Moses:
Alas! Phenomenology, a respected branch of knowledge, actually tells us to treat what Nwolise says as "fact". The Obatala created the Yoruba people with a chain from heaven that took him to earth is treated by you and I as mythology. It is a fact to whoever originally invented it. He is not a crook, to be sure.
If you experience consciousness, you and only you, as you dreamt that a tiger pounced on you and before it kills you, you woke up. It is a fact; it has to be treated as a fact, and we proceed to its analysis. I think only fools will dismiss you—the wise ones will reflect upon what you say.
If Nwolise tells me that last year, he flew in the middle of the night to Nashville, I can proceed to treat it as a fact, unless we had ten bottles of Gulder together the night before! I cannot ask him for evidence, which he does not have, and I cannot produce an evidence, as it outside the realm of his cultural cognitions. Facts operate in a context as they do not always have autonomous legs to stand. Sometimes they do, in raw forms, uninterpreted, unprocessed.
Cultural cognitions are so powerful, and they produce so many facts. Drugs have been invented to alter those "facts".
When I went to greet AB Assensoh, one of my best friends in the world, we stopped at a gas station to play lottery—one of those that you will win millions and millions, and we spent a long time spending the money. Here, we took a decision that produced a fiction, based on facts, which in turn produced other facts. You cannot deny the reality that I was a multi-millionaire for a certain moment in that trance! I was one, and I established hundreds of scholarships, eliminating poverty in Kumasi, built a house next to AB, etc.
Fact itself is plastic, unfortunately.
TF
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7224
512 475 7222 (fax)
http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meochonu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 4:41 PM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeriais Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable
Nimi,
I do not think that folks are dismissing belief and faith as unworthy of study. That would be unscholarly. Why do we have theology and religious studies as fields in academia?
What folks are pushing against is the consecration of certain claims as as "factual" before such claims have been researched and tested and rendered verifiable. What folks object to is the conflation of claims founded on faith and belief with demonstrated scientific principles--in Nwolise's example, witchcraft and the TV remote control. I think it was Gloria who said Nwolise's offense is that he jumped the gun and declared a conclusion that has not been demonstrated by any replicable research, experiments, principles, and rigorous logic. I concur.
I hope we don't end up talking past one another. Let's take your Bohr anecdote and Falola's position as a point of departure.
Bohr says "I don't believe in it. But I have it there because people say it works whether one believes it or not."
Falola says: "I don't believe in it but many Nigerians do and I want to know why, I want to understand why"
I don't know anyone in this discussion who has or would disagree with these two positions, since as we earlier stated, there are many scientists, academics, and purveyors of scientific knowledge who also subscribe to various faiths, beliefs, and systems that contradict the principles of science and logic. There is no debate there. We're all complex beings and can subscribe to mutually exclusive ideas and ideologies and find ways to compartmentalize them.
Returning to the two positions, neither Bohr nor Falola says "witchcraft and belief in using doorpost objects to ward off evil spirits are factual and are the equivalent of the tested and verifiable principle of the workings of a TV remote." If they said that then they would have crossed into Nwolise's territory.
For me it is even unnecessary for scholars and scientists to apologize for their beliefs or non-beliefs or to preface their remarks with disclaimers of non-belief in something. In fact, I would not even have a problem if Falola and Bohr said they believe in witchcraft and practices deemed capable of combatting evil spirits--they are entitled to their personal beliefs as I'm entitled to mine--as long as they do not leap to the conclusion, as Nwolise does, that their belief is factual and that it is the equivalent of scientific principles that emerged through rigorous experimentation, peer review, replication, verification, etc.
On Thu, May 9, 2019 at 9:24 AM Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
Great one:
I am presenting the Convocation Lecture at Babcock on June 2nd, titled "Faith, Fact and Fiction". It has been a very tough essay for me to write. I have written 75 pages, and I will stop at 100, and I just still cannot conclude—one element of the essay undercuts the other. Why is it difficult for me to conclude? Because my knowledge is inadequate, and in some ways grossly deficient.
Scholarship is a difficult enterprise, and I often wonder why I am not a tailor like my dad, just making attire for people and drinking beer in the evening.
Sometimes, I think that scholarship is not my line.
TF
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7224
512 475 7222 (fax)
http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of nimi <nimiwari@msn.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 9:15 AM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeriais Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable
Dear Friends:
This debate over Prof. Nwolise has generated some comments that are surprising to me. I cannot understand why a scholar will state that "there is really no knowledge in religion." This statement is so easy to refute that I did not expect it to be made here. For instance if a religion like Islam states that its founder fought wars, is there no real knowledge in this statement? Have historians denied that Prophet Mohammed existed and fought wars to establish Islam in the Arabia?
I take the Falola's position that all knowledge systems and worldviews need to studied, and this endeavor does not mean that we cannot differentiate science from religion. Falola's point is that if a knowledge system works for a people we should not regard them as lunatics, but as scholars study their epistemology and bring it into a comparative analysis with those from other peoples, regions, or periods. We need to study a system of thought even if we do not believe in it.
Yesterday, I wrote that some of TF's position reminds me of the anecdote about the world famous physicist Neils Bohr. The joke about Bohr is that he was doing something he did not believe in because people said it works. My point is that even the great physicist was not so dismissive about alternate forms of knowledge as some on this forum do. I see the same ethos in Falola's scholarship and his interventions on the matter we are debating. This does not mean that Bohr or Falola confuse science with mere faith or religious mumbo jumbo.
Besides, there are epistemological issues in the quote about Bohr: Can we separate belief from efficaciousness of a phenomenon? Can a person not believe in something, but put it into practical use? Can a person not believe in religion, but recognize its benefits? A soldier may not believe in religion or the ideas of Nwolise, but can still find usefulness for them if he knows that it can play a function in defeating the enemy. Didn't some colonial officials manipulate religious fears in Africa and Asia to dominate their subjects? Is this not the way democracy works in many countries as Zizek argues? Zizek's point is that people often do things (including participating in democracy) that they do not really believe in. (Is there no separation between belief in democracy and its effectivity in Africa—in this case non-positive effectiveness?)
As a reminder this is the yesterday's quote about Bohr from Zizek.
"Surprised at seeing a horse-shoe above the door of Bohr's country house, a fellow scientist exclaimed that he did not share the superstitious belief that horse-shoes kept evil spirits away, to which Bohr snapped back, 'I don't believe in it either. I have it there because I was told that it works even when one doesn't believe in it.' This is indeed how ideology functions today: nobody takes democracy or justice seriously, we are all aware of their corrupted nature, but we participate in them, we display our belief in them, because we assume that they work even if we do not believe in them." (Slavoj Žižek, First as Tragedy Then as Farce (New York: Verso, 2009, 51)
So let me add by quoting what Albert Einstein said about Nobel-Prize winning quantum physicist Niels Bohr: "He utters his opinions like one perpetually groping and never like one who believes himself to be in possession of definite truth."
TF's point is that he is groping for knowledge, not gunning for definite truth either in science or religion. The larger point of TF's intervention is that there is often epistemic partiality in the academy or personal relationships, and this is an issue analytical philosophers are debating? Why do certain scholars extend more credibility to ideas from their friends or regions? Why do some scientists tend to believe theories of their friends or schools of thought that are non-truth tracking? All this is not to say that knowledge gained from rigorous science is not superior to knowledge derived from mere "faith."
Finally, as an aside let us go back to the Zizek's quote. He said ideology works in this way: "This is indeed how ideology functions today: nobody takes democracy or justice seriously, we are all aware of their corrupted nature, but we participate in them, we display our belief in them, because we assume that they work even if we do not believe in them." Now the question is: does scientific rationality work as ideology for some Nigerians and their leaders? Don't they participate in science without believing in it? This fact alone warrants a study of their worldview or the imbrication of Nwolise's type ideas/theories in their science.
Nimi Wariboko
Boston University
From: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu>
Reply-To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 9:04 AM
To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeriais Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable
Prince:
Just to be clear I have never said "there is not much difference between religion and science". I apologize if I come across as saying that.
I have said that alternative ways of knowing must be understood, even if it makes no sense to us as scholars. Any knowledge that makes sense to a certain community means something to its members unless we are calling them lunatics. And those members, I argued, will carry their ideas to all spaces where they find themselves, including the classroom.
One African head of state was accused of cannibalism
Another of eating the testicles of his enemies.
What I want to know is the knowledge behind that extreme practice, and my argument is that this knowledge—no matter how silly, misleading, gullible, and unscientific—should not be dismissed.
I don't agree with Nwolise, but I want to understand the formation of his knowledge system—the source, most especially, how it is applied. I don't agree with him, but I gain more in understanding if I can track the lineage of his ideas, as he may not just be speaking for himself but a community. Who wakes up at Ibadan in the morning and say that witches in Nigeria can break up my legs in Austin? Call it magic, but what does this tell me?
TF
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7224
512 475 7222 (fax)
http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 7:27 AM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [UTEXAS: SUSPECTED SPAM] Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeriais Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable
TF
You have a point there prof. I have always argued for decades in tandem with circumspect others that as subatomic level of science, to the generality of the pooulace there is not much difference between religion and science: belief in the unverifiable work of the priesthood couched in metaphors. One metaphors of science and the other metaphors of mundane religion.
The high priesthood demonstrate new knowledge to fellow high priesthood and the rest (you and me) must follow their agreement. I'm talking of knowledge involved in the splitting of the atom in miles-long super collider. You cant say they are lying because you dint have the apparatus to determine what the truth might be. Yet we call it verifiable science.
A consultant medical doctor student of mine once told me people thought they were God when all they did was try their best. He was referring to situation where treatment is given to someone in critical danger. In one situation the patient survives, in the other the patient gives up the ghost and relatives can't deal with it and think the doctor did not do enough. So I understand there are always Gray areas in many situation
I agree with you as liberal artist who is also a social scientist that uncritical cross application of the modes and methodology of one discipline for another is the main issue with Nwolise^s position.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu>
Date: 08/05/2019 15:10 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: [UTEXAS: SUSPECTED SPAM] Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeriais Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable
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Actually, millions believe that God Himself is in charge of those planes! This is not my evidence.
Where we have to keep this disagreement going is the evaluation of faith and where to place it. And this is a difficult exercise.
I think there are so many people out there who actually believe that it is God Himself who is in charge of the plane.
I don't agree with it, but I have to deal with it. It is a mode of thinking, a form of knowledge. Our secularist thinking tends to diminish its relevance and location.
Here is my trouble:
I have trouble with Nwolise--- a belief expressed as faith cannot be projected as scientific fact—but I want to know why, as I cannot say that he is not intelligent, as this will be arrogance on my part.
I have trouble with Moses—no form of knowledge, as a way of knowing, must be dismissed. In dismissing Nwolise, he is dismissing a form of knowledge, no matter how gullible. Gullibility drives human being, even at the highest level of government where political leaders cook human beings for charm.
When I went to Ambrose Ali University to give a lecture, the dominant talk was about ritual murder—the use of human beings for money. I don't believe it, but I have to work with it as a) a knowledge system; and b) a practical reality that drives what human beings do, as in their hard work to protect me.
And I don't see how the university teacher can avoid this in his conversations in and outside of the classroom. The knowledge derived from Physics is not this Ekpoma-based knowledge. I can win the Nobel in Physics and still believe, as those in Ekpoma do, that a human being can be converted into money.
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7224
512 475 7222 (fax)
http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meochonu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, May 8, 2019 at 8:49 AM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [UTEXAS: SUSPECTED SPAM] Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable
"a claim about magical powers should not be viewed as a regional point of view when the claim abuts the laws of physics. physics does not claim it knows everything, or even human limits. but it has protocols that are reasonable, and universal.
do you want to take an airplane that works on a prayer? not a prayer."
Ken,
Exactly, exactly. Toyin Falola lost me with his insistence that Nwolise and his ilk should be situated within a paradigm of regional academic orientations and differences. That's relativism taken too far. That's pandering to bad scholarship. Even more seriously, that's the soft bigotry of low expectation on display. You cannot claim to be part of a global academy and it's disciplinary protocols or aspire to membership in it and then produce something informed entirely by your belief and faith, insist on consecrating it with the legitimizing halo of academia, but then refuse to subject such claims to the rules of that very academia. That's not a regional academic flavor or peculiarity. That's bad scholarship, and if many Nigerian academics are guilty of it as Falola says then we owe it to them to first call the error by its proper name and, second, proceed to correct the guilty colleagues.
What I am seeing here is similar to the case of a Nigerian academic who writes poorly but claims, when challenged, that what he is doing is implementing a pan-African Afrocentric, decolonizing, and epistemological agenda of rejecting the white man's linguistic conventions and impositions.
How convenient.
I believe in regional intellectual flavors and I am always fascinated when I attend academic events in Nigeria because what I see is sometimes a refreshing departure from what I experience in North America. However, I have never seen a situation in which academics at these events seek to circumvent disciplinary and general or universal principles of knowledge production.
Sent from my iPhone
On May 8, 2019, at 2:06 PM, Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:hi moses, toyin,
i think there are at least two or three things at stake in this. the academy is one, and it differs not only between countries but also regions. our midwest universities are radically different from ivies, in the u.s., for instance. secondly, there are disciplines, with their protocols. a claim about magical powers should not be viewed as a regional point of view when the claim abuts the laws of physics. physics does not claim it knows everything, or even human limits. but it has protocols that are reasonable, and universal.
do you want to take an airplane that works on a prayer? not a prayer.
lastly there are discourses, where for instance a theological discourse from within the perspective of a faith community will differ radically from that in other communities, like a political community, for instance.
this flap over nwolise mixes up the three. i don't mind people within a faith community making their claims, and respectful discussions over witchcraft or magical powers or spiritualism etc, can be held, even within the scholarly community.
but when a discourse appropriate, say, to the historical disciplines become larded with those of a faith community, naively lending the one to the other, we don't have appropriate means for discussion.
a small example. i do film criticism, not movie reviews. you would not want to publish a movie review under the heading of film criticism. that is true for probably all disciplines.
ken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 8, 2019 8:21:58 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [UTEXAS: SUSPECTED SPAM] Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable
Moses:
You need to broaden the net wider than Nwolise's. As you read more Inaugurals coming out of Nigeria, you will see that faith is embedded in many of them. Pages upon pages in those lectures are about how God has brought them where they are. Jesus is mentioned hundred times more than Nwolise's witches. And you cannot deny that Jesus cannot break your legs in Nashville!
Where you and I can never agree is to define the academy as "global" with rules, protocols and conventions that should apply to China, Brazil, Uganda, US, etc. I think the notion of a "global academy" is problematic.
What I want you and I to do is to define the African academy within its evolution and peculiarities, and see the protocols that can work. For instance, what they call leave and sabbatical in Nigeria is not how they are defined in the UK. And there is no sabbatical concept in the majority of American universities—here at UT-Austin, we don't have a sabbatical. I have never had one. If you want to go on leave, remove yourself from the pay roll!
Academic seniority means something different in Nigeria than here where a student processes the idea of respect differently. I won't ask a Nigerian student to go to Ibadan and call his professor by first name.
In Nigeria, Professor Emeritus is now a prestige title, appointed by Senate. At Yale, all Emeriti have just one office. Here in Austin, an Emeritus has no office, not even a place to park his car. It simply means "you once worked here and you can keep your title!" In Nigeria, it means prestige, living on campus, having an office, supervising students, etc.
Moses, we have to join our colleagues in Africa to discuss what the African Academy means as it evolves. In its modern variant and in the context of this discussion, that academy does not have its roots in Africa. It is evolving in the context, first of colonialism, and second, of the disorderly postcolonial. The witches have not vacated those campuses, as well as patriarchy and other things that those in the West complain about.
May be as we discuss and evaluate the emergence of an African academy, it may then mean that faith can be accepted as one of its conventions.
TF
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7224
512 475 7222 (fax)
http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meochonu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, May 8, 2019 at 7:02 AM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [UTEXAS: SUSPECTED SPAM] Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable
"If the professor has been saying that many people believe that witches can land in Austin to break my legs, I won't have any issue with it as this is "faith", not science."
Oga TF,
I would not have a problem with the professor either if that was what he said. Nothing controversial there. But that is not what he is saying. He is saying that such beliefs are factual and analogous to the tested and verified principles of science and technology. For this claim, he has nothing but a mere assertion probably derived from his occult belief system (thanks for that information).
I don't care for Adepoju's esoteric indulgences and pursuits. Not my cup of tea. But I find his rigorous analysis of it and it's possible relationship with established scientific and social scientific phenomena quite interesting and intriguing. I actually love unconventional and controversial ideas and arguments. But if they are coming from a self-identified academic and /or are propagated through academic mediums they have to obey the rules and protocols of academic practice.
You cannot be an academic and insist on being taken seriously when you pass off personal belief or faith as a factual equivalent of scientific principles and technologies.
Finally, you are right that the tragedy of his dalliance with the Nigerian military is that he was preaching to the proverbial choir, to people who are already steeped in paranormal agency and are thus primed to lap up Nwolise's affirmation of their beliefs in the guise of an academic lecture. I made this exact point to a friend two days ago. In that sense, yes, Nwolise is a clever academic entrepreneur.
Sent from my iPhone
On May 8, 2019, at 12:17 PM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:Moses:
With respect to the Nigerian army, are we not giving this Professor too much credit than he deserves? If I were Nwolise, I would now be so happy that people are taking me so seriously that I have even attained a global stature! We have now giving him a stature that he previously does not have!! I spent have a day trying to know him and his work!!!
All what we have are his statements, not the outcome of his statements. That he gives lectures and people clap for him does not translate into a project by the Nigerian army to convert witches into drones to fly in the middle of the night to the Sambisa forest. In any case, those soldiers already have charms and amulets in their pockets. The Marabouts are already there, and they don't need Nwolise to tell them that you need charms to support ammunition.
I am interested in what the Professor said as an epistemology…a way of thinking. We cannot be dismissive of the mode and ways of knowing—to do so it to undercut knowledge itself. If the professor has been saying that many people believe that witches can land in Austin to break my legs, I won't have any issue with it as this is "faith", not science. People have described God to me, but I won't ask them for evidence.
Here is why we need to move in a different direction. When I sought to understand the Professor further, someone told me that he believes in occultism. This is none of my business. It is his right to join any association of his choice, as people join secret confraternities. Thus, I cannot ask him not to propagate his occultism and recruit additional members which might be what he is doing. Or he could set up an Occult School, just as Adeboye has a Bible College different from the University.
I very much doubt that we can stop his occult beliefs, if he truly has them, not to be part of his life and conversation, just as we cannot stop a Pentecostalist from his faith. The deeper he is into the practice, the more he comes into the open. And that he makes it part of his Inaugural Lecture means that he is not as dumb as we think. It may sound silly but this may be his own mission, to enhance the credibility of occultism.
I wish I could be forwarding all our stuff to him but I don't have his contact so that he can respond.
This is a very good debate to have, and we must come to a full understanding of what the Professor represents. In the early years of my introduction to Toyin Adepoju, the person who sent his Internet stuff to me told me that he is eccentric and full of maniac ideas. I was later to discover that Toyin Adepoju has the mind of a Nobel Laurette!
TF
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7224
512 475 7222 (fax)
http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meochonu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, May 8, 2019 at 5:49 AM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [UTEXAS: SUSPECTED SPAM] Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable
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"Prof. Nwolise and others like him should first reduce their esoteric knowledge to something more tangible and usable and observable and testable, even if they are the only one that can replicate the oddities, as it seems to be the case in many instances in the Tompkin book above. The context in which he is reported to be teaching it when all he has are assertions subverts rationalistic science and could compromise the military."
----Femi Kolapo
That is all we're saying. You cannot propagate untested, unverified, unproven, and unreplicable claims as assertions of fact and certitude and as the equivalent of verified and replicable scientific principles through academic mediums and forums, and recommending these dubious claims for operational use to senior military officers.
On Wed, May 8, 2019 at 5:07 AM Femi Kolapo <kolapof@uoguelph.ca> wrote:
The following publications include details of some of the most rigorous tests, including by sceptical establishment scientists, applied to issues of the paranormal or supernatural that you will find anywhere. I have not read each page of all of them, though. From the little I have read, I feel confident to conclude that you will encounter similar phenomenon as Nwolise was said to have described in his inaugrual adress and more. Watson and Rhine were top scientists. Some of the reported experiments in the Secret Life of Plants are simply mind-boggling, but they won't be to my relatives in the village who do not subscribe to the idea that all there is is NATURE and matter.
those who are interested should first read about Robert Pavlita's experiments and demonstrations - about 5 minutes reading here: https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_psychotronicweapons05.htm
Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, PSI Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain-Abacus (1977).
Lyall Watson - Supernature . A Natural History of the supernatural (1973)
J.B. Rhine, Extra-sensory perception-Boston Society for Psychic Research (1934)
Peter Tompkins, Christopher Bird, The Secret Life of Plants a Fascinating Account of the Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Relations Between Plants and Man (1989)
The more important point for Nigeria, I believe though, is to hold these two worldviews and knowledge systems apart.
They must be held separate while we first master and exploit the tremendous benefits that the naturalistic, rational world of modern science affords. Since it deals with the natural material world of regular, measurable, predictable forces subject to the replicable law of science.
natural science works and has been very productive in terms of enhancing material life and material comfort etc etc. its principles and methods applied to politics, economics, and to social organization, have led in some areas to significant socio-cultural, advancement - e.g. in advocacy for and attempt to realise human equality and human rights.
Witchcraft and all the other things Nwolise was talking about, i.e., what otherwise we should call ESP and paranormal science, because they deal with oddities and unpredictable realities (odd occurrences) that humans and scientific reasoning cannot control and which the law of science cannot handle, should not be dismissed. Hold it separate, encourage those who are interested in it to continue to investigate it and exploit it as safely as possible for the good of society, if they are able to fathom it. The USSR, US and some European countries during the Cold War, for purposes of control and power, supported research into this sphere of knowledge and in all probability, the rival world powers continue to investigate it. Prof. Nwolise and others like him should first reduce their esoteric knowledge to something more tangible and usable and observable and testable, even if they are the only one that can replicate the oddities, as it seems to be the case in many instances in the Tompkin book above. The context in which he is reported to be teaching it when all he has are assertions subverts rationalistic science and could compromise the military.
/Femi Kolapo
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 2:16 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable
I second Brother Chielozona. Okey Ugaga, please give us an example of a modern army that gathers/gathered intelligence from ghosts and spirits. I watch a lot of crime detective stories and I know that some police investigators consulted psychics in the course of murder or missing person investigations. It's not something they do as part of official practice and in all my years of watching detective shows, I've seen no single instance in which the crime was solved through psychic consultation. But more relevant to our discussion, I've never heard of any modern army emplying the services of ghosts and spirits for intelligence gathering. I want to be educated, so I, like Chielo, await your response.
On Tue, May 7, 2019 at 1:01 PM Chielozona Eze <chieloz@gmail.com> wrote:
"Perhaps you are not aware, but the military and intelligence services of some other countries (including the USA, USSR/Russia, and even Nazi Germany) have at one time or the other also practiced some of what Nwolise is asking the Nigerian Military to try here"- Okechucku Ukaga.
Interesting. Could you, please, provide evidence? Or are you seeking to sneak in ideas plucked from the air?
Chielozona
Chielozona Eze
Professor, African Literature and Cultural Studies, Northeastern Illinois University; Extraordinary Professor, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.Fellow - Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, South Africa
https://neiu.academia.edu/ChielozonaEzeMy latest book: Race, Decolonization, and Global Citizenship in South Africa.
On Tue, May 7, 2019 at 9:16 AM Okechukwu Ukaga <ukaga001@umn.edu> wrote:
Moses, my broda:
Perhaps you are not aware, but the military and intelligence services of some other countries (including the USA, USSR/Russia, and even Nazi Germany) have at one time or the other also practiced some of what Nwolise is asking the Nigerian Military to try here. So I would not say Nigeria is doomed just because of his suggestions and/or the following applause. The problem with Nigeria (as Chinua Achebe famously wrote many years ago and Wole Soyinka recently reiterated a a BBC interview) is poor/bad/ineffective leadership, not second or third order issues.
Now, on a different but related issue, what do you make of the reported negotiation between the federal government and Miyetti Allah? Any historical context? Any insights regarding potential alternative(s) to the current approach?
Regards,
Okey
On Tue, May 7, 2019 at 6:08 AM Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:
Colleagues and friends,
Setting aside for the moment the bizarre atmospherics of Professor Nwolise's oeuvre, have we pause to consider the implications of what Okey Iheduru posted from eye-witness knowledge? He told us that in this age of heightened insecurity and multiple threats to the sovereignty of Nigeria, Professor Nwolise makes regular lecturing appearances at the only postgraduate institution of the Nigerian armed forces, the National Defense College, urging army colonels and generals and their equivalents in other branches of the armed forces to gather military intelligence through ghosts and spirits and, more disturbingly, that he receives a "rapturous" applause and positive reception each time he presents this dangerous nonsense to the students. Wow, just wow. And we wonder why the Nigerian armed forces cannot understand the security threats facing the country, let alone tackling them. And some say I'm exaggerating when I say the country is doomed.
On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 9:03 PM Ashafa Abdullahi <abashafa@gmail.com> wrote:
Oga Toyin,
It's my deliberate judgement to agree with you entirely. My concern about majority of posts here here is inconclusive lamentation. Let's not portray ourselves as if the politicians & leadership across we complain about daily are better than us. They complain & pretend they are the solutions. But we lament and don't proved solutions, which means we need to shift ground. There's nothing that has not been said regarding Nigeria's ills. Let's put our analysis on the solutions.
On Mon, May 6, 2019, 14:40 Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu wrote:
Moses:
The most productive argument will be to assume that many won't disconnect! Society and people do not just shift. Something must first shift before they respond. Thus, we have to work out a new way of thinking that will accommodate that, which may be unfortunate.
I have been to Jos and Kaduna where making the disconnect argument to our colleagues may not even have any appeal. If you wake up in the city, driving to work to see which road is taken by the Christians and another by the Muslims, the first thing they do when they get to the office and return back home is to pray. Even as an External Examiner in such places, I joined them in that prayer. And in the classrooms, they pray, and they prayed for me, and they work faith into their presentations. I listen and process to understand where they are coming from. Not that I agree with them, but that I understand why they do what they do.
I know how to make the theoretical arguments about the disconnect, but at the same time, I know that in practice it won't happen.
TF
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7224
512 475 7222 (fax)
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From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meochonu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, May 6, 2019 at 7:40 AM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable
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TF,
We get all that. Some of my own family members get scandalized when I tell them that they're too quick to blame the devil/witchcraft and to resort to prayers for problems that are physical and require taking concrete action. That's not the point. In our work, we reckon with the existence and influence of that worldview, which cuts across all of Africa's religious traditions. The point is that an academic should not uncritical substitute a religious dogma founded on faith and unverifiable supernatural truth claims for a rigorous, analytical engagement with such claims. An academic who is a Pentecostal Christian, devout Muslim, or Ifa practitioner should compartmentalize his religious beliefs when doing academic work. Yes, all writings are autobiographical, but when we say that, we are talking about subconscious bias and the ways in which our socializations seep into our approaches subconsciously. It does not refer to the conscious certitude of passing off unverifiable spiritual and other truth claims as "factual." There're probably Western academics who believe in alien abductions but will they try to publish that belief in a journal or present it as fact in an academic lecture? They know better than to try to do that. Even if they want to write on alien abductions, they know that the academic protocol is to maintain a critical, scholarly distance from the subject/object of inquiry and analysis.
On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 7:25 AM Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
I am beginning to enjoy this debate.
What is "factual"? At Ibadan, my city, and yours, witchcraft is "factual"!! The mission of Christ is "factual". It is the fact of faith, not the fact of science.
Years ago, in the company of others, when I told my mom that I did not believe in witchcraft, I sent her into panic and she began to look for remedies for me to stay alive. I don't believe that there are witches, but have the witches now left Ibadan because I don't believe in them?
TF
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7224
512 475 7222 (fax)
http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meochonu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, May 6, 2019 at 7:13 AM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable
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And, by the way, yes, a "fundamentalist Christian" can win the Nobel Prize in Medicine but certainly not by advancing his religious beliefs as his oeuvre. Yes, we need an epistemology that engages with prevalent beliefs in supernatural causation in Africa because these beliefs are pervasive, inform devotional practices, and animate and constrain attitudes towards politics in African countries. That epistemology is already underway, with many scholars such as Nimi Wariboko, Obadare, Peter Gaschere, Elias Bombgba, Olupona, Asonze Uka, yourself, Are Adogame, and others already engaging critically with that world. However, it would be academically suicidal if these scholars where to attempt to pass off an uncritical endorsement of Nigerian religious beliefs as "factual" in the most important academic lecture of their career or in a book.
On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 5:11 AM Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:
Oga TF,
As a person of faith myself I have absolutely no problem with people believing in whatever they choose. That is their right. However, there are two issues here. One is that this was an inaugural lecture delivered to an academic community and later self-published as an academic book. An inaugural lecture is supposed to be the capstone of a professor's research enterprise and academic contributions, which if not publishable, should at least be worthy of submission for peer review. Can this mishmash of Pentecostal and African traditional religious beliefs be submitted for academic review in any serious academic culture?
Secondly, here is what Nwolise wrote: "The scientist or intellectualist may not see or accept these as real based on his training, but they happen daily and are factual." The Professor of political science is passing off his witchcraft claims as factual. He is both professing and affirming witchcraft remote controls and the instrumental and causative agency of malevolent spirits as factual, but what is the basis for this? Where's the proof, the demonstration, the logic. I would not have a problem if he had stated that he was outlining the prevalent beliefs in Nigeria. No, he advanced these unproven and unprovable beliefs and spiritual opinions as factual. This is what I expect to hear and hear all the time from the pulpit in my church. I've never heard it in an academic lecture unless the academic is quoting or paraphrasing someone in order to analyze the claims or beliefs. Professor Nwolise would have delivered his spiritual thesis to an audience of Pentecostal Christians. Conjectures, faith, opinions, and beliefs cannot substitute for academic rigor, scholarly skepticism, and analytical tentativeness and distance in matters that are beyond empirical proof and rest on faith, piety, and belief.
Some of my Facebook friends posited that I should at least give the man credit for putting his imagination to good use and for giving us something in the magical realism genre. But the man is not a novelist. He is not even a Professor of literature. My favorite fictional niche is actually magical realism, two of my favorite novels being Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Ben Okri's The Famished Road. I also love Tutuola's The Palm Wine Drinkard and Fagunwa's Forest of a Thousand Demons. But these are works of fiction and folklore, not academic lectures/books purporting to explicate and solve a problem in society as Nwolise claims to be doing in regard to human (in)security.
The full title of Nwolise's inaugural lecture is: Is Physical Security Alone Enough For the Survival, Progress and Happiness of Man?"~O.B.C Nwolise- (Inaugural Lecture 2012/13, University of Ibadan).
By the way, what does Nwolise proffer as a solution to his claimed ubiquity and multivalent instrumentality of evil spirits? He says Nigeria needs to take "spiritual security" and "Strategic Spiritual Intelligence" seriously and that Nigerians should counter this ubiquity of spiritual threats with what he calls "Divine Security Insurance."
At any rate, several of my Facebook interlocutors raised the questions you're raising here and I will save myself some effort by reproducing my responses to them below.
Eric Terfa Ula-Lisa, Believe whatever you want. I am a Christian and believe similarly as you. It is your right and prerogative. Other people, including atheists, have their own opinions and beliefs. Find a church or the appropriate venue to peddle and profess those beliefs. Beliefs and mere opinions are not admissible as factual in academic discourse, period. I can believe if I want that lizards are capable of giving birth to humans. I will probably find an audience somewhere that is receptive to it, and I have the right to that opinion. But I would be laughed off the stage in a serious academic culture were I to try to pass it off in a lecture as factual. Piety and belief have their place. Academic rigor and analysis have their place as well.
Eric Terfa Ula-Lisa but how can we proceed when there is no verifiable, empirical basis to do so? If I come to your church, the Christian that I am will take your word for your "empirical experience with witches." But in my terrain of academics, how can you convince me except by merely inviting me to accept your word for it. Academia has its rules and that is not how it works. The gentleman in question is a professor and was giving an academic lecture to an academic audience. And yes, as an academic theory or argument, the quote deserves nothing but ridicule. He should have been laughed off that stage, but I'm sure they clapped for him and praised him. However, if he had expressed those sentiments in a church, I would not have ridiculed him at all.
To the Facebook follower who posted a link to an academic study of witchcraft, I had this to say.
This is a study of witchcraft. Academics have been studying witchcraft and associated beliefs for centuries. But they don't advance them as factual. They maintain a critical distance from the belief system and practice. They don't pass off these unproven and unprovable phenomena, beliefs and practices as "factual." They don't lionize or legitimize the beliefs.
I don't have the energy to even engage this type of academic, but you mentioned opinions, which we all have. He wasn't just expressing an opinion on Facebook or to his friends in a conversation. This is his inaugural professorial lecture, which should be publishable or at least worthy of submission to a journal in his field. Tell me, can this paper be submitted to any journal let alone be considered for publication in a journal in his field? Is it even worthy of an academic debate? Can it provoke academic debate? I am a practicing Christian. I have my beliefs in that regard. But I will not deliver an ACADEMIC lecture at a university, let alone a professorial inaugural, that is basically a rehash of my Christian or theological beliefs. If I desire a forum and platform to propagate a theological theory of spiritual causation, I will look for a religious audience, preferably in my church. I have no problem with people believing what they believe, but religious beliefs or opinions or convictions do not constitute academic theories. He actually says in the excerpt that his witchcraft scenarios are "factual," as actual as the science behind TV transmission and remote control technology. Where is the proof for this? Where is a demonstration of this? In scholarship, you do not make claims or assertions without demonstrating them. I am a little disappointed that you're dignifying a mishmash of traditional African religious and Pentecostal spiritualist explanations as a social scientific theory. The man is a political scientist for crying out loud. I can say a tree can learn a language. I have a right to that opinion but would I not be laughed off the stage and humiliated if I were to go before an audience of academics and express that opinion and posit it as fact?
All peoples have their beliefs, superstitions, metaphysical claims, and cosmologies. The difference is that you don't find their professors of political science delivering academic lectures claiming, without proof, that they are factual.
Scholars study all phenomena, including religious and superstitious beliefs but they maintain a scholarly distance and/or engage critically with them. They don't advance such unproven and unprovable phenomena as "factual" without proof or verifiable methodological demonstration. And stop with excusing poor, inept, and uncritical scholarship with claims of a decolonizing agenda. That's how some Nigerian academics who cannot write simple English sentences will claim that their poor writing skills are a form of rebellion against the white man's colonizing language and that they are trying to Africanize and decolonize African scholarship.
Anyway, perhaps I should not waste energy and time on nonsense and heed the advice of my brother, Professor Adeeko, below.
Adeleke Adeeko Moses Ochonu My friend, please leave witch hunters alone! Why bother to debate people who choose to equate the being of electronic remote devices and the being of beliefs. How can you begin to understand the structure of a moral framework that cedes complete control to forces beyond understanding, an allegedly moral (?) system that accepts as justified the killing of children as witch, a system that fails to question the sexism that restricts witch convictions to women, a system that equalizes belief and proof. Moses, please leave these people alone. How can you talk to them?
On Sun, May 5, 2019 at 7:04 PM Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
Question:
Is the professor expressing a belief system or affirming a belief system? If expressing a belief system, there is nothing new in what he has said. If he is affirming it, can you and I deny him of his faith? Pentecostalists tend to believe in magic and witchcraft. There is a clue in one sentence:
"In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic."
Suppose the professor is a practicing Muslim who is observing the Ramadan and he talks about Allah and the rewards of heaven, is this not similar to his ideas on Nigerian religion?
And what about he a Christian, do we accept his faith-derived statement? A fundamentalist Christian can win the Nobel Prize in medicine.
I am not sure that one can win the argument in many parts of Africa that it is possible to disconnect this kind of belief from the work they do. In many Nollywood movies, the medical doctors tell their patients to forget about modern medicine and see the "native doctor". The campuses are littered with sacrifices, and when I was at Ife, one was put in my office.
There must be an examination of his essays and books to conclude on the degree to which his faith as affected his findings. Human beings can "fragment" one part of the brain to write the most brilliant essay today and another part can see witches the next day.
The assumption that human beings are rational all the time is actually not correct. Indeed, they are not, in the secularist understanding of faith.
In any case, I hope the professor is reading this so that he can teach Moses a lesson by breaking his two legs!!!
TF
From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meochonu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 4:56 PM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable
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I am reading Professor Ebenezer Obadare's brilliant new book, Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (Zed Books, 2018), and I came across the quote below, one of those he advances as touchstones for his central argument.
It is not lifted from a sermon or a facebook post. It is not extracted from a theological or hermeneutical document.
On the contrary, ladies and gentlemen of Facebook Nigeriana, it is an excerpt from the inaugural professorial lecture of a certain Professor Osisioma B.C Nwolise, a Professor of Political Science (a social science that teaches logic, empirical proof, rigor, verifiability, and rational analysis) at the University of Ibadan.
This is the most important lecture of his academic career, delivered in a university to an academic audience. And yet if I did not know its context I would have surmised that this was a sermon delivered in one of the parishes of my home church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God.
Here is an academic lending his professorial weight to the Nigerian pastime of spiritualizing sociopolitical, security, and economic problems--our culture of conflating piety and politics, or neglecting political action for pietistic escapism.
We try to pray away our problems when we should be acting against them. Now, our professors who should know better are uncritically legitimizing and trying to intellectualize this culture of fatalistic spiritualization of secular, practical problems.
Farooq Kperogi is right; our problem is not just leadership but also a national scourge of illiteracy (literal and figurative) and irrationality. How can a country whose professors profess such nonsense make progress or solve its problems?
And how can a people challenge their oppressors and tormentors in power when even their professors subscribe to such drivel, such spiritual causality for everything, including election rigging, bad governance and incompetent leadership?
Read and weep for what remains of the diminishing country called Nigeria.
"When we want to watch our television, we switch it on with our remote control by pressing a button. Then we can stay in Ibadan and watch a football match being played in Athens, Sydney or Paris. In the same way, a witch stays in her house in Lokoja or any other town, stirs water in a pot, or conjurs(sic) a mirror, and can monitor any targeted person or object in London, Athens, or Sydney. In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic. A witch can also stay in South Africa or the United Kingdom and break the leg of an effigy spiritually programmed to represent a person domiciled in the United States, and the person's leg will break mysteriously there. The scientist or intellectualist may not see or accept these as real based on his training, but they happen daily and are factual. There are spirits attached to walls, plants, leaves, found in bushes, on people's clothes, etc.; and there are roving spirits that move about especially between 12 noon and 2.00 pm, and at night. Some of these spirits are benevolent, while others are malevolent. It is the malevolent spirits that constitute threats to humans. They can project sickness into people's bodies, change people's star or destiny, or change the sex of a baby in the womb, remove the baby completely or turn it into a stone, or tortoise, snail, horse, snake, or a disabled [person]. If it were possible to carve out a block of the air for spiritual analysis, we can find several arrows, and many other dangerous pollutants, spiritual weapons of mass destruction flying in various directions 24 hours of the day."
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