Toyin Adepoju,
Normally, I would certainly try to respect your stated wish, but in this case I don't quite understand what you could possibly mean by requesting that I do not use you as a "crutch".
I certainly hope that I can walk the walk and talk the talk without recourse to using Mr. Adepoju as my "crutch".
I should also hope that I should never have to do that when any public intellectual on a public forum continues to represent, promote or reflect the ideas and attitudes that you reflect in this or any other public space, that I should need permission from the Almighty or from you or from anyone else to use your name and or to call you out if need be when you talk about President Buhari , "Fulani Herdsmen" , the Sultan of Sokoto or the Emir of Kano. I shall not do that ( seek your permission to use your name( even in vain) at least, not unnecessarily...
It's less difficult to separate the singer from the song than it is to differentiate or separate the dancer from the dance or in this case to separate you from your arguments or the various noises that you make...
In giving this reference the other day, I spelled the word incorrectly, here it is again : brit mila
On Friday, 27 July 2018 20:03:36 UTC+2, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju wrote:
Cornelius, please dont use my name like that anymore.If you have an argument to make present it without invoking Adepoju as a crutch.toyinOn Fri, 27 Jul 2018 at 16:24, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:--
Toyin Adepoju,
Just in case you think that toning down the vitriol would be an infringement on your freedom of speech, I understand that this probably caused the assassination of Umar Ibn Khatab, by his Persian man servant who it is said was complaining bitterly to the Caliph , who did not pay him the requisite attention. On the other hand it is said of Rasulullah - sallallahu alayhi wa salaam, that he never interrupted someone who was talking to him, and even more than that, would kindly enquire, " Have you finished what you are saying ?" before he himself would speak. There is the instance ( just before the ayat forbidding alcohol was revealed to him) when - according to Sahih Muslim ( I know the passage well) he was summoned to the drinking parlour where some terrible things were happening, and when he was accosted by one of his relatives who was drunk at the time and asked, " Are you not one of my father's slaves?" the prophet of Islam did not start to exchange any words with him , but hurried back home....
Seriously: your background in the hermeneutics of the esoteric should not stand in the way as an encumberment or to cloud your vision when dealing with practical politics in any country or any part of Nigerian territory in which
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity." (The Second Coming)As "second comings"go, this is indeed Brer Buhari's second coming , all said and done, the first one was through the mighty barrel of a gun ( just a few days after Jesus' birthday celebrations in Nigeria, in A.D. 1983 ) and the second coming was more gracefully through the ballot box, albeit after some blood-curdling threat that if he was cheated again in 2015 , the way that he was cheated in 2011, then " the dog and the baboon will be soaked in blood" by which it was to be understood that if he would be cheated once more , unlike Obadiah Mailafia's "gentle Jesus , meek and mild" of Umuahia, it looked like in Brer Buhari's case he would not take a second yuki-yuki defeat ( another rigged election) lying down, therefore ominously sounding that in his pipeline or gun barrel was already stored another round of "mere anarchy" , another " blood-dimmed tide" that would be " loosed" upon ye all.
In Pakistan the losers are crying " foul" , If Brother Buhari were to loses next year, say in an election rigged against him (and I pray that that does not happen) even as I wonder what would possibly be loosed upon Nigerians back in Naijaland /Nairaland...
Usually being short of answers, I like to wonder. JJ Rawlings also earned the title "Junior Jesus" ( from his initials) because he also came twice ( the first time , unlike Jesus, through the barrel of his father's gun...)
For all we know, even assuming that " Nigerians sleep too much" or " youths everywhere are lazy", you could be that prophet or warner waking up from from a sphinx-like inertia of more than "twenty centuries of stony sleep"now trying to restore the eyesight of the blind who cannot or do not see or want to what's going on , by your giving them and us all the eyes with which to see, what the hell is going on!
But just this one word of caution to us all, from Islam's Holy Quran : "and let not hatred of any people seduce you that ye deal not justly."
Secondly, you could as our Professor Falola has raptly advised, tone down the extremism in your language. To me your vitriol sounds like that of the most extreme of Islamophobic Israeli settlers, they quote the Talmud that " Hashem ( God) regrets that He made the Ishmaelites ( Arabs) " - except of course we are talking about Nigeria and Lord Lugard , not about the Almighty or Lord Balfour , and we know that Toyin Adepoju would be the first to claim equal rights even in a resurrected Sheikh Usman Dan Fodio, Sokoto Caliphate or a later day "The Caliphate of Nigeria"
According to a certain predetermined mind set on wishful thinking, "All Fulani are terrorists, Generalissimo is Fulani, therefore Generalissimo is a terrorist" could only be OK in Copi's classroom introduction to General Logic, but in reality you can only get away with " all men are mortal..." and then go on to dispute whether or not those who resurrect or resurrected can still be considered as being mere mortal or not . ( By the way my late friend Teju Dedoye (of Ondo) wrote a paper on a resurrection or resurrections that took place or have taken place in Yoruba-land ( perhaps with an emphasis on metempsychosis or reincarna
tion ( so many Babatundes even in my family( Baba has come back...) I first met Teju ( here in Stockholm) carrying a big James Bond type attaché case and when I asked him Bob-Marley like "what's there in the bag?" , Teju answered, " My qualifications!" ( He had just come from a job interview.) I asked him let's have a look at them, and he showed me: He had been specially trained by the FBI ( knew a lot about computer fraud ( this was n´more than 20 years ago) he had accumulated enough University points to earn him a couple of PhDs – and I know only one other person ( an Indian guy , Martin Kemal ) who had enough points from Moscow, and courses from Harvard Yale, etc. to add up to about seven PhDs ( as in"Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates"
( I told my Better Half who at that time was sitting on certain interview boards for recruiting top civil servants, and she told me that Teju would never get one of those jobs, the reason being that he was too "overqualified"
But from terrorism, death and destruction , reincarnations and resurrections back to the main point: We want to live in a democratic system known for law and order, crime and punishment, not one in which, everyday, someone or thousands, get away with first-degree murder; therefore your Human Rights arguments could be made more unassailable if you moved from the abstract generalisations to the more specific and concrete by giving verifiable examples. Take this instance for example, if you could verify the accuracy of this report this could be a feather in your hat: Plateau Killings: Gen. Atolagbe victimized for choosing justice against Fulani terrorists
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