youngest president who is 31 years old.His name is Sebastian Kurz, he is just 31 years old and with him is his girlfriend Susanne.Before today's election, he was the country's foreign minister.

While our youths are contented with being ass lickers, praise singers and Special assistants  on social media in  Nigeria, youths elsewhere are disrupting the status quo, pushing for innovation, changing the narrative and pushing for new frontiers.

From Facebook to Snapchat and Taxify, these tech giants were founded by millennials  who are youths.

Mark Zuckerberg is just 32 years old and the youngest billionaire in the world.

The bar has been raised in Austria that elected a 31 year old man as her leader today.

A 31 year old man in Nigeria is probably in his parents house, unemployed and broke, eating free food and not bothered.

The 31 old Nigerian man is feeling big supporting politicians (who directly or indirectly put us in the mess we are in) on Facebook without seeing the nexus between the failed leadership and present unemployment predicament.

I weep for our youths many of whom are wasting away forgetting that time waits for no one.

The condition in Nigeria is not helping matters though  and then the current generation if youth is not ready to push for change.

Those who have bank jobs think they are on top of the world, forgetting that the owners of the banks were billionaires at their age.

The women get married and drive their husband's cars and think they have arrived.

Those who work in IOCs see themselves as great achievers, not knowing that they are slaves.

I ask young people reading this, what are you doing with your life?

Are you happy with the way Nigeria is at the moment?

What are you doing to push for change?

I wish you a Thought Provoking month.

FORWARDED AS RECEIVED FOR ITS BENEFICIAL PURPOSES PLEASE

 

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