Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Thought For Today

i like the summary given below, by kolapo. i don't think the communal vs individual distinction will get us much mileage. how can we understand the factors that generated this change? with a small shift in language he could be describing how people turned to trump, based on their despair over job loss and the lack of a future. even those with a high school diploma might be feeling some of this.

i wonder, however, if you need to factor in the larger economic landscape. not then corruption of state figures, which doesn't change the situation today from the past; but the larger global situation which undermined the ability of the state to generate enough resources to buy off its  citizens as was done by patronage in the past. why is that not working? i think geschiere and others point to the failures of the state since the world bank stepped in; and now especially with resources increasingly stolen from the state and the nation by global capitalists, those getting the massive mineral wealth, or the fish, or timber. with local people getting small change, and in places like east congo trying to control it themselves. i read there are 126 militias in east congo

nigeria seems different; but is it, up north? who is in charge in the northeast? and if there aren't minerals, then kidnapping begins. in the sahel there is both.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of FJ Kolapo <fj.kolapo@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, June 26, 2021 6:32 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Thought For Today

 

agreed, prof. but worryingly, it seems that it is increasingly associated with crime in Nigeria. It is usually said that poverty is beastly. But poverty in Nigeria seems to be a new type of beast, with new fearsome features. Its nature seems to have changed in the last 30 -40 years and the morality and philosophy associated with it in the minds of youthful Nigerians with how to understand and manage it have changed or are changing faST. For one, much of poverty used to be communal, a fact that ameliorated the material and psycho-social devastation that individuated poverty would otherwise have caused. This sense of communally shared experience and management of poverty is evaporating fast. Also, poverty used to be associated with rurality and illiteracy and was defined in terms of the experience of the subsistence agriculturalist, the unskilled urban laborer, the unskilled unemployed or of the informal sector vendor in shanty towns and city margins. With their tenuous access to cash and run-down housing, poverty manifested in their generally limited access to the national and international markets and to imported use goods, and in limited but not totally absent food and dietary choices. It is now worse. Today poverty is also experienced by mobile, literate or rather Western-educated youth; it is foregrounded by their frustrated and thwarted hopes and ambitions; hopes and ambitions born of the knowledge via modern communication technologies of the boundless and seemingly readily available possibilities of individual flourishing and happiness out there in the wider world. to these people, poverty seems to have acquired a new horrible visage and many of them are handling it without bothering with religious or philosophical reflection. Unfortunately, crime has emerged to be one major way that an increasing segment of Nigerians see themselves escaping the stultifying hand of poverty - blue-collar and now "red"-collar and blood-colored crime. Sad. Terrifying.

On Sat, Jun 26, 2021 at 10:19 AM Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Chidi:

Poverty, with due respect, does not necessarily lead to crime. Indeed, it is one of the strongest motivation to succeed in life. It carries a body of dignity and hope.

See a current movie, White Tiger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yNZsomWa7U

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM <chidi.opara@gmail.com>
Date: Saturday, June 26, 2021 at 8:00 AM
To: USA African Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Thought For Today

If you are from a very poor home like me and you did not go to prison at the age of 21, you are lucky.

 

You struggle for things your mates take for granted. 

 

Almost everyone takes advantage of you, nobody respects you. You don't have dignity and you hate society for these.

 

I however have to sincerely thank the (Roman Catholic Church) Sunday school teachers, who kept drumming it into our ears then that any slight moral and legal infractions would land us in "hellfire".

 

I also must sincerely thank my late mother for that singsong of hers even in the midst of poverty, that "Chidi, any day you commit any criminal act, you will cease to be my son".

 

Society should for the sake of its safety, work towards reducing extreme poverty.

 

-Chidi Anthony Opara (CAO)

--
Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet and Founder/Publisher of; PublicInformationProjects (www.publicinformationprojects.org)

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