On Monday, January 17, 2022, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:
There's also the Oral Tradition
How do you intend to contribute to keeping it alive, in Africa?
I suppose you could explore Spoken Word possibilities - live performances supported by some jungle drums and the creative effects of some Shango thunder & lightning , lighting up Chidi on stage, performing wonders of the word….
Your Spoken Word recordings should give you and us more than just a little satisfaction.
--On Sunday, 16 January 2022 at 10:59:42 UTC+1 chidi...@gmail.com wrote:"You and Chidi have been singing the praises of blogging, online self-publishing , that you are both plentifully available on the WWW., but I suspect that it should be a little more satisfying/ fulfilling to refer to your books"-Cornelius HamelbergMazi Cornelius,If I existed as a poet before the era of printing press and wrote on scrolls, would you have woken me up to write on books when the printing press was invented?Wouldn't it have been a case of someone or a group of people transferring my work to books and now to internet applications (Apps) and e-books?The scrolls, the books and the internet applications (Apps) are publishing media, depending on the era.Because I am writing in an internet era, I prefer to write on internet applications (Apps) and on e-books.-CAO.
On Friday, January 14, 2022, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:Dear Sir,
Tobrah ?
Me? Ibim!
This analysis of Nigeria's security situation is interesting
All that you say makes absolute sense to me, however, at the same time there are the powerful external and internal/ domestic actors who would like to see the disintegration of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. and the fulfilment of their own dire predictions. Some of the very premonitions that the late Obadiah Mailafia , the outspoken Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, and last but not least, the disintegration that John Campbell the USA's former Ambassador to Nigeria predicted. based on the presumption that one of the functions of any embassy in that country, is to collect , analyse , interpret and assess relevant information about that country, according to their own strategic interests
They - whoever they are, know that they can best foster and foment this disintegration/ implosion not so much by remote control but certainly, most successfully as they are doing right now through their agents already stationed on the ground - and therefore, not accidentally, on a daily basis, the last several years that's what we have been seeing unfolding right in front of our eyes: the destabilisation of Nigeria along its well known fault lines - the North -South, East-West, Islam vs Christianity axis , the evidence of all this in the ongoing Boko Haram terrorism ( who are they and where are the weapons coming from?), the daily murders, wanton ransom kidnappings, church arsons etc. etc. that is being reported by the Nigerian mass media and that is still being discussed ad nauseam in this forum since the good old days of Yaradua, Goodluck Jonathan, right up to the present dispensation of two termer Muhammadu Buhari.
I have seen and know about eight military coups in Africa.
It seems to me that a successful coup that would be capable of imposing law and order over the whole Federation would prevent the disintegration of the country into its constituent fragments, ethnic enclaves that are agitating for their freedom, separate from what is known today, as Nigeria.
This seems to mean that a coup does not have to be successful - on the contrary, the coup has to be unsuccessful in order to ignite the various separatist movements and their seemingly dormant ambitions which are being barley suppressed at the moment , because they fear what could be the outcome of a military confrontation with the Federal Military - but in the eventuality of an botched coup attempt, should the secessionists secede simultaneously, in the absence of a unified Federal military to curb that tendency, it would be a fait accompli. How long the ensuing chaos would last , until the dust of battle finally died down, is quite another matter. For the time being, at least right now, Nigeria's Federal Army doesn't seem to be so successful at quelling the ragtag terrorists known as Boko Haram; who knows, at a future date when the chips are down Boko Haram and some units of the Federal Army may well unite ( unity of purpose)
Let us pray
On Thursday, 13 January 2022 at 17:26:19 UTC+1 nimi...@msn.com wrote:Dear Elder Cornelius:Your prognosis of a military coup has touched a nerve in me. Last Tuesday, January 11, I gave a lecture on Nigeria to a group of high school teachers of history and social studies from all over America. During the Q/A, one of them asked me if a coup was imminent given the poor security situation in the country?
I responded by saying it was unlikely at this point and if one was staged it might not last long. I proceeded to give six factors which informed my response.
First, I stated that coups are less likely in Nigeria today than say 40 years ago. The mood and ethos of the country are not conducive for the acceptance of military coups as they were in the past.
Second, Nigerians are more likely to resist military coups today. Given the current ethnic divisions in the country, I said Nigerians might interpret coups as ethnic agenda more than ever before and therefore resist them—especially, by people in ethnic groups different from the leaders of the coups.
Third, I explained that the Nigerian ruling class has reached some sort of convention or consensus for now: the best way to compete for the capture of state power, which can be used for primitive accumulation, is through the crude or fraudulent electoral system. The officers of the military are part of the thieving ruling class and most of them understand this emerging consensus. The military itself is much more divided today than ever before and rely on this emerging consensus to safeguard the fraud and corruption within it. They aid civilian leaders to rig elections in exchange for a share of the loot of state treasury.
Fourth, it would be difficult to sustain a coup or military rule as a large number of the ruling class now have arms or access to arms. Some of the aggrieved political or displaced leaders might restore to armed struggles against the military government and transformed themselves into warlords. Such warlords might carve out territories for themselves within the country. This is a scary thought.
Fifth, any military coup from the usual originating regions for coups in Nigeria at this point will just add fuel to secessionist movements like IPOB. Other militant groups in other parts of the country might escalate their operations and also demand to break away. Boko Haram might work harder to gain grounds in a convulsing Nigeria.
Finally, the Nigeria military is currently not competent enough to tackle and control the widespread banditry and arm robbery all over the country. The number of guns held by rogue individuals in the country is high. The state does not have a monopoly of force in Nigeria. The military might not fully grasp the economic dimensions of national security and blunder as their civilian leaders had done. Eleven years ago, the federal government asked me to look into the security situation and I clearly laid out a program for the economic dimensions of national security. (For anyone here wondering why the government would hire me as a consultant since you know me only as a philosopher, theologian, or ethicist, let me clarify things for you. For your information, my initial training was in economics and finance. I was an investment banker in Lagos and Wall Street. I also taught in a graduate business school. Before I took up the task of advising on the economic dimensions of national security, the top security brass in the country knew I was consulting for the Central Bank of Nigeria.)
Poverty, corruption, bad infrastructure, and poor economic conditions in the country are in my opinion the greatest challenges to Nigeria's security condition. In my consultant report, I stated that the usual military approach to national security wherein the security apparatus buys more equipment and hires more personnel was not going to be effective. I advised them to take the economic dimensions of national security seriously. This is a multifaceted approach to managing the country's security challenges.
These are the six reasons I could generate in the heat of fleeting Q/A session, fielding questions from some of America's most brilliant teachers. I gave my talk over Zoom. I am sure, others could come up with more factors. But when you responding to questions literally standing on one foot, there is a hard limit to your intelligence.
Let me hasten to add that none of the six reasons I provided serves as an ultimate guarantee against a successful coup. Protecting the current democracy—the tattered, struggling, and fragile one that it is—depends on the eternal vigilance of Nigerians themselves.
Sir Cornelius, you have provided a very pertinent prognosis of a possible coup in Nigeria. I hope Nigerians pay attention to your word of advice.
Thanks and best wishes,
Nimi WaribokoBoston University.
On Jan 13, 2022, at 6:31 AM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,
You are an incorrigible optimist and maybe not a great economist with a good nose for market possibilities and impossibilities.
About my proposed Bookshop, "Sunshine House" - way back in 1985 not surviving to see daylight in 2021, speak less of thriving, you should know that even successes like the once upon a time great little Stockholm bookshop known as "Agora" folded up a long time ago and some of its personnel moved to Hedengrens , the best bookshop in town, along with Akademibokhandeln. Nota bene: Amazon has moved in on Sweden, to muscle in on the book trade, which means that it should be easier - maybe a little cheaper to order some Ta-Nehisi Coates from them than from anyone else in Sweden. When that excellent little fortnightly West Africa Magazine also folded up by 2005, it was time to lose heart , since for the specialist book-store I had in mind, the most guaranteed sales would have been African and African - diaspora music, newspapers, magazines, political & literary journals, and of course crème de la crème in third world literature , and that includes a big chunk of first literary world India , Black Britain, the Caribbean, some Sweden, Canada, and of course, Mighty top dog, the Mighty Mastiff United States, in real or surreal English.
They say that our Shakespeare knew "small Latin and less Greek." In that respect, I guess he was just like some of us ( a little Latin, and less Greek)
And you yourself, where to place you? Are you a postmodernist / a postmodern philosopher or do you elude definition?
At least Ojogbon and some of the most eminent scholars in this forum recognise and identify as one of them, swimming in the same ocean of inquiry. And this very good thing : You don't start putting on airs about it. As you know, you evince a strong attraction and such a great passion for the world of the academe. Indeed, you are swimming in its waters as a part of it, although you sometimes when self-effacing ( a good quality) give the impression - appear to be a little hesitant and apprehensive like the Sadhu before plunging into the ocean against his own will, afraid of being swallowed up entirely, swept away by some really swift, strong, powerful, overwhelming current, into the vast ocean of consciousness and like Sri Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj becoming at-one-ment with it ?
In that case, on the existential level you probably harbour the kind of fear captured by Khalil Gibran in this poem - Fear
Sometimes, what's done can't be undone - for instance should one be swayed by some conspiracy theory or other about not taking the vaccine , it could be - too late - if you have already taken the vaccine you cannot intake it, one cannot " vaccinate" - we ( all of us ) can only hope on The Resurrection
To Ken, you say, " I speak from a history of struggle"... jihad !
According to Wole Soyinka," a tiger does not proclaim his tigritude he pounces" , so that if Ifa had been a woman/ big booty, I imagine you would have pounced on her (the little tigress, Queen of the Slipstream ) long ago and she would have surely surrendered and by now would have been writing some sublime poetry in her dairy, unlike Anais Nin, about the ecstasy of submission, and singing the kinds of songs you find in Court and Spark. I can't help imagining this
Of course, no one else is capable of standing in your shoes for you , artistically speaking, even if equipped with the necessary negative capability. I daresay it's no coincidence that your middle name is Vincent or that you were conscious of this when you chose to write about your namesake Vincent Van Gogh…
And, of course, there's sometimes the fear of rejection even amongst the bravest of us all. Perhaps, only a gifted few are exempt or distant from that kind of fear. I'm thinking here of e.g. Kwame Anthony Appiah who as the new kid on the block I'm sure entertained no fear of rejection when he submitted his manuscript for that his early 1992 publication "In My Father's House - Africa in the Philosophy of Culture "
Now here's the nitty-gritty : When you talk about, " At the beginning of my journeys in Ifa studies..." - those imprecise years of so long ago when I suppose you were initiated into the Ifa cult, it's not unreasonable to expect that by now you have undergone more than the fifteen years of understudy/ rigorous discipleship/ apprenticeship to have qualified as a bona fide Babalawo , so that you are equipped to speak more authoritatively from the inside and in speaking more authoritatively from the inside you'll find that adherents of that faith( cult and your fellow academics who are practitioners of that faith ( cult, and others who merely teach but do not practice or are not authorised to practice those mysteries, begin to take you much more seriously.
"I don't think I've advanced in Ifa Studies, beyond the level of that 2004 essay" ( Humility is really my first name, hello, that was our Oluwatoyin Vincent Adejoju the most humble speaking) although the fact is we don't get that impression from his recent altercations with Lord Olayinka Agbetuyi his forum interlocutor. Furthermore , if Oluwatoyin hasn't advanced beyond the level of that 2004 essay, we are to assume that he has voluntarily, chosen not to do so, since we all know and so does he, that he have more than the required capacity/ brain power and sense of righteousness to become a fully fledged Babalawo
About that type of capacity, the list is long. when you add Susan Wenger ( an initiate) and her husband Ulli Beier...
You could be to Ifa what Sir Richard Francis Burton is to so called "Muhammadan studies" ( I read most his Personal Narrative Of A Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Mecca, on the 17th of June 1981, my first night in Ahoada, Rivers State , Nigeria - prior to which I knew zilch about al-Islam) . You could be to Ifa that too , shining the light of Ifa in both the East and the West - like what Sir John Woodroffe is to Hindu Tantra, what Agehananda Bharati is to Hindu Sadhana, you could be a garlanded cult leader in the West, like Adi Da with his awesome library which is free, or what Henry Corbin is to Shia Mysticism, what Idries Shah was to Sufism generally, in the West, at a popular level ( he converted Robert Graves - Oxford Professor of poetry to Sufism!) and so you too could be what Laurence Galian is recently, contemporaneously with Peter Lambourn Wilson. I know that you could easily attain to some of these, but the question remains: What about JESUS? As the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, I wonder how Jesus would have about "Atrocities/war crimes condoned in the Bible" if his disciples or the Pharisees had asked him that sort of question. I'm in a bad mood -feeling a little shattered after watching Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch's "A History of Christianity" , last night. If only you could research for me the claim that "Salvation cannot be found outside of the Catholic Church"
I've got it all mapped out for you ( shmile).
Take heart. The Prophet Moses, Jesus the Redeemer, the Prophet Muhammad salallahu alaihi wa salaam were not PhD students either, nor was Baruch Spinoza or the great Moshe Chaim Luzzatto
The only criticism I've heard from fellow ignoramuses here and there is that Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju seems incapable of saying anything about Ifa and allied Nigerian phenomena without reaching out to explain everything in terms of Western categories of philosophy, metaphysics, etc. I guess that if you were writing in Yoruba, for a traditional Yoruba audience/ readership you would dispense with ranting on about Kant, Heidegger, Dion Fortune, the Dalai Lama, etc.
By the way, it was on Swedish text TV just the other day that 200 villagers in Zamfara had been massacred , getting everyone shivering and wondering, when is the carnage going to stop? My take is that this is a very bad omen, considering that Zamfara was the first state in Nigeria to adopt Sharia Law and meanwhile their governor and special constabulary seem to be sitting on their hands and doing nothing to bring the agents of Shaitan to justice. For some time now Brother Buhari has been saying that he's going to do something about the mayhem. The question is WHEN? Failing to do something about it my prediction is that the military will soon declare a state of emergency in the North East and the North West , which means that the next de facto military coup - a logical consequence of what's going on, is on the horizon - at which time Mr President will be on the sidelines until the next elections which of course will have to be postponed indefinitely, especially if free and fair elections cannot possibly be held in the Northern citadels of terror, mayhem, ransom kidnappings and mass murder. It's not an atmosphere conducive to free and fair elections. Should the chaos and anarchy escalate, you shouldn't have too long to wait, before the no-nonsense military takes over completely, to establish some law and order in the country. The genie is out of the bottle. Time will tell. Martial law is coming. Pray that the mayhem doesn't move down South to where you are at the moment, and if it does , maybe it's time to be relocating to a safe haven in the United States , the alternative being , " To take up arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them ?"
One of the last things that Obadiah Mailafia said in his last major interview was that nobody knows how much the current administration has been borrowing , from China, among others. But to all intents and purposes, the Nigerian economy is doing very well. Otherwise, the old proven formula going back to the days of Shehu Shagari is that when the treasury is empty , the military usually takes over , and by dispensing with the expensive senate & senators, a military administration is at least the most cost-effective way of administrating the country and establishing at least a semblance of law and order.
Since I'm a great fan of the African Oral Tradition, my New Year's Wish is that this year you will be interviewed/ participate in a meaningful discussion with relevant persons such as Nimi Wariboko or Ojogbon himself, in an appropriate forum and book press where you can disseminate your ideas.
Pepe Ndombe & Madilu System : Santa ( 2021 Album
On Sunday, 9 January 2022 at 13:35:59 UTC+1 ovdepoju wrote:
Thanks, Cornelius.
ill check out the Buba and Ochonu essays to help me broaden my perspective.
why would your bookshop not thrive? Are there not still physical book shops everywhere, although their existence is riskier than before?
i dont think ive advanced in Ifa Studies beyond the level of that 2004 essay. perhaps my most ambitious work on ifa was done at that period. what followed may be seen as more complementary to those works than extending their interpretive and applicatory possibilities radically. to go beyond those levels, i might need something different or significantly deeper.
the MAs were like refresher courses, well after my BA and after years as an academic. such reinvigoration should be a regular part of a scholarly career.
thanks for the suggestion on books. books are priceless. im working my way towards that. im beginning by creating links to my work in different places.
benin too was good in occult literature. that was where my entry into the occult began.
this discussion has helped me reflect on where i am coming from, where i am and where i could go from here. i cut out most of the thoughts it inspired in me so as not to bore reasders, but im keeping them for my own reflection.
great thankstoyin
On Fri, 7 Jan 2022 at 12:50, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju: Thank you.
Pope wrote his An Essay on Criticism when he was 23 years old, Alexander the Great passed away at 32 years of age, Purcell was through with composing by the time he was 36, Buber's I and Thou was published in 1923 when he was a mature 45, and last night, I was listening in on your man who never left town, nevertheless arriving in the space-time dimension known as the Hereafter at a ripe 79...
From the point of view of all of the above, it's really amazing that your contribution to this monumental 2022 publication was written as far back as 2004 when you were a slightly different kind of person, perhaps, less cerebrally advanced and cosmologically speaking, with all that modern science and philosophy since then , less well-informed than you are today. If any of the other contributions on the political and economic issues had been written that far back in time, they would probably be outdated by now – however, when it comes to Ifa, Heidegger , and Calvino, I suppose insights may change about the still evolving Ifa, and whereas Calvino is gone, God willing, the ghost of Heidegger and the sins of his Nazi past will never be laid to rest, will continue to be exhumed for re-examination for many generations to come. Talking about "Nazi past", Pope Benedict's is also there to haunt him.
I suppose that as underdog, there's no other way but to use comparative philosophy/comparative mythology / comparative religion to explain the mysteries in something as uniquely indigenous as Ifa.
I have looked through all of the chapter titles/ topics , they are all very interesting indeed, and I'm intrigued that Malami Buba who I associate with language and literature has a chapter entitled "Look East" and Look Back: Lessons for Africa in the Changing Global Order " - a very topical issue indeed, with China on the march in Africa.
(By the way, have you looked at his ( Malami Buba's) The legacies of the Sokoto Caliphate in contemporary Nigeria and if you haven't, you know that you ought to, needless to say, in conjunction with Moses Ochonu's Colonialism by Proxy: Hausa Imperial Agents and Middle Belt Consciousness in Nigeria – since you are forever going on about "Northern Hegemony " Miyetti Allah, dear President Buhari, and our dearest Fulani Herdsmen
You and Chidi have been singing the praises of blogging, online self-publishing , that you are both plentifully available on the WWW., but I suspect that it should be a little more satisfying/ fulfilling to refer to your books. We ( Better Half and I ) were handed one ( a book) on new year's eve by our guest, the author, Karl-Gunnar Norén – the book " Polarfararnas kläder" – På liv och död" and I could see the glint of satisfaction in his eyes as he autographed it and handed it over. Factor in what Ken Harrow says in this thread, about the profit motive in publishing ; among other things, it means that Nigeria is potentiality a huge market, once the soon to be 300 million strong nation re-incarnates as a reading generation (sadly, for now, even in this digital age, more than a hundred million Naira souls belong to the non-reading generation….
Your walk in your then favourite haunt , the Benin City Market was not very different from my prowls in the Mile One Market in Port Harcourt and the market places in Aba where to my great surprise you'd always find stalls with the Seal of Solomon, all kinds of magical pentagrams and assorted magical talismans, the so called sixt
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