http://www.policy.hu/onyeukwu/
"Let us move forward to fight poverty, to establish equity, and assure peace for the next generation."
-- James D. Wolfensohn
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Stockholm
Sweden
People's Planet
August 5, 2025
Dear John,
Yesterday would have been Harvey's 94th birthday
- dayan ha emet -
But it seems the good die young, yeah
Patrice Lumumba at thirty five years of age , also
Dr King and Malcolm before they were forty years old
John F when he was 46 years old, Jimi Hendrix at 27….
A couple of people turned up at the park yesterday, among them Ken Baskin, Melvyn Price ( USA) Lefifi Tladi , Ebrahim Isaacs ( South Africa) Poe Jatta, Modou Sarho ( Gambia) Ambrose (Cameroon), Lars, Einar (Sweden
Tomorrow it should be some time since Cornelius Hamelberg
Down memory lane, my earliest intimations of patriotism must have started with "God Save the Queen" over here in Merry England in 1952, years later followed by High We Exalt Thee, Realm of the Free and since circa 1971, Du gamla, du fria is pulling at the heart strings.
Likewise, for this Pan-Africanist the national enterprise Nigeria started with an acquaintance with The Story of Nigeria and I suppose ,for Nigerians is intimately with taking to heart, believing in a hope in the words of the Nigerian National Anthem as it is sung gustily…..
Your eloquent demystification of what you mean by "No reform will stick if people are too broken to believe." now convinces me that instead of merely sitting on some policy board or think-tank you ought to be running for president with an introduction and personal letter of recommendation from someone like Chief Emeka Anyaoku; and prior to your election it should be interesting to study your intentions, your memorandum on purpose when you address Chatham House, where the wannabe next Nigerian president usually addresses the issue of the direction in which he would like to take his beloved countrymen as part of the Nigerian pre-election ritual, the aim being that as the Mr. President in the driver's seat, we do not "wander in circles, democracy without destination", democracy without wheels…
About humility and that kind of jazz, " Another signpost pointing in the same direction is the term id ,which, in the later Freud, is the opposite of the term ego; as in the earlier Freud, consciousness is the opposite of the unconscious…." P 88 of Norman O Brown's Love's Body , Chapter V, titled Unity
Fela & Roy Ayers : 2000 Black
Cornelius
On Monday, 4 August 2025 at 23:41:31 UTC+2 John Onyeukwu wrote:Dear Chief,
You write like a jazz ensemble plays, improvising across registers, threading memory, melody, mischief, and mourning into a full-bodied sound that leaves the listener somewhere between snap and silence. I hear the drums of Baldwin in Oxford, the wail of Leon Thomas in "The Creator," and, somewhere, the thunderclap of Harvey Cropper warning us, once again, not to come here with our racism or, dare I say, our complacency.
You asked me to demystify this line:
"No reform will stick if people are too broken to believe."
Let me offer the mystery in return, by way of parable, place, and politics.
Picture a road. A Nigerian one, naturally, perhaps the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway, under construction since Methuselah. On that road is a teacher , no pay for six months, still showing up. Next to him, a nurse who's never known what a functioning scanner looks like. Down the road, a youth corper with two degrees and no hope. Then a farmer who tills but doesn't eat, middlemen, subsidies swallowed by "ghosts." And a grandmother who voted every cycle but has never once seen a promise kept.
Now, gather them together. Tell them: "Reform is coming." Will they believe you? Or will they, like Bar Kamtza, smile on the outside but seethe on the inside, because betrayal stings deepest when it wears the robes of community?
This, my Chief, is what I meant. Reform, the real kind, doesn't begin with policy documents or press briefings. It begins with restoring trust. And trust grows only in the soil of dignity, when people see themselves not as beggars at the gates of governance, but as co-creators in the national experiment. Without that, all you get is chest-thumping when Nigeria wins a trophy, and chest-slumping the morning after, when 'NEPA' strikes again.
Ah, yes, self-esteem, as you so brilliantly observed, is mostly local, sometimes ethnic, rarely national. That is our burden and our unfinished work. Until we forge a shared story, Nigeria remains a house with 200 rooms and 0 living rooms.
But let me not only bemoan. You reminded me that "The Creator has a master plan", peace and happiness for every man. The line holds. So long as we teach it. Model it. Remember it. Even, or especially , on Tisha B'Av, when we contemplate the temple ruins of hate.
I thank you also for invoking the schools grooming Africa's "future leaders." May they remember humility. May they learn from Paul Biya what not to do. And please inform Chidi that a poem is long overdue , not about our neighbors but about ourselves. The kind of poem that doesn't rhyme, but rings true.
As for the 2027 elections, well, let them add more states if they must. Let them carve out more boundaries. But unless we redraw the map of our hearts, we will continue to wander in circles, democracy without destination, INEC stylee.
So here's to patience (Sabr), forbearance, and the occasional mango tree meeting. May we yet raise a nation where dignity isn't seasonal and belief isn't broken.
Ever grateful,
JohnOn Sun, 3 Aug 2025 at 18:22, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:John Onyeukwu,
As always, muchas gracias for your gracious thoughts and your significant words.
Someone with less foresight may well be asking how come I'm saying "as always" after only slightly knowing you in cyberspace for three days ? The answer is that unlike NEPA (never expect power always) I think that after the first, second and third impressions, when it comes to John Onyeukwu, quality is to be expected always, quality of the kind that Ahmad Tejan Kabbah probably had in mind when he recommended Resourcefulness, Excellence, Tolerance, Good Neighbourliness, Generosity, Honesty, Self-esteem as desirable personal and national qualities - to which I'd like to add ( with you in mind) Patience ( Sabr) and Forbearance.
Self-esteem belongs to the department of human dignity and of course we have to be constantly aware and on the alert that there ought not to be that surfeit in our own sense of self-esteem (caused by an excess of self-love) to the extent that we become arrogant and overstep the bounds by impinging on someone else's dignity, sense of self-worth, and that includes those that are deemed to be servants like us…
Self-esteem seems to be more local than national and will continue like that until we have an overarching sense of nationhood. How do we achieve that? What can be observed in our West Africa, is that self-esteem seems to be mostly individual (personal) as everywhere else in the world, and then local ( our ethnic vanity, in our ethnic vicinity). What's also observable is that because of so much dissatisfaction with mis-governance, as you say, "it's hard to watch Nigeria grind its way through every national absurdity and not want to convene a Sovereign Conference in your head", of course self-esteem at the national level manifests most passionately (chest-beating) when a Nigerian excels ( thereby symbolically representing all Nigerians) otherwise it's according to the weight a passport carries, or at international competitions such as Nigeria winning the Women's Africa cup in Football, and what a day it should be when Nigeria wins the World Cup in Football. Prediction : Overnight we would all become Nigerians. Chest beating Nigerians, and LOUD - no racism, just BLACK & PROUD !
On the political scene, what's missing is some rhetoric about making Nigeria great and here too, could you please demystify us ; what do you mean by "No reform will stick if people are too broken to believe."? Your fitness to be the next or a soon to be future president is going to be assessed based on your answer to that question…
For now, you may be demurring as a reluctant presidential candidate or that your time is not yet because it's the Octogenarians' time, the old fogies who wannabe like Paul Biya ( sadly Chidi is trying to be a good Nigerian neighbour by not writing a poem about his neighbour Paul Biya, but what about a poem starring his own president? )
Don't come here with your racism etc , well I admire Gore Vidal
Would like to see debates of this quality :
Malcolm X. Oxford University Union Debate in 1964
James Baldwin vs William F Buckley
In the meantime, many thanks for highlighting Alayi ( indeed, charity begins at home) and -ah nostalgia - the pastoral idyll "under the mango tree somewhere with kola nut, palm wine, and people still unafraid of truth."
Nostalgia -Umuahia 👍 Leon Thomas :The Creator Has a Master Plan
"There was a time, when peace was on the earth
And joy and happiness did reign and each man
Knew his worth.
In my heart I yearn for
That spirit's return and I cry, as time flies
Oooomm, Oooomm
There is a place where love wherever shines, and
Rainbows are the shadows of a presence so divine
And the glow of that love lights
The heavens above, and it's free, come with me
Can't you see
The creator has a working plan— peace and
Happiness for every man
The creator has a master plan— peace and
Happiness for every man
The creator makes but one demand, happiness thru
All the land"
Back in the day - my brief stay in Nigeria -1981-84 -in my neck of the jungle it was Rivers State, Imo, Anambra, Bendel …and since then a couple of new states have been sprung out of those four states. In the last Nigerian presidential election the Federal Capital Territory was being disputed as a state and I suppose that with the stipulation that "To be declared Presidential winner, a candidate must secure at least 1/4th (25%) of votes cast in 2/3rd of the entire 36 States of Nigeria (that is in 24 States" is more than enough reason why all over the place people are agitating for more states to be carved out of their own ethnic enclaves in time for the upcoming 2027 Mother of all Nigerian Presidential Elections.
Still on the political front I hear that there are special schools where future African leaders are being trained ,not that in the next 20 years, Nigeria's presidents have to come from those schools?
Most seriously :
Today being the 9th of Av of absolute relevance to us all, something we ought to pay attention to and examine because it also bedevils national harmony, not only interpersonal ships : Sinat Chinam (baseless hatred) It was Sinat Chinam that caused the destruction of the Second Temple : In a nutshell :The Story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza…
On Saturday, 2 August 2025 at 20:34:44 UTC+2 John Onyeukwu wrote:Dear Chief,
What a message! Like a jazz solo stretching across decades, dancing between memory, provocation, grief, satire, and the drumbeat of hope.
First, thank you for your generous words. I don't know about running for President, I can barely run my own schedule. But you're not wrong: it's hard to watch Nigeria grind its way through every national absurdity and not want to convene a Sovereign Conference in your head. Abuja? No. Umuahia? Perhaps. But if I had my way, it would be under a mango tree somewhere in Alayi, with kola nut, palm wine, and people still unafraid of truth.
You summon Harvey with such force I could almost hear his thunderous rebuttal, "DON'T COME HERE WITH YOUR RACISM!", and it made me smile and wince at the same time. That peculiar alchemy of love, contradiction, genius, and memory. He must have been one of a kind. The kind that reminds us that nations too have personalities, moody, brilliant, and self-destructive.
Oh yes, I agree. Talking isn't enough. But silence is worse. Poetry isn't policy. But I have seen a line of verse undo years of cynicism. Words, when carried in the mouths of the right people, still move mountains, or at least shake a few foundations.
As for our current democraship (part democracy, part hardship, mostly drift), I weep too. About the universities. About the anticorruption performances. About the savannah banks of broken dreams. You ask, what can be done? I return to Kabbah's seven values, not because they are magic, but because they still make more sense than much of what passes for national planning. Especially that last one, self-esteem. No nation can rise without it. No reform will stick if people are too broken to believe.
So no, I won't run for president. But I will run my mouth. Thoughtfully. Hopefully. Tirelessly. That, my friend, is the only race I am qualified for, and maybe the one that still matters most.
Happy birthday to Harvey, wherever he now roars.
Warmly,
JohnOn Sat, 2 Aug 2025 at 14:13, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:Stockholm
Sweden
People's Planet.
2nd of August, 2025
John Onyeukwu,
Have you ever thought of running for president?
If you are feeling too shy or humble, you don't
have to answer the question.
You are a busy man and this is really
to the forum, through you, nominally…
About dear Harvey Cropper
He had such a phenomenal memory!
Harvey was at FESTAC '77 in Lagos.
Home again. So many stories to tell !
The very first time he got angry with me
was when I complained that so few
people were writing poetry in African
Languages. WHY DON'T YOU DO IT ?
He thundered. I explained that my competence
wasn't good enough in any African Language, wasn't
good enough to write poetry. Competence in e.g. Krio
is only acquired through full immersion in every aspect
of Krio culture.
As time wore on and especially
the last year or so of his life
when there were other people around,
anything that I said was wrong:
If it was white and I said it was
white, he'd say ," No : it's Black"
It was like a game. Whatever I said
he'd say the opposite. For example
if I said, "We the Black people…" I
wouldn't even be allowed to complete
the sentence because dear Harvey
would be bellowing at the top of his voice :
DON'T COME HERE WITH YOUR RACISM !
A few years ago I told Lefifi Tladi about this
and he had an explanation. By the way, in 1985
Johnny Mbizo Dyani gave me the name Themba Feza
which means " Hope to complete". His trumpeter was
Mongezi Feza. We ( friends) will be gathering to
celebrate Harvey's birthday here in Stockholm,
on the 4th of August.
John Onyeukwu,
Man of analysis and understanding
Man of the palm-oil oral tradition
so you think that talking
is going to solve everything?
When has talking solved anything?
You gonna convene another National
Sovereign Conference? Where? At Abuja?
Umuahia? At the United Nations headquarters in New York?
But the United Nations are not united, ditto Nigeria.
Not united. I shouldn't be pessimistic?
I'm not. I'm Pan-African. I'm optimistic.
We've still got to go through these seven stages
Trump thinks that he's at stage 8 and that's why
he wants to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace
He would like to take the United States, Greenland,
Canada and Gaza with him, to the Highest Heaven
Meanwhile, over there in Nigeria,
Anti-corruption commissions and wars against
corruption have only exacerbated the problem
that everybody apart from the looters is crying about.
The Bank Manager at Savannah Bank at No 10 Aba Road
Port Harcourt, stole my £6,000 Sterling! As Ojogbon said,
"Alas! you need power to keep the money you have stolen."
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