Thursday, September 30, 2021

USA Africa Dialogue Series - (Cartoon)"Security Vote Corruption, A Gubernatorial Pandemic"



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Wednesday, September 29, 2021

USA Africa Dialogue Series - 1st World Yoruba Carnival of Arts and Culture

26th September, 2021

Office of the Coordinator General


1st World Yoruba Carnival of Arts and Culture


Abeokuta, Ogun State,

Federal Republic of Nigeria

 

Dear Leaders,

THEME OF THE 1ST WORLD YORUBA CARNIVAL OF ARTS AND CULTURE

Following extensive deliberations on our platform, I wish to announce the decision to adopt:

"Fun Irapada Ara Wa"

as the theme of the 1st World Yoruba Carnival of Arts and Culture. The English sub-title adopted is:

"Reaffirming our Yoruba Identity and Legacy"

I thank all for the vigorous interactions that led to the adoption of the theme. 

 

Yours Sincerely,

 

 

Otunba Femmy Carrena

Coordinator General

1st World Yoruba Carnival of Arts and Culture

 

USA Africa Dialogue Series - Rodney Prize

USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Remembering and Understanding: Introducing an Autobiographical, Multi-Cultural and Interdisciplinary Journey with Immanuel Kant and Kantian Scholarship

Dear Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju ,

Has it ever occurred to you that you would very well be a reincarnation of Senor Kant – as per Gilgul? No kidding! Hence the fascination, the passion, the monumental monomaniacal obsession with that dude. Perhaps you remember bits and pieces of what he thought, his cogitations and writings from his former life over there in Königsberg. Did he/you then show an avid interest in big booty? Of course, it was another body, culture, time, and place...

Recently, I listened to this interesting ten-minute take on the idea. There's Allan Cronshaw who says that he used to be James, the brother of Jesus.

BTW, I think that Jimi Hendrix is an incarnation of Robert Johnson

I suppose that you have already taken the Bodhisattva vowto keep on coming until everybody is free...

This just came in

Wishing you a pleasant day, away from ransom kidnappers, marauding Fulani Herdsmen...



On Tuesday, 21 September 2021 at 13:06:35 UTC+2 ovdepoju wrote:
Remembering and Understanding: Introducing an Autobiographical, Multi-Cultural and Interdisciplinary Journey with Immanuel Kant and Kantian Scholarship


    Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
                     Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Procesess and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge


Time: 3am

Where: My study in Ikeja, Lagos.

What: I just realized today, the 21st of September,  is my birthday,  from noting the significance of  the date on my computer.

I also realised earlier that I am writing a book on the German philosopher Immanuel Kant.

It's possible to forget that one's birthday is approaching.

But how can one write a book without knowing that one is  doing so?

That correlation between unawareness and the obvious is at the core of the work on Kant I'm engaged in.

I'm exploring my recurrent encounters with Kant's work over 30 plus years as a point of entry into his creativity as it intersects with the development of my own life, helping me understand what his work contributes to understanding the meaning of my life in relation to progress in the quest that unifies my cognitive biography and that of Kant, the unfolding of the quest for knowledge of fundamental and ultimate realities correlating  Kant's life and mine.

Having reached an above 20,000 word count without strain as the essay continues to grow, inspired by my reading of scholarship on Kant as well as studying Kant's works, explorations promising to expand in the context of the seemingly infinite access to these materials and complementary texts enabled by my own library and, at no cost, except to my conscience,  by the controversial, but in my case, indispensable shadow libraries Zlibrary, PDFDrive, Libgenesis and Sci-Hub, a wealth of access I am observing myself using with some senstivity to the place of the insights they provide in the already clear structure of the growing work, it's become clear that the work is growing towards a book length text which will make some original contribution to Kant scholarship.

I aspire to present the relationship of Kant's work to the intimate, daily dimensions of human experience, as these point to the efforts to understand the ultimate significance of these immediate realities, developing this understanding at the intersection of autobiography and multi-cultural thought and art.

Without our ability to see, hear, touch and smell, how would we make sense of the world and move around in it?

What is the relationship between our awareness of ourselves and our awareness of the world?

What can we know as different from what we cannot know but can only believe, if we wish to believe?

How should we live in the midst of these perplexities, as we wonder if God exists, if the universe had a beginning or whether it will end, as we study the structure and dynamism of the cosmos and are  inspired by the grandeur of existence in the midst of our mortality?

I understand the questions above as summing up the essence of what I have learnt so far in these opening stages of explorations of Kant's philosophical quest, exploring  Kant's continous  journey recurrently rethought from his 20s to its termination by his transition in his 80s, if I recall his age at that time clearly enough,   a quest combining both ambition to totality of knowledge and a growing awareness of the impossibility of such totality, that tension  being central to his contribution to human thought.

What has drawn me to Kant?

A revelatory experience on reading him for the first time in a selection from an English translation of his work on aesthetics, the study of beauty and of art,  Critique of the Power of Judgement.

The effect was so powerful I entered into trance, losing consciousness of myself and the library where I was.

Similar though not as intense encounters with Kant have occurred for me in other libraries, from Benin to London and in my own library in Lagos.

What is this man really saying, I am now provoked to ask after these years of fascination and occasional engagement.

Let's relate closely with his work and with people's views on it and see what these  tells us.

Steadily, Kant opens up for me in his effort at trying to make sense of the miracle of existence and explore how much we can know about it and how and why.

I am contributing to humanizing Kant's thought, making it more readily appreciated as speaking to everyone, everywhere, not only to those ready to engage the sophistication of his thought and expression, a sophistication I am contributing to demonstrating as open to being  made accessible in terms of it's beauty and power without diluting it's force.

Do I expect to provide any new interpretations of the general direction or specifics of Kant's work?

I am developing an understanding of Kant that contrbutes to appreciation of how it can inspire individual quests for fundamental and ultimate meaning.

I am also developing close reading of strategic Kantian passages that might not have been discussed before  in terms of such line by line analysis.

Whatever might have been achieved before along those lines, I expect what I'm offering to represent a new slant on the effort.

Why this struggle to argue for doing something new in relation to Kant's work, granted Kant scholarship has been growing for more than three centuries?

Why not simply engage Kant for one's own benefit, one's effort to understand something that strikes one  deeply, using writing about one's explorations as a means of clarifying one's growing understanding?

Does one's enjoyment of a novel, a poem or a film, and one's notes on that enjoyment as it relates to the views of others need to be justified in terms of others' views on that work of art, such delightful engagement being how I see much of  my relationship with Kant's work?

Such an approach to Kant seems unusual in the first place in the general understanding, an unusualness suggesting that such a perspective could contribute to making Kant's work better appreciated even if it does not aspire to developing new interpretations of Kant but only seeks to explore and re-present Kant from a particular perspective, not as the distantly brilliant mandarin of knowledge, akin to the exalted classical Chinese officials of high learning but distant from common experience, as this class is perceived in their title becoming metaphorical in English, but as a fellow traveller who walks the goat's Earth, as with his hands he touches God's sky, as an African poem puts it of the earthly foundations of human experience and it's celestial orientations, a tension and harmony at the heart of Kant's work.

But perhaps, new perspectives may emerge as I dialogue with my friend from Konigsberg, Kant's home town, where he spent most of his life.

Speaking with him and others who do so, one could be led into insights into issues perhaps yet undiscussed in Kantian scholarship, such as  moving from the correlation between his ideas on the Sublime, on grandeur in the Earth and the cosmos and Rudolph  Otto on the numinous, " an invisible but majestic presence that inspires both dread and fascination and constitutes the non-rational core of vital religion", as Webster's dictionary defines it, these ideas couid illuminate my encounters with sacred spaces, as in Benin-City's Ogba forest in Nigeria, correlations extending to the Yoruba concept of "ase",  cosmic force both concentrated in sacred spaces and facilitating individual creativity, ideas also correlative with the German term "Geist", a concept  strategic for German thought in meaning both "mind" and "spirit, leading also to the related Asian terms, the Indian 'shakti" and the Chinese "chi", correlations pursued as I illuminate correlations between Kant's work and Asian and African art, universes of possibility likely to be new to the field in spite of years of discussing Kant in relation to Asian thought and by Africans, perhaps in relation to African contexts.

Is there anything more beautiful than the exercise of natural powers?

Thinking, walking, sex, emotion, touching, all these and more testify to the awareness that one exists, one is alive and one is aware of these realities.

"Dare to trust your own intelligence", the man of Konisgberg summed up the core of the Enlightenment, the European philosophical movement that inspired him and to which he contributed.

The dash of the leopard across the savannah, the gliding of the fish in the sea, the potent thread of the elephant, the sinous twisting of the snake in it's motions across points are as the creative power of the mind exalting in it's own capacity to explore itself and the cosmos, explorations from within the potencies of thought that Kant pursued in a lifetime of unending quest.








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Tuesday, September 28, 2021

USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Wole Soyinka: Literature, Activism, and African Transformation

Mighty congratulations to the authors! 276 pages plus the bibliography!

This is a reference work I'd like to possess. Everybody's curious and by the time all of that is properly chewed upon savoured and digested, many there are who will then feel themselves better equipped to commit the kinds of critical, literary sins known to mankind as the biographical heresy - still causing Shakespeare among others to be still rolling over in their graves - in Brer Soyinka's case, it will be, Brer Soyinka wrote, said, did this and did not do that because he was this and that and because he was an Honourable Yoruba man etc.) - that's when the biographical background, black-ground and good home-training and upbringing enters literary criticism (and appreciation).

I'm sure that to some extent Messrs Dauada & Falola must have already committed the heresy – it goes with the territory they are covering in this praiseworthy enterprise. When I get my copy, I intend to start with the last chapter, Chapter 13, curiously entitled "Will Soyinka's Works Outlive Him? " What a question! Are you serious? What kind of rhetorical question is that, even in the digital age of the non-reading generation?

When Brer Soyinka stopped over in Stockholm on his world tour campaign against Abacha, my friend Demba Conta gave him a copy of his new song "Apartheid Under Arrest", at which point Brer Soyinka tugged on his grey beard and said, profoundly, "Under arrest indeed!"

As an example of the periodic sentence, try this for size: Wole Soyinka will be read, long after Chinua Achebe is forgotten – but not before!


On Tuesday, 28 September 2021 at 02:15:26 UTC+2 toyinfalola wrote:

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Wole Soyinka: Literature, Activism, and African Transformation

Mighty congratulations to the authors! 276 pages plus the bibliography!

This is a reference work I'd like to possess. Everybody's curious and by the time all of that is properly chewed upon savoured and digested, many there are who will then feel themselves better equipped to commit the kinds of critical, literary sins known to mankind as the biographical heresy - still causing Shakespeare among others to be still rolling over in their graves - in Brer Soyinka's case, it will be, Brer Soyinka wrote, said, did this and did not do that because he was this and that and because he was an Honourable Yoruba man etc.) - that's when the biographical background, black-ground and good home-training and upbringing enters literary criticism (and appreciation).

I'm sure that to some extent Messrs Dauada & Falola must have already been committed the heresy – it foes with the territory they are covering in this praiseworthy enterprise. When I get my copy, I intend to start with the last chapter, Chapter 13, curiously entitled "Will Soyinka's Works Outlive Him? " What a question! Are you serious? What kind of rhetorical question is that, even in the digital age of the non-reading generation? When Brer Soyinka stopped over in Stockholm on his world tour campaign against Abacha, my friend Demba Conta gave him a copy of his new song "Apartheid Under Arrest", at which point Brer Soyinka tugged on his grey beard and said, profoundly, "Under arrest indeed!"

As an example of the periodic sentence, try this for size: Wole Soyinka will be read, long after Chinua Achebe is forgotten – but not before!


On Tuesday, 28 September 2021 at 02:15:26 UTC+2 toyinfalola wrote:

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - habila posting of early european black male portraits



kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Wole Soyinka: Literature, Activism, and African Transformation

Congratulations. I look forward to reading it.

Nimi Wariboko
Boston University. 

On Sep 28, 2021, at 2:10 PM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:


Magnificent.

The first book length biography of $oyinka, to the best of my knowledge.

Ezenwa-Ohaeto's own effort in that direction was truncated by his death.

Thanks

Toyin

On Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 01:15 Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Mailafia

Point noted.

Of course the Rwandans
never claimed that they were the 
Purveyors of Civilization. And to crown
It all, remember that the divide and rule tax
policies of the Belgians exacerbated the
tension between Hutu and Tutsi in the first 
place. Without the legacy from their
colonizing manipulative 
policies, that crisis may not have happened.




Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

From: Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2021 10:11 AM
To: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>; usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Mailafia
 

Please be cautious: **External Email**

as for your first quote, gloria, on whether the colonialists knew of the evils they did, etc., you have summed up perfectly conrad's heart of darkness.

it would be difficult to find literary expressions of colonialism that cast it in a favorable light. quite difficult. i think they knew about the negative side, but many rationalized it, or ignored the negatives because there was some profit, or ignored it by denigrating black people, or called themselves realists, or claimed if they didn't do it, the french or portuguese would and they would do it worse. i've seen all of that.
in the end, if you call people cockroaches, there is no crime in squashing them.
agamben called that the state of exception, and 800,000 rwandans died in such a state of exception.
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu


From: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2021 6:03 PM
To: Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>; usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Mailafia
 


"the "here" for the colonialists was the clear light
 of reason, bringing civilization."


Thanks for the quote by Damas but didn't 
the colonialists themselves not know that murder, genocide and mayhem, theft of land and 
dispossession, discrimination,  
and sexual predation, were the antithesis 
of reason and civilization and  amounted
to barbarism. It was all about greed and wealth 
accumulation, and they knew it, while using
those magic words "reason" and "civilization "
as fig leaves to cover their own shameful 
behavior.

By the way was Damas not of the negritude 
movement- the movement that sharpened his
tongue, widened his vision of his
place in the world and enabled him to
speak not lies, but truth. I am surprised 
that you are quoting him.



Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association


From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2021 5:25 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Mailafia
 

Please be cautious: **External Email**

the reach of lies was intended for the heights of rhetoric.
you could find it, basically, in heart of darkness, with conrad's attempt to expose the false rhetoric of colonialism. but it is intended more as a cri de coeur, not a lawyer's statement. not about the legal truth or juridical truth, but the deeper truth where life and death are marked by lies and deception. you have to pick up your hands when you cry out over the lies; you have to raise your voice. your eyes widen, you say, didn't you see this! did you believe it? it was all lies, all lies, not a word of truth in it.

of course there is always another side. a wonderful french expression, tout le monde a leur raison. i don't have it quite right, but something like everyone has their own truth, their own way of seeing things. achebe's standing on the foot here, which enables you to see from here what you can't see from there,

the "here" for the colonialists was the clear light of reason, bringing civilization.
the here for damas is this poem:

i feel laughable
an accomplice among them
a pander among them
among those bloody hands red and frightening
with the blood of their ci-vi-la-za-tion

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu


From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2021 5:00 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>; Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Mailafia
 

Dear Ken:

The use of "lies" is problematic. Perhaps, "delusional", "optimistic". By luck, I have met many great people, including evil ones, but I don't think they are telling "lies".

"Lies," as opposite of "truth", is an epistemological catastrophe. My favorite thinker of all time, Ahmad Bamba, said that the lie that heals is better than the truth that divides.

TF

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Date: Monday, September 27, 2021 at 3:53 PM
To: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>, usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Mailafia

democratic regimes, in our lifetimes, and before, were also colonial. there was a facade of anti-colonial rhetoric at the time of eisenhower, but it turned out to be lies, and increasingly lies and lies.

democracy at home; colonialism abroad. the contradiction was overwhelming.

 

as far as socialism with a human face, or anything with a human face--we should all pray for it. again the lies and lies, stalin's "communism" was a great betrayal. the american wars in vietnam and iraq and afghanistan, all the same story of conquest disguised as this or that human endeavor, so as to sell the wars at home.

senghor wanted african socialism. the rhetoric of negritude and socialism was so hypocritical, espcially in countries like cameroon. i remember ahidjo's speeches, again lies, backed up with the machine guns in the polling booths and on top of the palace of la presidence downtown. it was so awful my colleagues wouldn't speak of the politics except in whispering in my car.

remember mobutu's africanité? or even idi amin's?

and the worst of it is that the ideals in the speeches held kernels of truth!

gloria, you tell me how we get to the real human face and i'll follow you there.

history has not proved kind to our ideals.

ken

 

 

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu


From: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2021 1:09 PM
To: Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>; usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Mailafia

 

Those first two paragraphs are memorable

and quotable.

 

Add  the fact that democratic regimes,

from the US to the UK and beyond, have been 

in the forefront of anti- democracy abroad, 

supporting despots such as Mobutu and Marcos,

 Suharto and Duvalier, Mubarak and el- Sisi, 

 Saudi autocrats etc. - over the years.

 

I don't think that free market capitalism

can bring economic justice, though. I would have 

greater expectations for state capitalism with a

human face or humane socialism.

 

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

 


From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2021 11:51 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Mailafia

 

Please be cautious: **External Email**

how would we define marxism today, since ALL of yesterday's definitions of capitalism and marxist are so obsolete they are a century out of date.

for marx, communism was a political movement of the workers party, and at its core was the belief that the only way to achieve social and economic justice was to overthrow the bourgeoisie and have a dictatorship of the proletariat.

 

no one uses any of those words the same way today, and ironically we have a "communist" party ruling in china, that has nothing of the proletariat ruling and a "communist" party in russia in opposition to the current dictatorship of a pseudo-democracy. we had a president of the american democracy who sought to overthrow the govt on jan 6th and establish a dictatorship. and we have social-democrats running a capitalist system in europe.

 

the dominant system of our day is neoliberal globalization. we do not have an adequate vocabulary to describe how it incorporates the greatest of all systems of economic disparities and injustices, and how authoritarian rule has helped it along, although the greatest powers are really democratic as well as authoritarian.

 

i am left with derrida's "spirit of marxism" as a standard for justice, and free market capitalism as the instrument for economic injustice.

i am skeptical of the older descriptors used so often here, including "the west" or colonialism in defining the current order.

 

ken

 

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu


From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2021 7:11 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Mailafia

 

 That was only his opening salvo. To be fair to Cabral, he then goes on to more fully expound on the theme in his " Tell no lies, claim no easy victories" 

On Friday, 24 September 2021 at 15:57:37 UTC+2 Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:

Re - the Marxist / anti-Marxist waffle, that kind of profound disagreement about the way forward for Africa could go on forever, especially when Dr Mailafia is not here to explain or to defend himself. To cut matters short let me quote this short note from a friend's Facebook page : 

 

"  Amilcar Cabral stated that always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children."

 

On Friday, 24 September 2021 at 11:44:47 UTC+2 jibrinibrahim891 wrote:

Obadiah Mailafia: Passage of a Deeply Thoughtful Man

Jibrin Ibrahim, Deepening Democracy, Daily Trust, Friday 24th September 2021

I lost a good fried, Dr. Obadiah (Obed) Mailafia on Sunday at the young age of 64 years, apparently, from the Covid19 pandemic. Yes, another casualty in the long list of distinguished Nigerians lost to this dreaded disease. As I always say to all my friends and relations, take your vaccination, follow the prescribed protocol and pray. 

I knew Obed from our student days at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), he was just a year behind in the university and I knew him from his first year – 1975-1976. He was a very cultured human being, very well read. I was always astonished at the vast number of books he has read and continued to read from when I knew him to the end. He was a very polite, kind and gentle soul. Although we were friends for over four decades, we never really agreed on anything and our friendship was based on disputations – philosophical, ideological and historical. We always agreed to disagree.

It all started in the 1975-76 session when my Marxist-Leninist Study Group identified him as excellent material for revolutionary cadre. Dear reader, at that time, everybody in ABU, or at least in our Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences was a Marxist, or at least pretended to be one. We were aware at that time that Obed was already reading Marxist literature so I engaged him with confidence to join. He rejected the idea of becoming a Marxist outright and provided his reasons. Marxists, he argued, were materialists who were cocooned in a monocausal vision of history while he was a humanist with a multi-causal vision that respected not just material conditions but also spiritual, cultural and other dimensions of existence and change. Secondly, he accused us of being intellectually one-sided in our approach because we focused too much, he thought, on Marxist texts and not the writings of dissidents who had lived in the Soviet Union and knew what really existing socialism was in practice. He had for example read the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who was one of the greatest critics of Soviet Socialism and devoted his life in exile to criticizing communism. I respected his vision and although he rejected the invitation to become a Marxist, we remained friends.

On graduation, we both joined the staff of the Political Science Department as graduate assistants, did our master's degree and both of us had our French sojourn at the International Institute of Public Administration, a fancy new name for the old "Ecole Coloniale", established in 1900 to train colonial officers. Subsequently, it was converted to an institution to train officials from former colonies. The French Government later took the decision to take in Anglophones and gave scholarships to Ahmadu Bello University, also to the universities in Ife and Nsukka, to go there. I was in the 1084-85 set while Obed was in 1985-86 set. We learnt to speak French, appreciate cheese and red wine and read French philosophers in addition to learning international diplomacy and international relations. At that point, Obed moved from Ahmadu Bello University to the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, becoming one of Nigeria's leading experts in strategic studies while I returned to my post in Zaria. 

In mid-career, we both decided to go out again and do our doctoral studies, I returned to France while Obed went to Oxford. He decided to divert from strategic studies to business and finance, a move that surprised me. I told him he was too smart and well-read to engage in such a pedestrian path based on pushing people towards the profit motive but he defended his choice making the argument that business and finance could be as exciting as strategic studies. He felt that that those of us from the socialist tradition were to focused on poverty alleviation strategies and by so doing we box ourselves into meagre reduction of poverty for the masses who never get to move out of poverty. His own vision, he declared grandiosely, was extending the frontiers of wealth creation to the people. I asked him to look at Nigeria's Gini coefficient which clearly shows the widening gap between the poor and the wealthy. He agreed, arguing that he left the academy and went into banking, first the African Development Bank, and later the Central Bank of Nigeria, precisely to help create the conditions to opening doors for more people to join the path to wealth creation.

He was initially reluctant to accept the offer to be Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria thinking his ambition should be more Pan African but he later took the decision that Nigeria is so important to Africa that helping push the Nigerian needle forward is in itself a fillip to African Development. In the CBN, he was deeply engaged in the dept part-repayment and part-forgiveness from the Paris Club process, arguing it would free resources that could be used to place Nigeria on the path to people-centred development. Then suddenly, in a three-hour saga, President Olusegun Obasanjo and Charles Soludo conspired to bundle him out of the CBN. It was a huge blow to him, not because he needed the job, but because he felt that the opportunity to contribute to national development was cut in an unfair way and in a context where he had done no wrong. He did try to go back to the job for some time but it did not happen. It was at that point that he began to believe in some conspiracy theories.

That brings me to the third set of disputations we had. In the last phase of his life, he became an ardent advocate of the conspiracy theory about the Fulani seeking to colonise Nigeria and engage in Jihad against the Christian community. This is a very emotive and raw issue and it is too early to go into the details. Suffice it to say that over the past decade, we had many arguments and as is usual in our relations, completely disagreed on the fundamentals. What I would say with certainty is that Obed genuinely believed in what he was saying and was not playing to the gallery or playing politics, with such serious matters. The gentleman that he is would never allow him to say what he did not believe him. I have lost a great friend and confidant. I feel the pain of his lovely wife Margaret, who hosted my family and I so many times over the years and the children. May his soul rest in perfect peace and may his life work be a blessing to all of us.

 

 

 

Professor Jibrin Ibrahim

Senior Fellow

Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja

Follow me on twitter @jibrinibrahim17

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