Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - TOO MUCH ADO ABOUT CERTIFICATE

People  are arguing for the no certificate option bcs they have a candidate who has little FORMAL education and little INFORMAL education.

Can you point to any definite evidence that your candidate has any significant education, FORMAL or INFORMAL?

Buhari's fellow ethocentrist, Trump, is not only a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania he is not representative in his crudity and fascist ethnocentrism, of modern US Presidency. He represents the resurgence of ethnocentric forces similar to those that have empowered Buhari, but the mentalities he represents may be seen as ultimately on the losing side, seeing in Trump a last gasp for air. The ethnocentricities of much the Buhari base, however,  are deeply entrenched.  The huge injustices possible in Nigeria, topped by state sponsorship of internal terrorism, are, also, most likely, impossible or unsustainable in the US.

The differences in legal systems, political history and economy between Nigeria and the US are too great for these two nations to be adequately compared  without making careful qualifications.

The person who should be Nigerian President in the current equation is Osinbajo. His conduct of affairs whenever his   lean master is not around shows that.

But we have a cultured SAN as VP and a crude provincial  who does not belong anywhere beyond his native Daura local govt as President.

Why?

Bcs most of the ethno-religious kin of the provincial will support him no matter what-after all, those outside their fold belong to a different universe, fellow humans but not equatable  with their brethren.

Those kin gave support for the initial two years of their uprising to the murderous Boko Haram Islamic terrorism which sold itself as an uprising agst the govt of a Southern President, thereby enabling  the eventual  removal of that govt by the govt of the provincial. That same provincial made sure he milked this narrative for all it was worth, arguing agst the war on the terrorists as war agst his people and telling his people that the terrorists in their later stages, when the govt's war agst them was succeeding,  were the work of the govt.

The Muslim North is dominated by right wing mentalities, conservatives at best, ethno-religious supremacists at worst, while the South often deludes itself in political arrangements into thinking it is dealing with a partner who sees it as equal.

This imbalance enables the Muslim North to field a Buhari who has no qualifications, whether academic or otherwise to lead anything outside Daura, a man whose history is stained with the blood of those massacred in his name, people whose actions he allowed to continue unabated without a word from him, people building on a culture of recurrent anti-Southern pogroms reaching back to the 50s, a culture that does not exist anywhere else in Nigeria, while the South can never field a person with only a secondary school certificate, even which Buhari does not have, and yet the uninformed character can win bcs Southern politicians might have little interest at the national level beyond how to eat.

We are happy if the Daura man presents toilet paper as a certificate, some once declared. Yet, there exist many who do not need to be assessed by such abysmal criteria. Now efforts are being made to paper over the determined  lack of self improvement in the Daura character by making convoluted arguments involving Presidents from centuries ago in other lands.

In a world in which his elders have chosen to improve themselves after leaving office-Gowon and OBJ- he has based his political identity squarely in such ethnic consolidations as publicly identifying with the massive looter from his region, ex head of state Abacha and in identification with Boko Haram Islamic terrorism and lately, enabling right wing Fulani  terrorism.

Buhari's major opponent, Atiku Abubukar, is an even deadlier cocktail than Buhari. Both demagogue and sly creature, he created the ideological foundation that eventually brought Buhari to power in the name of the power-must-return-to-the North mantra aided by the momentum he helped generate by fueling Boko Haram with his threats of violent change agst Nigeria, enabling Buhari's eventual victory as the candidate most visible in the Muslim North and now enables him stand a chance of taking over from Buhari since the PDP zoned the Presidency to the North in the name of riding the wave of pro-Northern agitation. Atiku has now  joined the restructuring brigade, all in the chance to pretend to believe in a Nigeria that is a level playing ground for all citizens.

I belong to Nigerian centred social media groups dominated by Benin people, by Igbo people, by Yoruba people, by Hausas and Fulanis, along with social media groups dominated by no particular ethnicity, and have frequented the Facebook walls of a good no of figures influential on social media from these ethnicities and more. I also correlate my understanding of Nigerian history with observations I make on these fora.

I have concluded that except most from the SE, educated as they are  by the 60s crises and the civil war, Southern Nigerians, of various social and educational classes, are largely politically shortsighted  in relation to the national context  while Northern Nigeria, across various social and educational classes, is dominated by an ethno-religious supremacist mentality.

That is what I reference in terms of " the negativities of Nigeria's Muslim North" describing people demonstrating those mentalities as  "a slice of that population that has no business in Nigerian govt".

Some people prefer to see me as vituperating agst everyone from the Muslim North. The argument is about  dominant  influences and a dominant mentality, not about every person from the  region .

This culture, pervasive but not all encompassing, is  rooted, I expect, in the deeply ethnocentric and religiously insular Fulani Jihad, most likely the most fundamental shaping influence of the region, a puristic form of Islam established through colonizing a dominant population in the name of social and religious reforms, while placing the scions of the conquering ethnicity as the perpetual ruling class.

I wish re-education on this  if those are not the facts, however they are interpreted.

Its from only the Muslim North you will find articulate and at times, highly Western educated elite defending or justifying or excusing terrorism bcs it serves their clannish interests, threatening death on social media to those of their people who support a candidate not from their region, where a mob will beat up a person who states their candidate might not win the Presidency in 2019, the only region where a candidate will threaten antagonists bathing in blood if he does not win the Presidential election, another threaten the nation with violent change bcs he was not made candidate of a party likely to win the Presidency etc

In a country where people from one section can carry out a sustained terrorist  campaign of occupation, murdering thousands and occupying their lands, with the most prominent elite of  the same ethnicity publicly supporting them, and go free as the govt run by a person from the same ethnicity struggles to bend or create laws to assist their geographical spread as owners over the lands of others, what you have is not equality but a relationship btw two classes, a subordinate and a dominant class.

Can this inhumane power differential ever be eliminated?

The IPOB vision is the only certain way I can see out of this calamity - a referendum run by international honest and impartial brokers for reconstituting the leaving or remaining together of each ethnicity currently in Nigeria and the terms for that, but with Niger Delta oil to feed a bloatedly run   govt, who among the political class wants to miss a chance to ride the gravy train?

Meanwhile a good no of  Southerners, in dealing in political contexts with  the Muslim North,  pride themselves on the political blindness  which they call freedom from ethnic identification, while,  without recognizing the evident ethnocentricity dominant in the other, they  are uninformed, or recognizing and refusing to act on it, are  being self destructive or colluding in their subjugation.

toyin

On Wed, 31 Oct 2018 at 14:49, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:

Toyin:

People also burned and killed people in the SW in the days of the Wild Wild West and in the second republic in Nigeria.  So that attitude is not the exclusive preserve of the Muslim North as you imply.

What is the the educational status of Donald Trump and how has that aided his quest for power and his administrative style?  He is also a contemporary American President and does not belong to the age of Lincoln. Donald Trump said worse things than Buhari yet he was elected President.  Can you remove him? Do you still not desire to go and live among such people as elected Trump?  So what's different about Nigeria?

Beware of the bigotry that you accuse the whole of the Muslim North of.  You contradict yourself by saying Buhari educated his daughter to a Law degree.  That means he recognizes his daughter belongs to a different generation from his.  He is not to be judged as belonging to his daughters generation.

Good education is desirable as the writer admits (so this is just making a mountain of a mole hill.)  After all he admits even traditional rulers are nowadays well educated

(Prof) Jibrin (Ibrahim) is from the Muslim North.  He understands the value of education and is more highly educated formally than you are. Does that mean you can not intelligibly  interract with him? No!  Does that disqualify him from being seen as a member of the Muslim North? No!

Dies the Nigerian Constitution say the President must have university a degree?  If not Buhari did no wrong by offering himself for election without a degree until the Constitutiin is changed

Bigotry is in every locale North or South.  Beware you are not an unsuspecting perennial victim.

OAA

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>

Date: 31/10/2018 11:30 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - TOO MUCH ADO ABOUT CERTIFICATE

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another pro-buhari massage?

perhaps all to support a man who has never bothered to gain a self or institutionally administered education? whose crass provinciality is evident in his administration and what he has to say to the public?

Buhari represents the negativities of Nigeria's Muslim North, a slice of that population that has no business in Nigerian govt.

have you ever reasoned that it is only from the Muslim North that anyone will dare present himself for the Presidency with little  certifiable education?

Nobody from the South would do that. It will not be accepted by either Southerners or Northerners.

Why is it so?

Partly bcs the Northern Muslim candidates can trust on the unwavering support offered by religio-ethnic bigotry of their kind of ethno-religious compact,  the kind that leads to the massacre of innocents bcs their candidate has  lost an election ( pro-Buhari massacres 2011) ,  as different from the more cosmopolitan Islam of the SW.  That ethno-religious clannishness is the primary strength of Northern Muslim politics in opposition to the South.

Those in the South, however, will not demonstrate such intense clannishness  but some are ready to blind themselves in support of such a clannish culture, such as through trying to sell to the public a story that you cant sell to your own child of why you do need not bother with significant education.

After all, without the piece of paper called a degree, one might not be politically  intelligent enough to get elected as Nigerian President as those without that sheet of paper have succeeded in doing.

You are not going to ask your son or daughter to emulate US Presidents of centuries ago in a time when  their country  was just beginning to develop a definite identity, where many values and the significance of many institution were still fluid.

You are not going to advice your child to ignore the fact that for perhaps a century now the standard education for US Presidents is an Ivy League education, an unwritten rule that, almost without exception, any serious aspirant to the highest levels of US govt is well aware of and does their best to abide by.

You have chosen to ignore the fact that the largely uneducated Buhari made sure he educated his daughter in a law degree in the UK. He did not give to his daughter the advice you are now giving to Nigerians, most likely in his support.

Why must some insist on low standards for Nigeria?

Standards they will not wish for themselves or their loved ones.

Invoking nations that have developed a superb systems of government in comparison with a country that is significantly akin to a jungle, where the govt itself is a terrorist enabler, where even the law does not do very much to restrain the powerful or the desperate.

well done sir.

toyin

On Tue, 30 Oct 2018 at 13:38, Anthony Akinola <anthony.a.akinola@gmail.com> wrote:

  TOO MUCH ADO ABOUT CERTIFICATE

Voluminous constitutions are symptomatic of the distrust a people have about themselves. It is assumed that a people cannot be reasonable and patriotic,every rule governing their behaviour must be spelt out in black and white.This would seem to be the case in Nigeria,with its cumbersome constitution, where every rule of democratic governance  is assembled, albeit in confusing and contradictory wordings.

One knows of a nation that is governed without a written constitution. There is not a document that is called the British Constitution, democratic governance derives its legitimacy from customs and tradition. Yet, Britain is one of the most orderly geographical entities in the world-a nation that once superintended governance in many overseas colonies.

Even in the United States of America, the nation with the first written constitution , not everything is packed into the constitution. The American constitution is a very slim document, readable and easy to comprehend even by those with minimal education. There is no reference to political party in their constitution, and neither is their a requirement that the President must acquire a certain level of education. It is enough that a candidate for that position has attained the age of 35,and he or she is a natural born citizen of America, or a resident within the USA for a minimum of 14 years.

Much as the letters of any constitution must be respected, one honestly thinks that the requirement of education for President should no longer be generating controversy in a modern society. It should by now be taken for granted that whoever shall be President of Nigeria would be educated, otherwise the collective intelligence of the citizenry is insulted.Such a requirement should not be in the constitution.

.

Even then, it is the democratic right of the people to decide who their leader is. Paper qualification may not necessarily mean that one is politically-intelligent. Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest presidents of the USA, is said to have had only about a year of formal schooling of any kind. His successor, Andrew Johnson, is said to have had no formal schooling of any kind.

Lest one gets me wrong, one is not saying that education is not important and neither is one holding brief for any politician. What one is trying to assert is that there are things we must now take for granted in the 21st century. Even in our local communities, contemporary traditional rulers are well-educated and sophisticated individuals. Gone is the era when the traditional ruler was that kola-chewing individual, very eloquent at reciting incantations.

Anthony Akinola,

Oxford, UK.

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