Feeling a little uncomfortable with missionary labels such as " witchcraft!" and "superstition"
Thinking about the (1) SOTAH which has fallen into desuetude since the ritual is said to have lost its efficacy because these days people are not so holy
Also thinking about (2) Kapparot
Question for Biko and Baba Kadiri : Is taking the oath of office on the Bible more serious than other forms of oath taking by the believers in Juju?
Ogbuefu Agozino,You averred that "Igbandu is a covenant or agreement of non-aggression among the Igbo. It is not a witchcraft." I can observe that you are trying to modernize the word IGBANDU to suit your taste. There is difference between performing an IGBANDU OATH-TAKING CEREMONY and signing non-aggression treaty between two parties. IGBANDU is a witchcraft that puts a spell on false oath-taker. In those days, a person who stole a cock of his neighbour in Igboland and denied it would be forced to swear or undergo IGBANDU ceremony. If it was true that he had actually stolen the cock but swore on IGBANDU to deny that he did not, the consequence could be that the cock thief might start to crow relentlessly like a cock.The internal crisis within the NCNC that led to the Zik must go demand in 1958 was not between Azikiwe and Mbadiwe alone. The NCNC Reform Committee was led by Mbadiwe as Chairman, Mr. I.R.E. Iweka as Vice-Chairman, Chief H.O. Davies as First Chairman, Alhaji N.B. Soule as Patron, Mr. L.N. Obioha as Vice-Patron, Chief Kolawole Balogun as General Secretary etc. On the other hand, the NCNC Strategic Committee had Azikiwe as National President, J.O. Fadahunsi as First National President, R.A. Njoku as Second National Vice-President, F.S. McEwen as National Secretary, Chief F.S. Okotie-Eboh as National Treasurer, T.O.S. Benson as National Financial Secretary, Fred U. Anyiam as National Publicity Secretary etc. Both the NCNC Reform Committee led by Dr Mbadiwe and the NCNC Strategic Committee led by Dr Azikiwe contained not only IBO people (as the tribe was then known) but other Nigerians. Why was Azikiwe asking Mbadiwe to exclusively perform Igbandu oath-taking ceremony with him over who should lead the NCNC, a national party containing other ethnic groups in Nigeria?From your wrong premise that IGBANDU is an IBO non-aggression pact you veered off, "It (IGBANDU) is similar to the Aburi Accord in which Gowon and Ojukwu agreed to resolve the crisis in Nigeria through non-violent means but Gowon reneged on that covenant and declared a police action that started the genocidal war." Aburi accord was not between Gowon and Ojukwu alone. Others that participated in the Aburi meeting were, Colonel Adeyinka Adebayo (West), Lt. Colonel David Ejor (Midwest) and Lt. Colonel Hassan Katsina (North) and Major Austin Peters (Lagos). Had Adebayo, Ejor, Katsina and Peters not agreed with Gowon, police action would not have been possible to be declared against Ojukwu. You claimed that the Police action 'started the genocidal war' but Ojukwu who fought the war said, ''I put myself out and saved the people from genocide." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/596712.stm. IBBC News, January 13, 2000, in Biafra: Thirty Years On by Barnaby Philips. So, Professor Biko Agozino, please read history as it was recorded and not what you imagine it to be lest, you will be reading your mind and not what actually happened.S. KadiriOn Wednesday, September 18, 2024 at 3:50:09 PM UTC+2 Biko Agozino wrote:Al Kadiri,Thanks for the archival news report from Daily Times of 1958. I will file this one.Igbandu is a covenant or agreement of non-aggression among the Igbo. It is not witchcraft. It is similar to the Aburi Accord in which Gowon and Ojukwu agreed to resolve the crisis in Nigeria through non-violent means but Gowon reneged on that covenant and declared a police action that started the avoidable genocidal war. Avoiding someone who threatens your life is not due to the fear of juju because they can try to harm you physically and not just spiritually. Zik was a social scientist and not a Dibie.You may be correct in suggesting that science has advanced and made it possible for air poisoners to secure their own bodies with applications like gas masks today but such advancements were anticipated by the scientific methods that Azikiwe called for and that Awo eventually agreed with when he threw away his impotent charms.In the fight against colonialism, for instance, no fantasies about poisoning the air that the colonizers breathed would work because the masses of the people would also succumb to such air pollution too, no mumbo jumbo would free prisoners from their chains, and calling the names of the colonizers three times at crossroads would not kill them with laughter.The scientific method is to educate the leaders of the struggle to restore independence, establish newspapers with which to educate and mobilize the masses, and form political parties that would unite the people and lead the struggle to victory. That was what Zik did and he detailed the blueprint in his memoirs, My Odyssey. It was a successful experiment to the extent that Nigeria regained political independence on a platter of gold, as he put it. Abi no be so?Biko--While I have not had time to participate in recent discussions on this forum I find it appealing to challenge the following statements by Professor Biko Agozino. He stated, ".... Azikiwe recommended in Renascent Africa (1937) that we should adopt the scientific method in everything we do. He used the example of claims that someone could spread deadly poison in the air to harm others, but he asked whether the evil genius would be breathing a different air? Infant mortality is not caused by witches but by often preventable diseases, he concluded." Of course, one should pardon Azikiwe because his knowledge of science in 1937 was not up to the standard that one could disseminate poison in the atmosphere and apply a prophylaxis on self in order to avoid being a victim of the poison.
However, in his conflict with Dr Kingsley Ozumba Mbadiwe that started in December 1957, while on board the ship returning from the London Constitutional Conference, Azikiwe, the scientist according to Biko Agozino, told Mbadiwe, "I believe you are after my blood." "And Mbadiwe flatly denied the allegation," Azikiwe said. The unconvinced Azikiwe then told Mbadiwe, "Inasmuch as the two of us are Ibo speaking we should perform an oath-taking ceremony which Ibo people call IGBANDU. I suggested that he should arrange for this event to take place neither at ARONDIZUOGU, his home town, nor at ONITSHA, my hometown, but that it should be held at a neutral place in IBOLAND, where we should be represented by four to six relatives each side." Azikiwe concluded, "Dr Mbadiwe has not been willing to agree to perform the IGBANDU ceremony, and until he does I shall forever be suspicious of him (Nigerian Daily Times, June 23, 1958)." Obviously, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe believed that IGBANDU-IBO OATH-TAKING CEREMONY would have negative consequence(s) on whoever among the two lied on oath.S. Kadiri
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of cornelius...@gmail.com <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: 17 September 2024 15:28
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - COMMUNITY CONCEPTS OF ATROCITY AND ATROCITY-PREVENTION
True: there's nothing wrong with Uranus
My Brother, or beautiful skyscrapers with anus
Up in the sky. BTW that's a reason why
Some of the gulf states in the Arab
League are not making any bellicose
Noises about their cousins in Israel:
In any future war they'd hate to see
Their skyscrapers being levelled with the rubble
And their assets in American Banks being either
Frozen, Seized, or Stolen or all their lust
For more on this, check out The Tall Buildings Prophecy
Hermeneutics may be a difficult word; even
More difficult is putting it into practice. It's bad
Enough trying to hazard a guess as to what
The Hebrew Poets of yesteryears meant
Employing their special Lashon Hakodesh
Vocabulary, even using tools such as Gematria
Or by approaching their prophetic poetry like Peter Obi's
Daddy, solely invoking the guidance of the Holy Spirit
Could be ditto about the ancient Lingo, IGBO
Those proverbs, "the palm oil with which words are eaten"
Tower of Babel! What colonialism has done to some of us !
Somebody told me that a philosopher had convinced him
That "God" exists. By which magic words did he perform
The miracle ? So, Ratzinger's explanation was a proof?
Yours truly is still treading water
At stage one: How To Read A Poem
And to love / enjoy
Understand / appreciate
Embrace or hate it.
Fast forward to wrapping it up with what you obviously want us to believe is your unassailable conclusion: "education and critical thinking" the panacea to all evil.
Really?
I prefer, Reishis chochma yirat Adonai :The beginning of wisdom is the fear of Hashem
Education and critical thinking of course a step in the right direction and an important factor in each country's ranking according to Human Development Index ( data from 2022)
On Sunday 15 September 2024 at 20:05:48 UTC+2 Biko Agozino wrote:--Cornel,
Uranus is not a bad word.
Ike is not a bad word in Igbo, it is homologous with strength, ike, which is why we joke that the European struggling to learn Igbo said that his nyash has finished when he meant his strength.
When you give a proverb to the wise, he will know but if you give a proverb to the ofeke fool, he will break his neck trying to twist it. Those prudes suffering from colonial mentalities who are questioning the morality of the words in the proverb may have missed the morale of the saying - if you support bad governmentaslity because of ethnic-class-gender-race chauvinism, will you buy your own fuel, food, medicine, or security at a parapo discount?
Oluwatoyin, Witch is a female gender compared to wizard that is male-gendered in English. You are right that witchcraft is shunned in societies that do not celebrate Halloween while wizardry is cherished in sports and drama - Wizard of Oz. No be juju be that? Aje or Amosu is gender-neutral in African languages, as Oyewumi argues. There is maleness in she or s/he and woman or wo/man.
To tackle the abuse of people, male and female, in witch-hunting across Africa, Azikiwe recommended in Renascent Africa (1937) that we should adopt the scientific method in everything we do. He used the example of claims that someone could spread deadly poison in the air to harm others but he asked whether the evil genius would be breathing a different air? Infant mortality is not caused by witches but by often preventable diseases, he concluded.
Awolowo disagreed with Zik in 'Juju as Science' (1939) and said that juju is an African super-science with which enemies kill victims by calling their names three times at cross-roads. He later admitted that he threw all his charms into the rubbish heap because they did not work and he said that this alarmed his fellow tenants in his compound.
Kissi, nothing works for community development like education and critical thinking. Africa hugs the bottom, ike, of the Human Development Index league table due to the denial of educational opportunities to the masses. This is easily fixed with relevant education for all, including boys and girls, irrespective of religion, ethnicity, class, gender or race.
Biko
On Saturday 14 September 2024 at 18:27:55 GMT-4, cornelius...@gmail.com <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:
Professor Edward Kissi,
Shalom Aleichem !
Our commonalities : First of all I have a wonderful friend here in Sweden, from Ghana, by the name of Micah Kissi // Micah Kissi of Ewe ethnicity. He is very religious ( a holy man) and I'm sure that with respect to the work that you are doing, he would be prone to be quoting Jesus, that "Blessed are the peacemakers, because they will be called sons of God"
The devil, in contrast, likes blood and is always busy promoting bloodbaths. A contradiction coming up: The bard sings that sometimes Satan comes as a "Man of Peace"
Of what you requested, here is the first of the four that I can think of at the moment:
Sierra Leone , where, for example we have the Great Scarcies and the Little Scarcies River As you know, rivers are landmarks that sometimes serve as borders and this story, mythical or real, could be situated in another African country in which a river divides people into North and South habitats, such rivers sometimes separating Tribe X in the north from Tribe Y on the southern bank. The story goes that when the Tribe X boy is circa 12 years old, as part of his rite of passage into young manhood, his father takes him aside to confide in him some adult tribal truths that he should now be old enough to deal with. "Son", he says," Now you have to be very careful. You see the people on the Northern side of this river, stay away from them , but if you ever get close, you will observe that their lips are red: They are cannibals"
At his coming of age ceremony, the same warning is given to the Tribe Y boy, and that's how an equilibrium of mutual distrust and fear is created in the children at such a young, impressionable age, maybe forever.
Surely, for African and Muslim parties to any conflict, the requirements for salvation in both Christianity and Islam are a much higher authority than " indigenous/cultural prohibitions"?
Just asking.
Most probably, the truth is that
"From the east, from the west
From the south to the north
Ah, na the same people
I say, "From the south, from the north
From the west to the east
Na the same people" (Tony Allen : Secret Agent
On Saturday 14 September 2024 at 20:42:54 UTC+2 Edward Kissi wrote:--Kinsman Cornelius, you raise some excellent questions here. Your pessimism is also apt because as I noted, the frequency of atrocities in our community of humans casts doubt on our ability to prevent or contain these catastrophes. Neverthekess, my thinking is that there must be some African indigenous knowledge that contains pathways to addressing my research and teaching interests.
I spoke last week on zoom with a peace education activist in the DRC and asked him about the dehumanization and targeting of albinos in his country and asked if there are indigenous/cultural prohibitions on that attitude. He told he had not thought about that but one wise-saying comes into his mind which he shared. It was a defense of albino identity but one that was different from my Kwawu people's anti-albino cultural attitudes. These are the commonalities and contradixtions I am interested in. So Cornelius, I need four of them from you.
Ed Kissi
Sent from my iPhone
A luta continua : Biko Agozino vs the evil criminal justice system !
I'm impressed by this avant-garde, Igbo witticism from the ancestral reservoir of wisdom, to wit ,
"Proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten."
It would seem that through colonialism, English Language Dominance ( English Language Imperialism) and Christian Missionary Activities, the word " anus" is not so decorous, not the kind of word you'd ever hear at Sunday School. In fact is it not a miracle that Ojogbon let it through the moderator's sensitive linguistic filter?
" her own anus in the sky" indeed, the height of hubris
We now know that Chidi is coming from the same ancestral reservoir with his
"The sky
Urinates,
Downpour!"
But back to the real matter at hand. In the same spirit but less vulgar - from Brer Brecht ( one of Baba Soyinka's favourites) :
For you, me, Tinubu, Trump, we, Kamala, the female witches, all of us :
On Saturday 14 September 2024 at 00:08:50 UTC+2 Biko Agozino wrote:Dibie na agwo otule, o debelu ike ya na elu? Igbo proverb meaning, The witch who concocts diarrhea, is she hiding her own anus in the sky? Or as Marley sang, when the rain falls, it won't fall on one man's housetop. Remember that.
Biko
On Friday 13 September 2024 at 16:39:23 GMT-4, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:
Wonderful. There are a good number of these
On Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 6:47 PM 'Edward Kissi' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:As many of you know, I have been involved in research and teaching on the Holocaust, Genocide, Human Rights, Genocide-prevention, Atrocity-prevention, and the prevention of identity-based violence for many years. Some may even be aware of my article in African Security Review in which I argue for a concept of "moral pan-Africanism" as a framework for sustainable regional peace and security in Africa.
In recent years, I have worked with many international organizations, museums, and academic institutions to find practical community-based solutions to genocide and identity-based violence. Sadly, these atrocities continue in all human societies with maddening regularity. Some would argue that their recurrence, despite the large body of scholarship and teaching on their causes, prevention, and impact, expose the limitations of genocide-prevention research and activism, or the incorrigible nature of humans as perpetrators.
As someone who grew up in a village in Ghana organized on community cultural and moral logics embedded in proverbs, folklores, and axioms, I am aware of values-laden proverbs that served my community well. Some of these community proverbs highlighted the "intersectionality" of human life, the moral necessity to defend the dignity of every human being, and the harm to self and society inherent in hate-speech. On intersectionality of human destinies, my Kwawu people say that "obi afumkwan nkye na asi obi de mu". This could be translated into English as: it does not take long for one person's path to his farm to intersect with another's. This community view that our lives are interconnected and what has been done to others can also be done to us made people in my local community admonish anyone who incited violence against others. On harm to oneself and community when people maltreat their fellow human beings, the Kwawu have a warning: wo twa wo tekrema we a na wonwee nam biara. Crudely translated: when you cut your tongue and eat it, you have not eaten any meat. Or, elegantly, if you roast your tongue for dinner you have not eaten any meaningful meal. You have harmed yourself and your community instead.
Certainly, these community maxims never banished conflict in Kwawu society but they warned against it. They provided theoretical frameworks for the prevention of atrocities.
I have been thinking of compiling and comparing such community-driven responses to atrocities, genocide and identity-based violence in Africa. Therefore, I am looking for many African community proverbs, maxims, stories, etc, that "discouraged" violence against groups based on their identity (ethnicity, beliefs, appearance, etc), or advocated inter-group harmony as the foundation of community security. Or proverbs and maxims that "encouraged" such violence and how that is explained.
My aim here is to look deeper into African societies and discover valuable traditions, values, mores, etc, that have been overlooked by genocide and identity-based violence researchers. I want to examine the commonalities in these community values and think about how communities can be viable partners in genocide-prevention and the prevention of identity-based violence in Africa. I want to use these as conceptual bedrocks for teaching a course on "applied genocide-prevention" in a certificate program for genocide-prevention practitioners.
I need your help! You can share your community anti-atrocity proverbs, maxims, axioms (and their English translations) in this forum or you can share them privately with me at ekis...@gmail.com, or eki...@usf.edu. You will be credited for your contribution.
Edward Kissi
Edward Kissi, Ph.D
Professor
School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies
University of South Florida
4202 East Fowler Avenue
Tampa, Florida 33620
Integrating sub-Saharan Africa into a historical and cultural study of the Holocaust
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