"Just imagine if Kanu will root all what he is saying in moral and ethical questions and language that relates to social justice in such a manner that even someone in Bangladesh can hear it and say, I can identify with the spirit of his struggle and the success of such a struggle is a universal blessing to humanity,..." S. Salanga
Thank you, Prof. Zalanga for this very wonderful piece of yours. I think you've said it all. I would suggest that this essay be read to the audience at the proposed gathering of Ndi Igbo in Houston. If any of the organizers of the Ndi Igbo gathering is on this forum, kindly arrange to invite Prof. Zalanga to present this paper at the gathering. You will be doing the "struggle" a great deal of good! I pray the Prof accepts the invitation. If he does, we have a firm commitment from some sources to fund his travels to the gathering.
May we all have a fruitful 2016.
Kenneth
On Saturday, 2 January 2016, 1:36, Samuel Zalanga <szalanga@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Chidi,
Please do you know whether this meeting has been recorded as was suggested in the message you sent out? Political Sociology is one of my areas of great interest. For a lot of reasons, I am very interested in this subject.
I am very curious about how the discussion proceeded. I forwarded your message to all my Igbo friends who I have very sincere and honest conversations about the challenges of Nigeria.
My own reasoning using the tradition of immanent critique or subversive orthodoxy is that I can concede that the Igbo people have many challenges in Nigeria. But based on insights form historical comparative methods of research, I quickly arrived at the suspicion that if ten good grievances can be listed of Ndi' Igbo people against the Nigerian federation, research methods will highlight something very insightful things that in my view will complicate the discussion:
1.The Grievances Would not be Applicable Only to Igbo Land: If one travels around Nigeria trying to examine whether the grievances and challenges identified apply only to Igbo land, he or she will conclude that this is not the case. Indeed, there are some areas of Nigeria, that are even more marginalized than Igbo land.
When I did my NYSC in Aboh Mbaise, I felt I was in a foreign country because of the differences in level of development there compared to Bauchi State. I learned a lot about regional variation in the country. The number of students enrolled then in secondary school in Aboh Mbaise Local Government Area alone then was higher than those enrolled in secondary school in the whole of Bauchi State.
All this is not to say that this is a reason not to highlight the challenges or grievances of Igbo people. The issue is as Adam Przeworkski and Henry Teune said in their book:. "The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry," when you gather data and conclude that a problem is not only existing in one place but several or numerous other places at the same time, then the cause is a problem much larger and not an issue just specific to a place even though context matters. It may be a systemic issue.
2. No Grievances or Challenges will Apply to All Igbo People or Igbo Land in a Flat Manner: The same grievances and challenges if examined very carefully will show that they manifest to different degree among different states, local governments and social classes or clans in Igbo land. This will equally apply in other regions of Nigeria even if the people come from the same ethnic group. You will find the same thing in Sokoto and Geidam. This means generalizing the grievances easily as though there has not been internal variation in the region since the past several decades will be somewhat unrealistic. There are parts of Igbo land that are more developed and better governed than others and it will be good to explain this. This is true with all the other regions regions in Nigeria. Recently I read somewhere that the governor of Gombe has been recognized for his work to the state. Gombe state came out of Buachi but in my view it is far more developed than Bauchi even though all are in the North and in the former Northeastern region or state. This means the problem can be explained by both internal and external factors.
3. Regret About the Past: I did not witness the civil war but the only time I saw a graphic representation of it was when I watched the whole series of late Professor Ali Mazrui. It was shocking to me that Nigeria went through that and we do not seem to have learned a lot from that. The meeting of reconciliation between then General Gowon and representatives of the Igbo command was touching. You sense from his body language that these were his colleagues and circumstances made them to be enemies and now they can reconcile. Just as was the case with some European forces during the first World War if I remember in a documentary where opposite sides celebrated Christmas and then you wonder why they were fighting. I feel terribly bad that Nigeria as a country has not learned much from the past or so it seems.
4. Is Rooting Social Struggle in Blood Ancestry the Only Viable Option in the 21st Century?: The reason why I am interested in all this is that I truly believe that the concerns that Igbo people have can be translated into moral and ethical concerns that should be of interest to millions of people who are not Igbo by blood ancestry. Making a movement strictly based on ancestry in our world today can be scary to many people because people know that it can be a source of instability in many societies. Beyond that, in spite of Carol Gilligan's critique of Lawrence Kohlberg theory of moral development, I think it is fair to say that as one grows in reflection, he or she becomes concern with an issue not just because it affects him or her, or his or her people. I can imagine that the descendants of Mayflower in the U.S. can decide to have such a meeting or the descendants of the American Pioneers in Appalachia can do that. That would make many others scared especially when the substance of their concern can be accommodated within universalistic language and ideals that one does not have to be part of their ancestry to sympathize or join the struggle. Ultimately, the world will be a better place if people are committed to such moral and ethical struggles even when the issues is not just about them, or they will join struggles with others in spite of differences to fight for a better world.
One of my greatest regrets in Nigeria is that whether it is with the Niger Delta struggle or Boko Haram, they never frame their agenda and pursue strategies that are rooted in some universal moral and ethical ideals that people can join even if they are not from the place. The struggle of Black Lives Matter can only succeed if it is framed in such a way that even though the problem is with Black people, the substance of the situation is a moral and ethical concern that affects human dignity in general and so all of us should care. This is what made Martin Luther King Jr and the Civil Rights movement succeed. I ordered a cd of the Letter from Birmingham Jail and listened to it for a month in my car in order to deeply appreciate and digest the manner in which Martin Luther King Jr. framed the struggle. It is hard even if you are a privileged White person to understand the history of western civilization very well and ignore him. Not surprisingly, when many Whites understood the depth and incisiveness of the position of the Civil Rights fighters, they joined the struggle and that increased the legitimacy of the struggle.
5. Other Examples from History that Support the Case for Moral and Ethical Framing of Social Struggles:
a) Similarly, if you watch the documentary called "A Place Called Chiapas":
you will be impressed by the way Commandante Marcos framed the Zapatista struggle. He framed it in terms of how neoliberal globalization renders many people as surplus people. He is not against globalization wholesale, but against the way it operates to make some people irrelevant. In this respect, his position can be supported by Professor Stitlitz's critique of neoliberal globalization in terms of its disregard for certain groups of people. After a careful analysis of what neoliberal globalization is, Marcos concluded that anyone in the world who faces the kind of marginalization they faced by the indigenous people in Chiapas because of globalization is also a Zapatista and should join them in the struggle. The New York Times calls the struggle the first postmodern revolution. Their manifesto was online and the government found it difficult to shut them up. And the coherence of their argument, its deep moral and ethical foundation in a situation where people treat the market as amoral became attractive to journalists from different parts of the world who flew to Chiapas to record what was happening. Why? Because when you hear what Commandante Marcos said and the manifesto of his people, if you are informed about globalization, you cannot treat them as persons very absorbed in themselves or being provincial in thinking. They demonstrate an awareness that the problems they faced are also being faced in other parts of the world and the struggle is rooted in a broader and deeper moral and ethical question.
Interestingly, Commandante Marcos is not an indigenous person. He was a Professor of Philosophy and Communications if I remember very well and was trained in Italy. He resigned his university teaching position to go and live among the indigenous people, and he won their trust. Consequently they made him their leader and spokesperson even though he was not a native.
b) Another example I can give is form the series called: "Have You Heard From Johannesburg?":
It is a seven-part series discussing apartheid and its collapse. There is an episode titled: "From Selma to Soweto." This is an excellent example of the contribution of African Americans to the anti-apartheid struggle. But the congressional Black Caucus did not frame the issue in strictly racial terms. They frame it as a moral and ethical issue that challenges what the U.S. or the "civilized world" claimed to be. It is harder to fight those kinds of framing when there is empirical evidence supporting the claim. One South African in the documentary said that, their campaign of persuading U.S. state legislators to divest from investing in South Africa or divest form corporations that do business there, was only successful in states where a Black and a White legislator sponsored the legislation and often bi-partisan. Why? Because the issue was framed as a moral and ethical issue that transcends race, ethnicity, nation etc. They were able to mobilize support to override the veto of President Ronald Reagan who opposed the law that declared economic sanctions against South Africa. Many republicans voted against Ronald Reagan's position.
c) I also at one point reviewed a documentary on Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota. He was charged with getting the voting rights act passed in U.S. congress (http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=4403196). Initially he adopted a very legalistic approach in making the case by focusing on U.S. laws and the constitution. But some ministers visited him in Washington and told him that he should broaden his framing of the issue from just legal to a moral and ethical question. And it worked because it became more difficult to easily ignore the moral and ethical questions especially when the opponents claimed to be moral and ethical people. This is not to say that morality and ethics cannot be debated but the common person generally has a fair understanding of what is right else society will not work as we see it. Are we lacking moral and ethical foundation in Nigeria to frame our struggles in similar manner? We can learn from the history of social struggles all over the world.
Conclusion: If the challenges and grievances that the Igbo people will identify can equally be found in other parts of Nigeria and in some cases in even worse situations; and if there is such injustice against some people in Igbo land committed by the powerful against the powerless, why not make the movement a moral and ethical struggle against exclusion, injustice and oppression of the weak by the strong instead of lumping everyone together? We need such a movement in Nigeria and indeed, the African continent, and I care less about where it starts, and my hope is that such a movement if it starts anywhere in Africa can go beyond that particular country.
I have painfully arrived at the conclusion that sometimes it is often easier to try to by-pass the fundamental questions of social justice, moral and ethical concerns that need to penetrate or infuse our social reality in a rush to arrive at the New Jerusalem or Dar es Salaam very quickly. Are there short cuts in such struggles? Many of the postcolonial African sates became predatory because many people who participated in independent struggles were more concerned about their exclusion from the privileges that the colonial officials enjoyed instead of the fundamental questions of social justice for all. But often such situations end up in disappointments because as St. Augustine said, while quoting Cicero, without Justice, we are all a gang of robbers. Just imagine if Kanu will root all what he is saying in moral and ethical questions and language that relates to social justice in such a manner that even someone in Bangladesh can hear it and say, I can identify with the spirit of his struggle and the success of such a struggle is a universal blessing to humanity, which in John Stuart Mill's Ideal Utilitarianism, can bring joy because it satisfies our hunger for justice and human dignity. Granted Mill himself failed to honor the dignity of he people in India because of his work for the East India Company or something like that.
I hope and pray that if there are moral and ethical issues of concern that detrimentally affect the lives of others, one does not need be of the same blood ancestry of such people or of the same religion or ethnic group before he or she can care about such concerns or join the struggle.
Samuel
On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 11:32 AM, 'chidi opara reports' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
--Ndi'Igbo in Diaspora have decided to meet in Houston on the 29th – 30th of January 2016, to debate their fate in Nigeria. The move is necessitated by our past experiences and recent events in the country........................From chidi opara reportschidi opara reports is published as a social service by PublicInformationProjects
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