Monday, November 13, 2017

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Nigerians Will Rather Cross the Mediterranean Than Stay At Home, By Ayodele Adio – Premium Times Opinion


S. O. 

I think you may have misread my piece. I used Imo state as a symbol of the Nigerian dysfunction. A microcosm. I never insinuated that the state is the worst hit by poverty or the all pervading mental poverty afflicting the mightily high in high offices. I also did not advocate vices or the oldest profession; the turning of tricks, neither did I indicate support for nor encouraged parents to steer their wards towards prostitution and other vices. It is today's reality. A consequence of years of misrule and deliberate downpression. 


When I read Prof. Zalanga's intervention, it was you that sprang to my mind, as the archetype of the diasporean intellectual engaging in distant pontificating. 

As Pepper Clark clocked it:

"So smug in smoke room they haunt abroad"

I do not know for real if you are working or living " in the Abroad" but I know for real that you have a generous spirit. Not mean like the overtly generous Sister Marie Antoinette:

"Let them eat cake"

But when you write the words below, I am sure you carefully selected them for this forum not for the family of the deceased or the hustler in Ajegunle, Rigasa or Ogbonabale. 

"There is no need to run away to any country when our own is not in the state of war and economic stagnation. If one has to leave, it is not for menial jobs in Europe or anywhere in the world. People like you and professionals who left for better opportunities in other parts of the world have added positive values to the collective pride of this country. "
Segun Ogungbemi 

According to Joyce Cary, a tumbrel (tumbril) remark is an unguarded comment by an uncontrollably rich person, of such crass insensitivity that it makes the workers and peasants think of lampposts and guillotines. 





On Nov 13, 2017 5:42 PM, "Segun Ogungbemi" <seguno2013@gmail.com> wrote:
The best way to fight injustices is through education and as TF canvasses, mass social movements. 
 Majority of the people in Imo State are doing very well. The state is much better than when I visited it in 1994. Today, many more children of Imo State origin particularly, boys go to school than ever before. 
If parents encourage their children to go into illicit businesses like prostitution, human trafficking, then they have misplaced priority. That is where government institutions have failed to protect lives and properties of the citizenry. 
There is need to sensitize the people on a moral principle of 'common sense ethics'. If the political class apply common sense to send their children to school abroad and the poor cannot afford it, the right thing to do is to make use of what they have to improve the education of their children/wards. I believe It is not by going into prostitution and other social vices that can save them. It will rather compound their problem. 
People living in Imo State are not the worst hit by government neglect in Nigeria, therefore some parents who encourage their children to engage in criminality have no justification to do so. 
Segun Ogungbemi. 

Sent from my iPhone 

On Nov 13, 2017, at 2:38 PM, Abolaji Adekeye <blargeo.dekeye@gmail.com> wrote:

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   Sir, 

My 50 cent.

When a country cannibalises it own children, It would be callous of anyone to turn around and accuse escapees, of desperation or even moral cowardice, if they volunteer for slavery under foreign skies? 


Hope is the last thing to flee a drowning person. Most Nigerians have been so dehumanized they'll face a certain death in the deserts of Libya and dinghies on the Mediterranean than continue in, for example, Imo state where the people's governor has prioritised the erection of statues of decrepit leaders at inflated contract prices to the provision of essential infrastructure for Imolites. 


Everyday the monied class send their children abroad to get quality education that'll continue to perpetuate their control of power, resources and various prebends. They would rather the people continue to send their own children to schools where majority of teachers cannot pass a competence test predicated on primary 4 syllabus. 

They build world class hospitals but if their pimple does not rupture in a day, they fly abroad to get it lanced.

They vacation and shop in Milan,  Dubai and Paris. They have houses in London and New York but the rabble should not aspire to these even by starting at the lowest rung of the social ladder as janitors, security guards and cab drivers. 

A cab driver in London is able to secure mortgage, here, a medical doctor of 17 years is still struggling to complete a 3 bedroom bungalow in Warewa. 

It is not the dead that should be condemned for taking the difficult way out. They are only guilty of seeking opportunities. At least they didn't join armed robbery gangs,  kidnapping krews or terror groups. In case you don't know sir, there is an epidemic of prostitution and drug abuse in our country. Girls are sacrificing their bodies to take care of their families and a criminal class is exploiting this abundance of victims and luring them abroad. To rub salt in the wound of this indignity, the young girls,  at times even underage, are often forced, threatened or cajoled by their parents and siblings into submitting to these trafficking rings. 

Parents are cannibalising their own offspring too in a vicious cycle of trickle down oppression. 

Finally, if any of the expats in Nigeria  are kidnapped or fall victim to terror,  are you going to blame them for not remaining in their countries?            

    

On Nov 13, 2017 11:48 AM, "Segun Ogungbemi" <seguno2013@gmail.com> wrote:
TF, the Irunmole Iwe,
The basic principle of life is self-preservation. The essence of social contract is good governance which implies protection of lives of the citizens and their property. 
Government is expected to provide basic ingredients of life: health, education, shelter, job opportunities, enabling environment for the governed to be productive and become useful to the society. 
As the greatest African historian of our time, you have written on all that. Once a country fails to perform its obligations to the citizens it encourages voluntary migration to places they believe could be a safe haven to maximize their natural talents for economic prosperity. 
The fact that Nigerian governments have failed in their moral and political obligations to some of aggrieved citizens, does it give them the liberty to engage in 'mass voluntary suicide?' Why couldn't the 26 Nigerians stay behind and join any of the mass social movements to protest against insensitivity of government to their plight? Perhaps that could have been a turning point of government in the mismanagement of human and natural resources. 
But the truth of the matter is that for anyone to leave Nigeria with the intention of getting a greener pasture in Europe he or she should have some money to make the journey. If the money is used on a small scale business with the help of financial institutions of government, there is no need to engage in a journey of the unknown consequences. As my mother used to say, a three pence that is invested is better than one pound that is laying fallow. That is one of the basic principles of economics. 
I have avoided making references to those scholars you mentioned including the biblical quotations because of my intellectual bias. 
There is no need to run away to any country when our own is not in the state of war and economic stagnation. If one has to leave, it is not for menial jobs in Europe or anywhere in the world. People like you and professionals who left for better opportunities in other parts of the world have added positive values to the collective pride of this country. 
Segun Ogungbemi 







On Nov 13, 2017, at 12:21 AM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

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Dear sir:

 

Is it a moral issue, as you framed it? Is it "sad" to be a janitor in London?

 

I know you are a philosopher so you have to forgive my ignorance with respect to the comment I made regarding your response on why Nigerians cross the Mediterranean.

 

Are we not dealing with the failure of the state (political management) and individual responses to that failure?

 

The political economy that drives philosophical arguments are deep, and ancient: from "Give us this day our daily bread" (Jesus Christ: religious divinity)  to "Man shall live by bread alone" (Marx: secular divinity). The centrality of political economy was asserted by Marx in the nineteenth century. And throw in Calvin. And even the over-cited John Locke, while not throwing away moral arguments, warned us in very extreme words to be careful of this kind of moral framing, saying, in his own words, men can be "more senseless than beasts themselves" as they invoke religious/moral evidence.

 

With full apologies.

 

TF

 

 

From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Ogungbemi <seguno2013@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday, November 12, 2017 at 5:03 PM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Nigerians Will Rather Cross the Mediterranean Than Stay At Home, By Ayodele Adio – Premium Times Opinion

 

It is sad that some Nigerians have no shame to be janitors in other countries something they will refuse to do at home.  

You hear advertisements on radio of people who recruit fellow Nigerians for work abroad and the police will not arrest those who engage in such illicit business. 

The society has become morally bankrupt, all it knows is money no matter how you got it. 

It is very sad and extremely painful. 

SO

Sent from my iPhone 


On Nov 12, 2017, at 9:29 PM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

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https://opinion.premiumtimesng.com/2017/11/12/why-nigerians-will-rather-cross-the-mediterranean-than-stay-at-home-by-ayodele-adio/


Sent from my iPhone

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Sent from my iPhone 

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