Cornelius Ignoramus asks because he has never known a democratically elected Nigerian president to have been criticized as severely as has Goodluck Jonathan, these past several years.
This afternoon, in between terrible bouts of wheezing, sneezing and blowing my nose I finally managed to read through Michael O. Afolayan's one minute piece The Home Is Still Empty: The Girls Are Yet to Be Found .
I'm still wheezing and sneezing. It's important that I myself know the mood that I'm in when writing this.
Of course even if you believe that you're not a materialistic sort of beast and you're informed, wheezing and sneezing and all, that you've just won the Mega Millions Jackpot, you could suddenly find that you are in a very different kind of mood altogether. You might even find that you are no longer sneezing at all, that all the mucous and the phlegm evaporated from your nostrils and your brain, momentarily or that you may still be sneezing and wheezing but not even be aware that you are still sneezing and wheezing or even - "oh what a feeling - dancing on the ceiling."
It's possible that you may even feel less happy if an apparition told you that you were soon going to heaven, "a place of no return", in very dangerous circumstances, a perception once held by the venerable Professor Falola...
Michael O. Afolayan's piece gives much room for thought. I'm sure that if Goodluck Jonathan took time off from his busy schedule to read it through, he himself could even wind up feeling bad and blue and would not possibly be feeling better.
Responsibility? He may even plead guilty.
These days one has to be very careful when talking about the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, so as not to talk about him in an undignified manner. To avoid insult and injury. And if he is no longer with us, the damage to his cherished memory could even be a lot worse.
"While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him" ( It's alright
The title of the piece lit a spark in yours truly, jolted me back to some Baul poetry / song
"They came and danced
and feasted and left,
and the house remained empty".
(There's nothing as frustrating as less than perfect recall when you're quoting poetry or song, because if you can't quote accurately then it's better not to quote at all. Anyway, the gist of the above – that sentence points at what happens when the soul leaves the body...
In concluding his teaching about last Sabbath's Torah Portion, Rabbi Richman of the Temple Institute, makes an important distinction between a house and a home - this time of course referring to the Third Temple where Hashem shall re- take His residence. In doing so the Rabbi quotes Bob Dylan's distinction between a house and a home in The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest :
"What kind of house is this," he said
"Where I have come to roam?"
It's not a house," said Judas Priest
"It's not a house . . . it's a home"
....A moral for us all:
"Well, the moral of the story
The moral of this song
Is simply that one should never be
Where one does not belong
So when you see your neighbor carryin' somethin'
Help him with his load
And don't go mistaking Paradise
For that home across the road"
Still on the issue of saving lives and in the case of what's happening in Nigeria, the absence of any credible deterrence means that evil continues. The story is from this Sabbath's Torah Portion which is Genesis 32:4-36:43 – about kidnapping and rape...
Reading and listening to the parable of the tribes and the various moral dilemmas and the various moral insights and conclusions that Rabbi Sacks derives from this Torah episode, I can't help but think about how some of these insights and moral conclusions apply to the girls that Boko Haram kidnapped from their school in Chibok and that they are now said to have been married off - willingly or unwillingly - to the jihadists – and the anguish of their parents, their family and friends who may never see them again.
Consider some of the moral judgements in the lecture and even given the different circumstances of time, people and place, how they are nevertheless applicable to the story of the Chibok girls and Boko Haram, like the Satanic Verses, a story of good versus evil.
I am not neutral not even after wading through some of this propaganda stuff in Africa Today. The stuff must be fully dismantled as in, go on, Speak the Truth and Shame the Devil!
I'm also fully aware that we can't take an isolated case such as Israel released 1,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, in exchange for Gilda Shalit. and make a principle out of it. But, is it not possible to fulfil Boko Haram's demand that their prisoners be released in exchange for peace?
Otherwise, sadly, it would seem that from the point of view of Aso Rock, in praxis, not all the states of the Federation are equal, that some states are more equal than others and not just in terms of revenue derivation. That Borno for example is far, away, up there, not near. This conclusion about the inequality of states is easily arrived at by anyone who can imagine what if - what if Boko Haram were operating in Rivers States or Imo State for example, blowing up churches there and had kidnapped 270 Ijaw or Igbo schoolgirls, would President Jonathan not have acted more decisively and with alacrity at such things happening in his immediate vicinity?
I'm not saying that it's "one country, two systems", I'm just pointing out what's happening. In a similar vein, in so far as the rebel war in Sierra Leone was confined to the provinces (once known as "the protectorate") it's common knowledge that some of the Freetown inhabitants' attitude was, "The savages! Let them go on butchering themselves up there, as long as they don't bring it here!"
On the 6th of January, 1998, from London, I phoned the then Chief Justice of Sierra Leone, Mr. Samuel Olu Beccles-Davies, a family elder, to tell him that my mother had passed away. When he answered the phone the first thing he told me was that his residence was full of Nigerian soldiers but that I could go ahead and talk. "Nigerian soldiers? ", I asked him. "Yes", he replied, "They are looking for Johnny Paul Koroma"
"Where is he? ", I further enquired
"The rascal is up in the hills", said Uncle Olu...
That was 6.1.1998
The RUF invaded Freetown on 6.1.1999...
Not that I imagine Boko Haram invading Port Harcourt, but Sir Goodluck Jonathan must be prepared for any eventuality before and after 14th February 2015, especially with all the weapons still adrift from Libya and other jihadist places that want to extend the Caliphate over all of Nigeria ... anything is possible...
I will soon be taking up the matter of Africa's sleeping giant in my blog We Sweden . I think that I'll label the piece "Counting the teeth of the crocodile". That would be a good title. I still can't get over Tim Sebastian on BBC Hardtalk saying to Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, "But people say that you are like a toothless chimpanzee, in your fight against corruption."
Pa Kabbah retorted "You can't root it out 100%!"
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