Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Today's Quote

its good to see that the scholarly lion continues to roam uninhibitedly, even more animated than at other times.

toyin

On Sun, 26 Feb 2023 at 22:55, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

The Nigerian police is not efficient and it collects bribe

NEPA is not efficient

Hospitals are not efficient.

So, INEC should be efficient and differs from other institutions?

Its agents travel on different roads, have different internet!

 

They should have given me that money to empower people in their 20s, and I will give them a president for free.

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 3:35 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Today's Quote

Dear Chidi,

I have been following the Nigerian Elections since 18hrs Nigerian Time.

May the best man win.

Re- "I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how, but what is extraordinarily important is this, who will count the votes, and how"-Josef Stalin

 

Your quote increases the tension and the stress. 

 

Obi would devoutly wish that it was his agents that were to be doing the counting of the ballots. As the saying goes, " A friend in need is a friend indeed" and that's why  Alhaji Atiku of course could be wishing InshAllah, for a little help from some of his 419 friends, whereas Bola Ahmed Tinubu popularly known as "The Godfather" ( of Lagos) I'm sure has the requisite tawakkul, and wherewithal plus InshAllah,  just as Cromwell said to his boys, " Trust in the Lord but don't forget to keep your gunpowder dry".  The actual sahih hadith is, " Tie your camel first, and then put your trust in Allah."

 

It's always like that with these winner-takes-all African elections. The anxiety and stress experienced by the hopefuls ( the wannabes).  the participatory citizens,  the dispassionate onlookers, and the ethnically biased observers near and far who have a dog in the fight. The anxiety and stress experienced during the waiting time between when the last ballot is cast somewhere up there in Bolgatanga or Abadam, and the final announcement of who is going to be the next president, more often than not, not a popular decision for almost half of the country's people who will feel that their man has been defeated, even cheated, vanquished, crushed, their hopes dashed to pieces. 

 

To what extent some of our juggernaut academics and other pundits will be telling us that our newfangled/ acquired forms of one-man-one-vote democracy governments can be said to be part and parcel of what usually passes our "colonial inheritance " or our "colonial heritage, remains to be seen. 

 

In the Epistemic Decolonization and the Emigration of Academic Common Sense being promoted by none other than Moses Ochonu, the first thing that comes to mind is Martin Bernal's Black Athena ( which proposes the Afro-Asiatic roots of the Greek concept of democracy, and not least of all of Plato's Republic) and the vicious backlash to that treatise in the form of Black Athena Revisited and the ensuing heated debates featuring the leader of the opposition  Mary Lefkowitz and her " Not out of Africa " As Ojogbon Falola so poignantly observed, "hardly is there a theory from the South that is not ridiculed or demeaned and eventually ridiculed, be it negritude, dependencies, nationalist historiography, Decoloniality, neocolonialism, ujamaa. It is not a case of making them work but of destroying them"

Some of our Nigerian academics love crying over spilled milk, instead of doing something about it.

 

 At this moment of stress for all of us the stakeholders, the hitherto sleeping giant's future is of great concern to us, so I feel that to relieve some of that tension and stress and to make you at least smile  a little, relax our face muscles, I should post  this  lighter side of things: 

 

a few ways of maintaining the peace and avoiding palaver 

 

My Better Half started getting excited when she read in DN  that Peter Obi was some kind of " Social Democrat". I had to calm her down.

 

For more passionate intensity : 

 

https://www.youtube.com/@flamencoguitarsale

 

On Saturday, 25 February 2023 at 20:28:58 UTC+1 Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA wrote:

"I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how, but what is extraordinarily important is this, who will count the votes, and how"-Josef Stalin

--
Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, IIM Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Editorial Adviser at News Updates (https://updatesonnews.substack.com)

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