Dear Brothers Samuel and Salimonu:
I enjoyed both of your postings (and others), but your detailed discussions reminded me of what Baba Ijebu, my legendary Yoruba mentor, used to tell me in the late 1960s (the good old days, when palm oil from Okipupa, Western Nigeria, cost on 2 shillings a gallon; and a dozen of chickenn eggs cost 6 pence, etc.) when we discussed Nigerian and Ghanaian problems (very much similar to the
problems faced by identical twins). Apart from Professor Chinua Achebe's brilliant conclusion that leadership deficiency was part of Nigeria's (and, indeed Africa's) major problems, Baba Ijebu also thought that "book long" was part of the crucial problems. He then cited too many degrees, adding that when all of us went to school in the colonial educational systems, anything (i.e. graded assignments or exams) with "D" and "F" denoted poor or failing work. He added, "Today in Nigeria, we have too many people with qualifications ending or beginning with 'D': DDS, MD, DMD, DD, E.DD, Ph. D. Why won't our country, with so many book men and women, have these many problems?"
Part of my posting is for comic relief, but Baba Ijebu had a real point when it comes to the thorny problems facing Nigeria and her twin brother, Ghana! Do you remember that Nigeria had a coup in January of 1966, and Ghana followed with her first coup in February 1966 ? There you have it; with apologies to VC Aluko!
A.B. Assensoh.
Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2018 8:14 AM
To: USAAfricaDialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - NIGERIA'S LITERATE ZOMBIES
'Intelligence, as distinguished from brilliance, is creative. Brilliance is more of an ability to reproduce what intelligence has created. For instance, someone came up with the law of gravity. That is intelligence at work. Someone else studies the law of gravity, takes an exam in it and scores 100 per cent, that is brilliance. One cannot be intelligent without being brilliant but one can be brilliant without being intelligent.'
Salimonu Kadiri
The central terms in this passage, intelligence and brilliance, could have been better chosen to avoid the confusion they are likely to generate from the way they are used here.
The central distinction in the passage is between creativity and other forms of relating with knowledge. I am excited by this summation because, ever since I began to think for myself on completing my secondary school education at 16, independent reflection stimulated by breadth of reading in my family's eclectic library and cogitations inspired by what I read, I have had an uneasy and often painful relationship with the globally dominant educational system, originating in Europe and spreading round the world, and have hated the idea of exams although I have excelled in them when I have been able to adequately compose myself to prepare for them.
I find a significant number of Salimonu's postulations problematic though important for analysis but I feel liberated by the one I have quoted, without having to agree with the claim that it differentiates Africans from non-Africans, as Salimonu argues.
toyin
--
On 24 February 2018 at 17:12, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com> wrote:
--Some decades ago, Fela sang a song titled, Zombie. Every Nigerian believed that the song, Zombie, portrayed the Nigerian Armed Forces as composing mentally degenerated people who are incapable of discerning what is good from what is bad since they could only act on command. The Commander would order : March forward; Open your mouth; Turn to the right; Turn to the left; Fall in, Fall out; Halt!; Stand at ease; Shoot and kill and the Armed men would obey any orders from the Commander just like senseless people. To be fair, 'Zombies' in Nigeria are not limited alone to the Armed Forces because all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) throughout the Federation of Nigeria are peopled by 'Literate Zombies' whom, in my previous postings, were wrongly referred to as Western Educated. Being educated, whether in the Western, Eastern, Northern or Southern part of the world, should imply that one has successfully gone through an act or a process of acquiring knowledge in a specific field or profession. As an example, a Western Educated Nigerian Electrical Engineer must, at least, have acquired scientific and technical knowledge of generating and distributing electricity. When a Nigerian is employed, paid, and equipped financially and materially, to apply his/her acquired scientific and technical knowledge of generating electricity for Nigerians, but he/she fails, the purported Western Education in Electrical Engineering must either be a fake or his/her educator(s) must have deliberately trained him/her to be a Literate Zombie, which means he/she cannot act as an electrical engineer without supervision of, and orders from, his/her educator. The economic and industrial underdevelopment of Nigeria, despite the availability of enormous natural resources and good climate are caused mainly by the 'Literate Zombies' in the MDAs of Nigeria. Literate Zombies are fluent in spoken and written English Language. However, when it comes to practical application of knowledge, they are just like mechanical toys in their fields of specialization and must be winded repeatedly to perform pre-programmed functions. The winders of the Nigeria's mechanical toys are the foreign interests. What causes Nigerians to be 'Literate Zombies'?
In London Sunday Times of 14 October 2007, Dr. James D. Watson, who shared the Nobel Price with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins in 1962 for the discovery of the structure of DNA, said of the Black people in general thus, "I am inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa because all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says not really." He concluded, "There was no reason to believe different races separated by geography should have evolved identically hoping that everybody was equal, people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true." In a nutshell, what Dr. James D. Watson was saying is that the Blacks are not equal to the Whites because Blacks are inferior intelligently to the Whites. Intelligence, as distinguished from brilliance, is creative. Brilliance is more of an ability to reproduce what intelligence has created. For instance, someone came up with the law of gravity. That is intelligence at work. Someone else studies the law of gravity, takes an exam in it and scores 100 per cent, that is brilliance. One cannot be intelligent without being brilliant but one can be brilliant without being intelligent. Thus, if we juxtapose Dr. Watson's opinion on the political and economic development of Africa as administered by the Literate Zombies, it becomes very obvious that Africans have, in all practical terms, demonstrated that we possess very low IQ. IQ tests are intended to determine the speed of thought, soundness of reasoning and sense of organisation. It is a very good test of mental capability and creative ability. In order to test the validity of Dr. James D. Watson's assertion about the superiority of the Whites to the Blacks, what one needs to do is to take a look at Nigeria, where the evidence of retarded intelligence or Zombie-like behaviour is astonishingly very glaring. Let's take a look at the Nigerian Minister of Power who is a professor of electricity. He travelled officially to London or New York to buy transformers and generating plants for the purpose of generating and distributing electricity in Nigeria. Before his departure, the honourable Minister had registered a brief-case Company in his name and opened several bank accounts in which he is the sole signatory. In collusion with the Permanent Secretary and some Directors of the Ministry of Power, the Minister awarded to himself the contract to supply Transformers and Generating plants and received, in advance, full payment for the contract into his bank accounts. On getting to London or New York, he saw a very beautiful environment and a system that works. Water flowed, electric lights were constant, roads were smooth, streets were clean, drainages were covered, public transport was excellent and technology worked for everybody. The Minister looked around and exclaimed, "Wow, what a beautiful place!" One would expect him to add, "I will go back to Nigeria with these transformers and generating plants to create constant electricity supplies in Nigeria." Instead, the Nigerian Minister of Power turned to his White host to say and ask, "I want to buy mansions here and I am going to pay cash down; can you help me?" That is the limit of the IQ of all our Literate Zombies in Nigeria. They are all, as Yoruba people will call them, KÓLÁJÁDE and not KÓLÁWO'LÉ meaning take wealth outside and not, bring wealth inside home. Of course, White Londoner or New Yorker, as usual, would cooperate with Nigeria's Minister of Power to help him buy mansions there with the stolen money from the Ministry of Power resulting in epileptic power supply or permanent darkness for Nigerians. How were Literate Zombies created in Nigeria?
In a letter written to Pope Henessy by Edmund Blyden in 1871, he warned that the subjection of Africans to 'unmodified European training' would produce slaveries far more subversive of the real welfare of the race than the ancient physical fetters through which the Blacks were carted and ferried away to the Americas and West Indies like cattle. It is noteworthy that Edmund Blyden did not say 'unmodified European Education' but 'unmodified European Training.' For the mere fact that Chimpanzees are trained to use knives and focks to eat does not imply that they are educated. However, the warning of Edmund Blyden was not heeded because the intention of the colonialists was not to educate Africans but to train them to serve colonial interests. Training of Africans by the colonialists was not open to all Africans but to a selected few. The purpose of limiting the training of Africans to very few of us was better illustrated by a part of what Malcolm X said in his Message to the Grass Roots thus, "The slave- master took Tom and dressed him well, fed him well and even gave him a little education - a little education; give him a long coat and a top hat and made the other slaves look up to him. Then he used Tom to control them. The same strategy that was used in those days is used today, by the same white man. He takes a Negro, a so-called Negro, and makes him prominent, builds him up, publicizes him, makes him a celebrity. And then he becomes a spokesman for Negroes - and a Negro leader." Trained Nigerians are Literate Zombies who have been rewired and retooled into abandoning Nigeria's real needs and aspirations for the purpose of devoting their lives and entire existence into serving the global conquerors. Literate Nigerian Zombies connive with foreigners to go into joint ventures, especially in the crude oil exploration, that present Nigerians as owners of companies which in reality are foreign owned. Due to the control of the white world over the literate Zombies that pervade the entire administration of Nigeria, the white world often act and behave as if Nigerians never can know where the shoes they wear are pinching unless they tell them. Therefore, the US and Western Europe controlled UN do not only always diagnose and proffer solutions to our industrial and economic problems but command the Literate Zombies to accept and implement their solutions. In 1985 when a Nigerian naira was exchanging at one dollar and fifty cents, the global economic dictators instructed the military and civilian Literate Zombies in Nigeria to devalue naira against the dollar so that Nigeria's products would be cheaper in the world market and make Nigeria to earn more money for its exports. Although the only major export from Nigeria was crude oil and its prize, internationally, was not decided in naira but dollar, Nigeria's Literate Zombies complied with the instruction of the global economic dictators. Naira was devalued and Nigeria's economy nose-dived and suffered a great recession. By the time Obasanjo became President in 1999, naira was exchanging at N85 to a dollar. Of what gain was the United Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa (UN-NADAF) which the global economic dictators forced Nigeria's Literate Zombies to accept in 1990? Five years later, 1995, the Global economic dictators set up the so-called implementing arm of NADAF called the United Nations System-Wide Special Initiative on Africa which Nigeria's Literate Zombies embraced just like a dog will embrace a bone thrown to it by its master. NADAF was buried in year 2000 without any benefit for Nigeria or Africa as a whole when the global economic dictators replaced it with New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). At the same time, Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) which was designed by the global economic dictators to cure most of our socio-economic ailments by year 2015 was handed over to Nigeria's Literate Zombies and they grabbed it without second thought. By the end of year 2015, Nigerians were economically poorer than year 2000, yet the global economic dictators were unrestrained to throw a new plan called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the lap of Nigeria's Literate Zombies for implementations between 2015 and 2030. The enormous power of the global economic dictators over Nigeria's Literate Zombies was demonstrated in the recently celebrated Valentine Day.
On 8 February 2018, pmnewsnigeria.com in its publication announced that AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), founded in Nigeria in 2009, was to observe what was termed World Condom Day on 13 February 2018, with distribution of three-hundred-thousand condoms and carrying out forty-three-thousand HIV test among Nigerians.
Two days to the Valentine's Day, Nigerian Punch online had the headline, Avoid Unprotected Sex On Valentine's Day, Government Tells Nigerians. Here follows excerpts from the warning: Ahead of the Valentine's Day which will hold on Wednesday, 14 February 2018, the Director General of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Dr. Sani Aliyu, has called on Nigerians, especially the youths not to engage in unprotected sex.
He said it was important that all Nigerians know their HIV/status, .. A young person not tested may not have the opportunity to enjoy future Valentine's Days, if he or she is diagnosed late or presents with terminal complications related to HIV infection and AIDS.
The NACA boss revealed that, at least, 15 per cent of Nigerian youths lose their virginity before the age of 15. He said that about 4.2 per cent of persons between the ages of 15 and 24 have HIV. The DG noted that first sexual contact in Nigeria begins at less than 15 years for 15 per cent of Nigeria's youth.... Only 17 per cent of young people know their HIV status. The DG states that new HIV infections are currently highest among young people aged 15 - 24 years. It is important to encourage the use of barrier protection such as condoms, which prevent STDs including HIV and unwanted pregnancies. Before commenting on the sexual warning to Nigerians by the Director General of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Dr, Sani Aliyu, I want to assert that if Nigeria's socio-economic and health problems are enumerated in order of priority from one to a hundred (1 - 100), HIV/AIDS shall list 100. In August 1987, the Federal Government adopted a blue-print titled, National Health Policy and Strategy to achieve health for all Nigerians by the year 2000. It was initiated by the then Minister of Health and Human Services, Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, a Professor of Paediatrics under the military President, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida. In fact, Professor Ransome-Kuti had dismissed the existence of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria then, pointing out that Nigerians were dying of preventable and curable diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever, cough and cholera. Professor Ransome-Kuti, however, believed that Nigerians were giving births to too many children. Therefore, he initiated in 1987, a government's population policy of one-woman-four-children at a cost of N228 million which was financially aided by USAID. Under Obasanjo's government, in 2004, and through his Minister of Health, Professor Eyitan Lambo, a new population policy of one-man-four-children was introduced. In a national broadcast in the evening of 9 January 2007, President Obasanjo announced that the meeting of National Council of State earlier on that date had adopted the census figures of 140,003,542 presented as the total population of Nigeria by the National Population Commission. He said among other things, "This figure represents a 3.2 annual growth rate. This rate implies that, even with our planned annual economic growth rate of a minimum of 10 per cent, we need to seriously face up to the challenge of moderating our population growth to about 2 per cent to enable us to double the growth of our national economy every eight or nine years. We must also bear in mind that high rates of poverty generally correlates with large households. One way of addressing this critical matter is through more focussed attention on girl-child education and the discouragement of such unprogressive cultural practices as early child marriage." The Idea of overpopulation in Nigeria, and indeed in the whole of Africa, was propagated by the US controlled United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) in 1994, while, at the same time, another arm of the United Nations, UNAID, also controlled by the United States propagated that Africa's population was being decimated by HIV/AIDS. Although no HIV tests were carried out to ascertain the number of people infected, because it was too expensive, terrifying figures were manufactured to support estimated number of HIV infected people and AIDS deaths in Africa. Under the pretext of combating the spread of HIV and subsequent AIDS' deaths in Nigeria, Literate Zombies are recruited and remunerated by the global economic dictators to become condom evangelists. Since Nigeria's Literate Zombies are too mentally lazy to invoke their God's given right to self enquiries, they cannot discern that a country cannot be decimated by an incurable and deadly disease and at the same time be overpopulated. Although the first Colonial Governor General of Nigeria, Frederick John Dealtry Lugard, was a racist, he did not fail to observe that every matured female in Black Africa was mated. On overpopulation he remarked thus, "The custom, which seems fairly general among the negro tribes, of suckling a child for two or three years, during which a woman lives apart from her husband, tends to decrease population (p.66, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, By F.J.D. Lugard)." Unlike Europe and United States of America, Africans are born with sexual discipline. Prior to cultural and traditional pollution of Africa by the colonialists, sexual intercourse was restricted within marriage couples and between a man and a woman. During the three years a nursing mother breast-fed her child, the man maintained abstinence. Through Literate Zombies, we are now forced to adopt Euro-American sexual behaviours and perversities. While the tradition in our culture was that sexual intercourse between a man and a woman should be flesh to flesh, we are now being taught through Literate Zombies that a penis enveloped in a condom, which turns a woman into a masturbating machine for a man, is the new trend so as not to be infected with HIV and die of AIDS. However, on the infectivity of HIV, the Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry, in 1993, Professor Kary Mullis, told us, "Human beings are full of retroviruses, and neither HIV nor any other retrovirus by itself poses any kind of threat. Which is not to say that there is no such thing as AIDS - only that HIV doesn't cause it (p. 154, Positively False, Exposing the Myths Around HIV and AIDS BY Joan Shenton). Kary Mullis received Nobel Price for inventing the gene-amplification technique called Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCP) that made it possible to detect a very tinny and dormant virus like HIV in the blood. That HIV is very difficult to transmit, Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Berkeley, USA, Peter H. Duesberg wrote, ".. HIV could never survive in evolution from sexual transmission. Based on studies ... conducted by the CDC (USA's Centre for Disease Control) and others, it takes on average 1000 unprotected sexual contacts to transmit HIV. According to Rosenberg and Weiner, HIV infection in non-drug using prostitutes tends to be low or absent, implying that sexual activity alone does not place them at high risk. ...//... Since about 10 to 30 sexual contacts are required to generate a child, but 1000 contacts are required to transmit HIV, HIV could never survive natural selection on the basis of sexual transmission, because the host would outgrow the parasite. ...//... The extremely low efficiency of sexual transmission of HIV also predicts that the safe-sex campaigns by the HIV orthodoxy will be of very limited value. Only those who would benefit are those who have an average of 1000 sexual contacts with HIV positives (p.248, AIDS: Virus or Drug Induced? Edited By Peter H. Duesberg)." Professor Luc Montagnier, the discoverer of Lymphadenopathy Associated Virus (LAV), later renamed HIV by the USA, admitted to the fact that HIV by itself is not harmful and can only be rendered pathogenic by co-factors (p. 241, Inventing the AIDS Virus, by Peter H. Duesberg). At the Cold Spring Harbour meeting of Scientists, Dr Robert Gallo remarked, "Montagnier did not conclude that their virus (LAV) was the cause of AIDS (p. 167, Virus Hunting by Robert C. Gallo)." While Nigeria's Literate Zombies in year 2018 are still running around to preach condom-ized sex so as to prevent the spread of HIV infection, the British Guardian newspaper of Monday, 9 March 1987, reported Britain's Chief Medical Officer, Sir Donald Acheson, as having said of AIDS, "It is not very infectious, you have a one in a hundred chance of catching it from sex with an infected person." Over eight years later, the curate at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Dungarvan, co. Waterford, Ireland, Father Michael Kennedy, revealed on Sunday, 10 September 1995,that a woman AIDS avenger had confessed to him of deliberately infecting 85 men with HIV. Reacting to the claim, the former Irish AIDS co-ordinator, Dr. James Welsh, in the Wednesday, 13 September 1995, issue of the London Times, categorically rejected the claim of the AIDS' woman avenger. He said, "The woman would have had to have sex with each man 500 times to infect him according to the latest medical research. Some researchers say 1000 times (p.3)." A section of Nigeria's Literate Zombies now deals in importation of condoms into Nigeria which was put at 400 million packets in 2017 under the pretence of safe sex and fighting HIV/AIDS. Another section of the Literate Zombies deals in importing oral and injectable contraceptives on a large scale into Nigeria for the purpose of what the UNFPA beautifully call, Access to Reproductive Health, which in reality means Family Planning or indirect population control.
The above explanations about the infectivity of HIV render useless the advice of the Director General of NACA, Dr Sani Aliyu, to the Nigerian Youths to know their HIV status. The medical facilities in Nigeria are not capable of carrying out such a large scale test even if it were necessary. Leaving that aside let us look at the statistics presented by Dr. Sani Aliyu to justify his call on the Nigerian Youths to test themselves for HIV. He stated, "... at least 15 per cent of Nigerian youths lose their virginity before the age of 15." The expression, 'at least' before the 15% indicates that Dr. Sani is only guessing and that he has no evidence that Nigerian youths lose their virginity before the age of fifteen. Otherwise he should have stated how many youths before the age fifteen are in Nigeria. Furthermore, he told Nigerians that 'about 4.2% of persons between the ages of 15 and 24 have HIV. Again we need to know how many Nigerians are between the age bracket, 15 and 24, before Dr. Aliyu's insinuation about 4.2% can make sense statistically. Dr. Aliyu noted that first sexual contact in Nigeria begins at less than 15 years for 15 % of Nigeria's youth... Once more, Dr. Aliyu's assertion will make sense if the number of Nigerian youths below the age of 15 are known. Dr. Aliyu followed it up by asserting that Only 17% of young people know their HIV status without telling his readers how many young people are in Nigeria. Finally, the Director General of NACA, Dr. Sani Aliyu, stated that new HIV infections are currently highest among young people aged 15-24 years. Again, Dr. Aliyu's statistic is a fraud since he did not tell readers how many young people between the age of 15 and 24 are in Nigeria and which other age group was he comparing with. As it is in NACA, so are they in all Ministries, Departments and Agencies of Nigeria because they are manned by Literate Zombies whose duties are to serve foreign interest and not Nigeria's interest. A while ago, I objected to the harangue of Philp Emeagwali, Gabriel Oyibo, Chris Imafidon and Enoch Opeyemi by some debaters on this forum. Their crime, according to debaters, was that they claimed unmerited academic achievements. As for Emeagwali and Oyibo, I drew attention of debaters to the fact that none of the two was ever employed in the service of any of the MDAs in Nigeria. Consequently, Nigerians have not suffered anything from their alleged false claims. Nigeria has a lot of Ministries, Departments and Agencies created to solve both known and envisaged socio-economic problems in the country. Nigerians who claimed to have requisite education to solve our country's economic, industrial and infrastructural problems have not only been employed and remunerated to enhance productions but huge financial and material resources have been placed at their disposals to accomplish the desired goals. Nigerian Engineers, Scientists and Economists in the MDAs collect not only their salaries and fringe benefits but steal monies appropriated for projects in Nigeria. Employed Nigerians at the MDAs of Nigeria have not been able to demonstrate knowledge attributed to them in their certificates. Claims to knowledge by Nigeria's officials at MDAs are just as false as that of Philip Emeagwali and Gabriel Oyibo with the difference that the latter are less devastating and harmful to Nigeria than the employees at Nigeria's MDAs. If one is educated, one must be able to demonstrate in practice what one is educated in, whereas a literate Zombie possesses no practical knowledge to demonstrate except to follow or obey commands.
S. Kadiri
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