Ekiti elections, Nigeria state and sundry matters...
Dear Asaju Tunde Lee (& All),
You have spoken well and I do so very much appreciate the words and spirit of your submission, may your days be long as an Asaju in your endeavours.
I am Marxist, but for me, any body can believe or not believe in anything. To that extent I wholly agree with the underlying position of anybody to his or her own God, god or godlessness; that is a personal decision. However, to the trenches that we have committed ourselves to, COLLECTIVELY, I will continue to raise my voice that we engage. For ourselves, for our country, and for our children's future.
At stake now is Ekiti, but as well at stake is much more than Ekiti! If March 21 did occur, with the frenzy with which we entered it and the enthusiasm in it, captured by Otive's immediate synopsis, why is everything as quiet as a graveyard now? How many graves of poor, innocent men, women and children in Ekiti and beyond, from the crass and shameless violence of our country's demented power elites will have to be filled? Deaths: from state apparatus protected electoral violence, from hunger, malnutrition and starvation, from potholes on roads that billions are budgetted for but still remain death traps, from rising waves of armed robberies by unemployed youths, from kerosene explosions and from sundry other causes that stem primarily from the systemic failure of state which we have identified and pledged a commitment to fight.
At stake is the attitudinal continuum from pre-March 21 of talking against these without any action, thus making us as a collective body as well culpable. What is that from, I think Burke about evil triumphing only when men (and women) of goodwill merely fold their arms? Is such arms folding (even where and when the lips keep making condemnatory motions) not even worse after resolving to do otherwise?
I must state here that I had had cause much earlier to raise the question of what next after March 21 to the triumvirate that organised it. CA's response was succint enough, pointing out the responsibilities for moving things forward and those whom these were vested on. I then forwarded the same message to these...I have had no response from these, nor have these been posted to the serve.
I do invoke my right as a member on this serve to demand that the necessary steps be taken to move the step of March 21 forward, starting with the issuance of the communique and the working paper.
Why do I stress on the foregoing while the immediate issue is obviously the unfolding saga in Ekiti? The ongoing drama in that state of the heroic, might be won or lost by the people, this possibility being partly determined by the extent to which we all as well act or chose not to. It will however pass and the situation of our country would continue its painful down slide except the strategic intervention of change-seeking forces, through engaging with and in the dynamics of the power struggle within the, is built, organised, forged.
I personally do not care if even Arch-Angel Michael and Lucifer -without the least of blasphemy intended- were to march together distributing leaflets, addressing picket lines, issuing statements, pasting posters, agitating from house-to-house, confronting mobile police if necessary, to liberate Ekiti from the fangs of the predatory, degenerate persons in power presently. But more importantly still; after Ekiti, what next? How many Ekitis must we have for us to move from mere resolutions to walking our talk?
This summarily is at the heart of my position thus far. I do hope the stridency of my voice, even if the contents of the words it utters does not make sense to most, would at least shake us from the lethargy we seem to have reverted to.
Lest we forget, I reiterate my demand, as a bona fide part of the process leading to March 21, being a subscriber on the serve that : all the assigned Rockview Conference working documents be issued, circulated for debate and we set our course on actualizing what was started of rising up to the challenge of a struggle for change in Nigeria.
Thank you
Baba Aye
_____________________________________________________________________________
From: Asaju Tunde Lee
Date: Tuesday, April 28, 2009, 9:48 PM
Dear all,
First of all, let me say a big thank you to you all for keeping faith while some of us are away in far-flung backwaters of our nation ekking out a living.
Let me thank Baba Aye for keeping up and coordinating this fight even from across oceans and climes and others like him who could easily afford to say to hell with the 'struggle' whatever that means and enjoy the relative freedom and peace they have now but who have chosen to be more strident than those of us who live on the shores of hell but have grown accustomed to the heat rather than protest.
Let me also thank Sam Amadi (my dear comrade) for responding to Thomas' diatribes in a manner that is very unusual for Sam (and I mean that complimentarily because Sam could be as hard as a rock when he pleases and yet be as cool as cucumber when the clime dictates.)
Now, what do I have to say. I just want to appeal to us that we should use refined language when we react to other people's views. I see nothing wrong in Sam's position. I am a Christian too and very proud to be a Christian and I see nothing anti-thetical with being a Christian and being (or pretending to be) a revolutionary. After all, Jesus died more than 2000 years ago and his ideas are still the subject of doctoral thesis today - what can be more revolutionary than that.
Now, that someone does not share our religious dent and our seemingly antithetical ideological persuasion does not give that person right to denigrate us. We respect the views of those who are Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Hare Khrisna, Agnostics and Atheists on this forum and so it should be. After all, the society we seek to better is one that is created by God and accommodates humans of different persuasions.
My greatest lesson is always that if you are angry, please don't put your fingers on those keyboards, you may hurt more people than you help and you may ostracise more people than you draw near. Let us not think that we know or act or are better than the other. We all subscribed to this forum freely and if what we want or desire is freedom for all, we should learn to respect the free will of others, even if they are said with a coat of Godliness or Godlessness.
Nigeria is a wonderful country, most of its leaders may be rogues but majority of the ordinary people are the most beautiful people on earth. Many of us are proud of our country and even find the contradictions within it amusing. May we find the heart to speak words that heal and reject the ones that hurt 'unnecessarily' . May we also have the grace to say sorry when we are wrong or when we hurt others, because sticking to our guns is not a sign of strength, it is a sign of weakness.
I take refuge in God against those who will propel their arrows of hate and solace in those who will offer their heart of understanding!
Tunde ASAJU
_____________________________________________________________________________
From: Samuel Amadi
Date: Tuesday, 28 April, 2009, 10:45 AM
Dear Thomas,
I did not want to reply you because your posting sounded like an ego trip of someone who wanted to bash anyone in sight and by so doing feel good about himself. But, I changed my mind and decided to reply you to protect those who may believe your 'useless' posting.
First, you question the 'kind of research' we do in Ken Nnamani center even when you support my claim that Nigeria is not a rogue state (you wrote in ur own words: "I refuse to use the concept of' 'rogue state' as coined by the US"). By now I should be familiar with a special intellectualism in Nigeria today amongst the chattering class that begins and ends by mocking someone's intellectual gravitas. So, where does research and what we do at the Ken Nnamani Center come in? Oh! just to show you know something by mocking someone else? Kudos. For the records, I thank God for his grace that has enabled me to acquire three research degrees (including a doctorate) from Harvard. May be I am the first in the country. I thank God that I was able to attain this honor in record three years and across two Harvard Schools (may be the only in Harvard history). The quality of my research speaks for itself, both in methodology and ideological clarity.
Again, Mr. Judge, how does the fact that I am intellectual supporter of the establishment come into this small posting which content you agree with? Do you know my pedigree? Do you know what I have rejected and what honour I have turned my back on because of faith in righteousness and justice? In case you dont know I have come some way back and have remained consistent with my intellectual and theological groundings. I am proud to be a protegy of Gani Fawehimi, Olisa Agbaokaba, Ken Nnamani. And Adeboye is my pastor. So, I fight the revolutionary war and even as a PHD (I dont know what special annointing that brings), I still shout 'praise the Lord' and I invoke the name of the Lord to protect my country.
My beloved Thomas, I think the problem is that the contradictions in the land and the smoke of battle have beclouded our fine judgment that we don't know how to fight furiously for what we believe and not trample the grassland of the beautiful homestead. To say "Away with the conspirators" like the Roman
Mobs of yesteryears and still say 'God bless Nigeria' in one breath is possible and desirable. Don't forget that I accused the leadership of 'frenzied incompetence and murderous corruption'. Are these the words of a collaborator, my brother. I only say, we are not a rogue state. And I know a little international relations and international law to know a rogue when I see one. Baba Aye, the main combatant in this battle of description has answered more gracefully than you the bystander. You ran into battle without a girdle on ur mind.
Again, I say, let this uprising not bring out the beast in us. My brother, I am with you in the trench. Stop slandering me with your grandstanding and provocative reductionism. By the way, Keynes' immortal words do not speak to me. It speaks to everyone. Ideas influence action. My idea of analytical candor and expressive clarity is why I am responding. In which case Keynes is my witness.
Sam
Dr. Sam Amadi
Director, (Research& Programs)
Ken Nnamani Center for Leadership & Development
Abuja, Nigeria
______________________________________________________________________________
From: Thomas Agbonkpolor
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 12:04:35 AM
Subject: Re: [FOIcoalition] Attn Sam: Ekiti Governorship Bye Election Update & Our HISTORY
Dear Sam,
As someone at the head of a leadership think tank, when you offer the type of analysis you have just done in reply to visceral response of Baba Aye to happenings in Ekiti, one just must be surprised at the type of research emanating from the Ken Nnamani Leadership Centre.
Virtually all the few points you made in your short posting can be faulted. Retired General Peter Ademokhai has just been released by Kidnappers after paying some 20 million naira as ransom. His first statement on regaining freedom is "I thought I was in Somalia, Somalia is a failed State......" . In your estimation, Nigeria is not yet a failed state (I refuse to use the concept of rogue state as coined by the US). So please classify Nigeria in the comity of nations given that Ghana has just concluded a national election adjudged free and fair even by the international community and Nigeria cannot conduct transparent elections in a few local councils..
If the current fight in Ekiti is not between Ekiti people and the rogue Nigerian State, can you please tell us who are the combatants and why the instrument of the State has been brought to bear so violently on hapless Abubakar Momoh & Co. Who were those thugs that battered Abu fighting for? That they are Nigerians or Ekitians cannot detract from the fact of their being tools, yes pawns in the political chess board.
One can go on and on querying the fallacies in your posting. Whenever the Nigerian kleptocrats want to hoodwink, they talk in Jesus name. For a PhD to mimic them so uncritically as you have done in your closing sentence calls into question the role of the intelligentsia in the continued decay in Nigeria. I leave you with the oft quoted statement with which J M Keynes concluded his magnum opus in 1936: Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.
I hope you are not one of Keynes 'academic scribbler' that sustains the present madmen in authority in our dear country.
Fracternally (as Chidi would say)
T
_____________________________________________________________________________
Dear Sam,
Thanx for yours below. Two issues were raised in it, as I perceive it. One, that there are Nigerians on both sides of the divide I pointed out as Nigerians vs the 'rogue state'. Two, that Nigeria is not yet a rogue state.
Of course Franco was Spanish, Pol Pot Cambodian, Pinochet Chilean, Mobutu Zairean, Verword South African and Abacha Nigerian. But then as Malcolm X pointed out, in every nation there are always actually two nations. The nation of the haves vs that of the have nots, the exploiters vs the exploited, the oppressor vs the oppressed, the minority who hold the power of state seemingly as something over and above society as a whole while it is a construct from within that contradiction of two nations on one hand and the 'immense majority' of poor, subjugated, dominated and marginalized -Strange's 'the many losers'- who however are not powerless in that they have number and history on their side, but who must find and fan the emancipatory fires of struggle, of change to come to a realization of their powers and thus lead society as a whole to a higher level.
It was Thatcher, from a neoliberal point mind you, who said 'there is no such thing as society'. But in a sense, she was right! The abstraction of we are all members of the one and same society, we are all Nigerians or Ekiti, actually hides much more than it reveals!
On rogue state, I was very conscious in using that term. The US has used it to characterise states that pose a threat to its global hegemony. The concept of 'failed state' is also innocuously separated from that of 'state failure', why? For ideological reasons geared at pulling wool on the eyes of change-seekers. I would advice you read William Blum's 'The Rogue State: a guide to the world's only super power'. But coming back home, except we insist on internalizing the conceptualization of the US which is itself anything but value free; what roguery could be more from a state than a re-enactment of Adewusi's kill-and-go tactics in a supposed democracy? Electoral roguery, roguish state sanctioned violence (despite all story to the contrary) and now sending in an IGP that like Ehindero is on his way out to unction such roguery in the name of the father in abuja, the son as oni and the spirit of roguery!
I have spent the past five days more in Ekiti expending more on phone calls than I probably ever did in all my stay thus far away from home, feeling out contacts, political, social, from collectives, more personal, I can come only to one conclusion; we might hardly realize how deep the keg of gun powder we seat on in that land is.
I am Ekiti and it pains me to my bones. But even if it were in any other state I would have been constrained to make the analysis I have made even without the depth of information I have presently on things over there.
At the heart of my position is a very simple call: LET US WAKE UP AND NOT REDUCE EITHER THE ON-GOING SAGA OR MARCH 21 TO DISPARATE EPISODES THAT COME AND GO.
We need to tie our theorizing on change with the practical struggles of the peoplr indeed learn from these. PRACTICE IS THE CRITERION FOR TRUTH!
I repeat again with a keen sense of historical responsibility "every onlooker is either a traitor or a coward or both".
This is the time as Murtala put it to 'rethink, to reflect AND TO ACT' as the platform we claim to want to build.....seeking change otherwise is merely masturbatory and can't result in real conception of change.
At stake is both Ekiti (one could add as I did earlier, Nigeria, etc) AND US AS INTELLECTUALS THAT HAVE COME TO THE CONCLUSION OF ORGANIZING TO BRING ABOUT CHANGE IN NIGERIA.
Sincere regards,
Baba Aye
_____________________________________________________________________________
--- On Mon, 4/27/09, Samuel Amadi wrote:
Baba Aye,
Thanks for your usual revolutionary sentiments and clarity. I was enlightened as always by your last posting. But, please note the crisis is not a fight between Ekiti people and the rogue Nigerian state. The people who battered our Abu and other comrades are Nigerians and Ekitians may be. The people who walked together with Abu are Nigerians too.
Again, the Nigerian state is not a rogue state yet in my view. With all the frenzied incompetence and murderous corruption it is yet to decend into a rogue state and will not in Jesus name.
Let not this 'uprising' bring out the 'beast' in us.
Comradely.
Sam
Dr. Sam Amadi
Director, (Research& Programs)
Ken Nnamani Center for Leadership & Development
Abuja, Nigeria
You have spoken well and I do so very much appreciate the words and spirit of your submission, may your days be long as an Asaju in your endeavours.
I am Marxist, but for me, any body can believe or not believe in anything. To that extent I wholly agree with the underlying position of anybody to his or her own God, god or godlessness; that is a personal decision. However, to the trenches that we have committed ourselves to, COLLECTIVELY, I will continue to raise my voice that we engage. For ourselves, for our country, and for our children's future.
At stake now is Ekiti, but as well at stake is much more than Ekiti! If March 21 did occur, with the frenzy with which we entered it and the enthusiasm in it, captured by Otive's immediate synopsis, why is everything as quiet as a graveyard now? How many graves of poor, innocent men, women and children in Ekiti and beyond, from the crass and shameless violence of our country's demented power elites will have to be filled? Deaths: from state apparatus protected electoral violence, from hunger, malnutrition and starvation, from potholes on roads that billions are budgetted for but still remain death traps, from rising waves of armed robberies by unemployed youths, from kerosene explosions and from sundry other causes that stem primarily from the systemic failure of state which we have identified and pledged a commitment to fight.
At stake is the attitudinal continuum from pre-March 21 of talking against these without any action, thus making us as a collective body as well culpable. What is that from, I think Burke about evil triumphing only when men (and women) of goodwill merely fold their arms? Is such arms folding (even where and when the lips keep making condemnatory motions) not even worse after resolving to do otherwise?
I must state here that I had had cause much earlier to raise the question of what next after March 21 to the triumvirate that organised it. CA's response was succint enough, pointing out the responsibilities for moving things forward and those whom these were vested on. I then forwarded the same message to these...I have had no response from these, nor have these been posted to the serve.
I do invoke my right as a member on this serve to demand that the necessary steps be taken to move the step of March 21 forward, starting with the issuance of the communique and the working paper.
Why do I stress on the foregoing while the immediate issue is obviously the unfolding saga in Ekiti? The ongoing drama in that state of the heroic, might be won or lost by the people, this possibility being partly determined by the extent to which we all as well act or chose not to. It will however pass and the situation of our country would continue its painful down slide except the strategic intervention of change-seeking forces, through engaging with and in the dynamics of the power struggle within the, is built, organised, forged.
I personally do not care if even Arch-Angel Michael and Lucifer -without the least of blasphemy intended- were to march together distributing leaflets, addressing picket lines, issuing statements, pasting posters, agitating from house-to-house, confronting mobile police if necessary, to liberate Ekiti from the fangs of the predatory, degenerate persons in power presently. But more importantly still; after Ekiti, what next? How many Ekitis must we have for us to move from mere resolutions to walking our talk?
This summarily is at the heart of my position thus far. I do hope the stridency of my voice, even if the contents of the words it utters does not make sense to most, would at least shake us from the lethargy we seem to have reverted to.
Lest we forget, I reiterate my demand, as a bona fide part of the process leading to March 21, being a subscriber on the serve that : all the assigned Rockview Conference working documents be issued, circulated for debate and we set our course on actualizing what was started of rising up to the challenge of a struggle for change in Nigeria.
Thank you
Baba Aye
_____________________________________________________________________________
From: Asaju Tunde Lee
Date: Tuesday, April 28, 2009, 9:48 PM
Dear all,
First of all, let me say a big thank you to you all for keeping faith while some of us are away in far-flung backwaters of our nation ekking out a living.
Let me thank Baba Aye for keeping up and coordinating this fight even from across oceans and climes and others like him who could easily afford to say to hell with the 'struggle' whatever that means and enjoy the relative freedom and peace they have now but who have chosen to be more strident than those of us who live on the shores of hell but have grown accustomed to the heat rather than protest.
Let me also thank Sam Amadi (my dear comrade) for responding to Thomas' diatribes in a manner that is very unusual for Sam (and I mean that complimentarily because Sam could be as hard as a rock when he pleases and yet be as cool as cucumber when the clime dictates.)
Now, what do I have to say. I just want to appeal to us that we should use refined language when we react to other people's views. I see nothing wrong in Sam's position. I am a Christian too and very proud to be a Christian and I see nothing anti-thetical with being a Christian and being (or pretending to be) a revolutionary. After all, Jesus died more than 2000 years ago and his ideas are still the subject of doctoral thesis today - what can be more revolutionary than that.
Now, that someone does not share our religious dent and our seemingly antithetical ideological persuasion does not give that person right to denigrate us. We respect the views of those who are Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Hare Khrisna, Agnostics and Atheists on this forum and so it should be. After all, the society we seek to better is one that is created by God and accommodates humans of different persuasions.
My greatest lesson is always that if you are angry, please don't put your fingers on those keyboards, you may hurt more people than you help and you may ostracise more people than you draw near. Let us not think that we know or act or are better than the other. We all subscribed to this forum freely and if what we want or desire is freedom for all, we should learn to respect the free will of others, even if they are said with a coat of Godliness or Godlessness.
Nigeria is a wonderful country, most of its leaders may be rogues but majority of the ordinary people are the most beautiful people on earth. Many of us are proud of our country and even find the contradictions within it amusing. May we find the heart to speak words that heal and reject the ones that hurt 'unnecessarily' . May we also have the grace to say sorry when we are wrong or when we hurt others, because sticking to our guns is not a sign of strength, it is a sign of weakness.
I take refuge in God against those who will propel their arrows of hate and solace in those who will offer their heart of understanding!
Tunde ASAJU
_____________________________________________________________________________
From: Samuel Amadi
Date: Tuesday, 28 April, 2009, 10:45 AM
Dear Thomas,
I did not want to reply you because your posting sounded like an ego trip of someone who wanted to bash anyone in sight and by so doing feel good about himself. But, I changed my mind and decided to reply you to protect those who may believe your 'useless' posting.
First, you question the 'kind of research' we do in Ken Nnamani center even when you support my claim that Nigeria is not a rogue state (you wrote in ur own words: "I refuse to use the concept of' 'rogue state' as coined by the US"). By now I should be familiar with a special intellectualism in Nigeria today amongst the chattering class that begins and ends by mocking someone's intellectual gravitas. So, where does research and what we do at the Ken Nnamani Center come in? Oh! just to show you know something by mocking someone else? Kudos. For the records, I thank God for his grace that has enabled me to acquire three research degrees (including a doctorate) from Harvard. May be I am the first in the country. I thank God that I was able to attain this honor in record three years and across two Harvard Schools (may be the only in Harvard history). The quality of my research speaks for itself, both in methodology and ideological clarity.
Again, Mr. Judge, how does the fact that I am intellectual supporter of the establishment come into this small posting which content you agree with? Do you know my pedigree? Do you know what I have rejected and what honour I have turned my back on because of faith in righteousness and justice? In case you dont know I have come some way back and have remained consistent with my intellectual and theological groundings. I am proud to be a protegy of Gani Fawehimi, Olisa Agbaokaba, Ken Nnamani. And Adeboye is my pastor. So, I fight the revolutionary war and even as a PHD (I dont know what special annointing that brings), I still shout 'praise the Lord' and I invoke the name of the Lord to protect my country.
My beloved Thomas, I think the problem is that the contradictions in the land and the smoke of battle have beclouded our fine judgment that we don't know how to fight furiously for what we believe and not trample the grassland of the beautiful homestead. To say "Away with the conspirators" like the Roman
Mobs of yesteryears and still say 'God bless Nigeria' in one breath is possible and desirable. Don't forget that I accused the leadership of 'frenzied incompetence and murderous corruption'. Are these the words of a collaborator, my brother. I only say, we are not a rogue state. And I know a little international relations and international law to know a rogue when I see one. Baba Aye, the main combatant in this battle of description has answered more gracefully than you the bystander. You ran into battle without a girdle on ur mind.
Again, I say, let this uprising not bring out the beast in us. My brother, I am with you in the trench. Stop slandering me with your grandstanding and provocative reductionism. By the way, Keynes' immortal words do not speak to me. It speaks to everyone. Ideas influence action. My idea of analytical candor and expressive clarity is why I am responding. In which case Keynes is my witness.
Sam
Dr. Sam Amadi
Director, (Research& Programs)
Ken Nnamani Center for Leadership & Development
Abuja, Nigeria
______________________________________________________________________________
From: Thomas Agbonkpolor
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 12:04:35 AM
Subject: Re: [FOIcoalition] Attn Sam: Ekiti Governorship Bye Election Update & Our HISTORY
Dear Sam,
As someone at the head of a leadership think tank, when you offer the type of analysis you have just done in reply to visceral response of Baba Aye to happenings in Ekiti, one just must be surprised at the type of research emanating from the Ken Nnamani Leadership Centre.
Virtually all the few points you made in your short posting can be faulted. Retired General Peter Ademokhai has just been released by Kidnappers after paying some 20 million naira as ransom. His first statement on regaining freedom is "I thought I was in Somalia, Somalia is a failed State......" . In your estimation, Nigeria is not yet a failed state (I refuse to use the concept of rogue state as coined by the US). So please classify Nigeria in the comity of nations given that Ghana has just concluded a national election adjudged free and fair even by the international community and Nigeria cannot conduct transparent elections in a few local councils..
If the current fight in Ekiti is not between Ekiti people and the rogue Nigerian State, can you please tell us who are the combatants and why the instrument of the State has been brought to bear so violently on hapless Abubakar Momoh & Co. Who were those thugs that battered Abu fighting for? That they are Nigerians or Ekitians cannot detract from the fact of their being tools, yes pawns in the political chess board.
One can go on and on querying the fallacies in your posting. Whenever the Nigerian kleptocrats want to hoodwink, they talk in Jesus name. For a PhD to mimic them so uncritically as you have done in your closing sentence calls into question the role of the intelligentsia in the continued decay in Nigeria. I leave you with the oft quoted statement with which J M Keynes concluded his magnum opus in 1936: Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.
I hope you are not one of Keynes 'academic scribbler' that sustains the present madmen in authority in our dear country.
Fracternally (as Chidi would say)
T
_____________________________________________________________________________
Dear Sam,
Thanx for yours below. Two issues were raised in it, as I perceive it. One, that there are Nigerians on both sides of the divide I pointed out as Nigerians vs the 'rogue state'. Two, that Nigeria is not yet a rogue state.
Of course Franco was Spanish, Pol Pot Cambodian, Pinochet Chilean, Mobutu Zairean, Verword South African and Abacha Nigerian. But then as Malcolm X pointed out, in every nation there are always actually two nations. The nation of the haves vs that of the have nots, the exploiters vs the exploited, the oppressor vs the oppressed, the minority who hold the power of state seemingly as something over and above society as a whole while it is a construct from within that contradiction of two nations on one hand and the 'immense majority' of poor, subjugated, dominated and marginalized -Strange's 'the many losers'- who however are not powerless in that they have number and history on their side, but who must find and fan the emancipatory fires of struggle, of change to come to a realization of their powers and thus lead society as a whole to a higher level.
It was Thatcher, from a neoliberal point mind you, who said 'there is no such thing as society'. But in a sense, she was right! The abstraction of we are all members of the one and same society, we are all Nigerians or Ekiti, actually hides much more than it reveals!
On rogue state, I was very conscious in using that term. The US has used it to characterise states that pose a threat to its global hegemony. The concept of 'failed state' is also innocuously separated from that of 'state failure', why? For ideological reasons geared at pulling wool on the eyes of change-seekers. I would advice you read William Blum's 'The Rogue State: a guide to the world's only super power'. But coming back home, except we insist on internalizing the conceptualization of the US which is itself anything but value free; what roguery could be more from a state than a re-enactment of Adewusi's kill-and-go tactics in a supposed democracy? Electoral roguery, roguish state sanctioned violence (despite all story to the contrary) and now sending in an IGP that like Ehindero is on his way out to unction such roguery in the name of the father in abuja, the son as oni and the spirit of roguery!
I have spent the past five days more in Ekiti expending more on phone calls than I probably ever did in all my stay thus far away from home, feeling out contacts, political, social, from collectives, more personal, I can come only to one conclusion; we might hardly realize how deep the keg of gun powder we seat on in that land is.
I am Ekiti and it pains me to my bones. But even if it were in any other state I would have been constrained to make the analysis I have made even without the depth of information I have presently on things over there.
At the heart of my position is a very simple call: LET US WAKE UP AND NOT REDUCE EITHER THE ON-GOING SAGA OR MARCH 21 TO DISPARATE EPISODES THAT COME AND GO.
We need to tie our theorizing on change with the practical struggles of the peoplr indeed learn from these. PRACTICE IS THE CRITERION FOR TRUTH!
I repeat again with a keen sense of historical responsibility "every onlooker is either a traitor or a coward or both".
This is the time as Murtala put it to 'rethink, to reflect AND TO ACT' as the platform we claim to want to build.....seeking change otherwise is merely masturbatory and can't result in real conception of change.
At stake is both Ekiti (one could add as I did earlier, Nigeria, etc) AND US AS INTELLECTUALS THAT HAVE COME TO THE CONCLUSION OF ORGANIZING TO BRING ABOUT CHANGE IN NIGERIA.
Sincere regards,
Baba Aye
_____________________________________________________________________________
--- On Mon, 4/27/09, Samuel Amadi wrote:
Baba Aye,
Thanks for your usual revolutionary sentiments and clarity. I was enlightened as always by your last posting. But, please note the crisis is not a fight between Ekiti people and the rogue Nigerian state. The people who battered our Abu and other comrades are Nigerians and Ekitians may be. The people who walked together with Abu are Nigerians too.
Again, the Nigerian state is not a rogue state yet in my view. With all the frenzied incompetence and murderous corruption it is yet to decend into a rogue state and will not in Jesus name.
Let not this 'uprising' bring out the 'beast' in us.
Comradely.
Sam
Dr. Sam Amadi
Director, (Research& Programs)
Ken Nnamani Center for Leadership & Development
Abuja, Nigeria
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