But is not Biafra the way you characterized it recently in this forum in your debate with IBK more like a blood ancestral movement bound together by language and culture and we live in a globalized cosmopolitan society as you acknowledged just now? I read what you write and I appreciate your fearlessness and courage but I want some consistency. Being cosmopolitan shold not mean by any means that you are disowning your Igbo heritage or identity. I will not advice that but defnitely cosmopolitanism will redefine your Igbo identity or any identity for that matter. If not, then do not expect the person in say the U.S. who is white and very proud of his white heritage to tamper with it because now the country is diverse and it has passed the stage of simply being Judaeo-Christian.
-- I am writing you this from a hotel in Awka, Anambra state but I am not ancestrally from this area. Left to me, I can dedicate my life to nurture youths here who can make a difference to humanity all over the world. Those that work with me here already know that in my relationship with them, the issue of ethnicity or tribal identity is not what we are trying build or shield in the name of culture. When a movement is for social justice but it is strictly based on blood ancestry, I have some concerns about that. It will be difficult for such a movement to fit in a cosmopolitan world. Just read the history of Che Guevara and see how he dedicated his life to fight for social justice beyond his ancestral home in Latin America. Indeed, he mobilized people from Cuba to go and fight for social justice in what is today the Democratic Republic of Congo. This happened at a time even many evangelical Christians are quiet about the issue of racial injustice and the colonial rule in Africa. The Americans were scared of his presence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But for him the struggle for social justice is not just for Latino people. There is a documentary film that shows all this and it inspires me to see the struggle for social justice as not an issue of ethnic or ancestral blood. Many African elites will feel embarrass to see a documentary film that is not fiction but real life story of Che Guevara flying with a team to the Belgian Congo to help them on the ground to liberate themselves.
Saying this does not mean that oppressed ethnic groups in Nigeria or any where in Africa cannot fight for social justice, but how they frame their struggle will make a huge difference in terms of how others identify with it and how that struggle inspires other people in other parts of the world. People flew from different parts of the world to meet the Zapatista because anyone who reads their manifesto knows that they are very cosmopolitan. Under the leadership of Commandante Marcos, they listed how neoliberlaism had marginalized them in their country and concluded that if anyone who has read their document feels he or she is in the same situation, then he or she is also a Zapatista and should join the struggle irrespective of where he or she is living in the world. It was this framing among other things that made them attractive to people in even Japan to fly to Southern Mexico to understand what is happening. And this made it difficult for the Mexican government to crash them as an irredentist movement. I do not have to be of the same ancestral blood with a people e.g., the Zapatista, before I can identify and support their struggle. If there is injustice in Igbo land I do not have to be an Igbo by blood to support the struggle for social liberation in Igbo land but the question is how is the struggle framed?
Language is not just a neutral medium of communication. It shapes our perception of reality and that is why people who are conversant with different languages can think more complexly. I regret the fact that I did not have the opportunity to learn any of the Nigerian languages apart from Hausa even though I am not a Hausa person by birth. I am committed to the struggle for social justice as an ontological vocation of all human beings, to use Paulo Freire's language. I have accumulated resources on such global movements for social justice, but not because I come from that ethnic group of those involved in the struggle.
I never feel ashamed to introduce myself as a Nigerian or even where I come from, but my identity is not built around an ethnic or tribal cocoon now and frankly I will never go back there. The fundamental principle for me is that of shared humanity. My being a Nigerian, being Black, being born in a place called Bauchi State but my father's ethnic homeland in Yobe is all subsumed under the broad category and principle of shared humanity. And so for that reason, I can live in Igbo land of Nigeria and interact with diverse persons there, and live not only in Nigeria but all over the world and do not have to reconfigure my sense of identity owing to the appearance of someone who I did not anticipate in constructing my social identity initially. I do not want to say something in my hometown that I will be ashamed if it was public disclosed in my university. I want my whole identity to be coherent in spite of the challenges. I cannot work in all sincerity with you as an Igbo person and convey to you that all is okay but when you leave, I say nasty things about you. Such for me will be a very duplicitous life.
When a person's thinking stagnates at the group level, it is level two of Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of Moral Development. The group can be either one's ethnic group or even nation. Once when I was asked to give a key note address on Nigeria's 50th independence anniversary, I expressed my concern about how some Nigerians feel because Nigeria is a big country in Africa, they are more human than people from other African countries. I told the audience to get used to it that we are all human. So even if for instance Burkina Faso is small compared to Nigeria, or that Lagos State's economy in Nigeria is almost the size of the Ghanaian economy, it does not mean that a Ghanaian is less human or less African than a Nigerian.
If any African ethnic group can claim inherent ethnic superiority then we immigrant blacks in the West should stop being angry when some persons of white ancestry claims inherent superiority over other races. One student in class at Nnamdi Azikiwe University raised this question of IPOB being superior because of their Abrahamic ancestry and I told him that I cannot fight white racism in the U.S. and come to Africa and condone racism in another name. This is as simple as it is. I respect all human beings irrespective of their ancestry but if for instance Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu feels, I have to relate to him and respect him because his race is inherently superior to others, I will say No. Some Africans can be duplicitous on this issue. We fight white racism in the West and then we return to our continent and either explicitly or implicitly traffic in the idea of inherent ethnic superiority. This is not a good strategy or solution to an inclusive and caring human society. I will equally not one for instance a Hausa-Fulani person to feel he or she is inherently superior to other minority ethnic groups such as in the Middle-belt or other large ethnic communities in Nigeria such as the Igbo or the Yoruba.
Language is a tool and it can be used for both good and bad purposes. The categories of mediation in a language can limit someone's imagination, and in some cases it an elevate it. We need to know the moral compass that informs how people use language or any tool for that matter, such as technology.
Samuel
Samuel Zalanga, Ph.D.
Bethel University
Department of Anthropology, Sociology and Reconciliation Studies,
Bethel University, 3900 Bethel Drive, #24, Saint Paul, MN 55112.
Office Phone: 651-638-6023
On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 5:56 AM, Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi.opara@gmail.com> wrote:
--(1)One important issue the advocates of "mother tongue" do not address is the relevance of a "mother tongue" spoken only in a very tiny enclave in this era of globalization.(2)The majority dwells in frivolities, that is why the minority rules.(c) Chidi Anthony Opara#2018Quotes
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