Category: Uncategorized

John Cardinal Onaiyekan, Catholic Archbishop of Abuja,  spoke to the Vatican Radio about the mindless slaughter of about 50 innocent students in Yobe early this week by the Boko haram terrorist group.

Onaiyekan, who is currently in Rome for a Peace Conference shared his thoughts about the Boko haram insurgency.  He also expressed his desire for inter-religious dialogue towards the path to peace. The Cardinal  emphasised that:

“As far as dialogue among religions is concerned, in view of peace, I want to say two things.

The first is that there has been a poor historical record of relations between Christians and Muslims. Our religions have been used in the past centuries for wars. It is necessary to say it loud and clear: we are now in a new era. Vatican II already moved in this direction. We thank God for Vatican II, but unfortunately it was a Catholic Council, the…

There is choice.  We can die
from the shame of what is done
to us.  We can wear the names
like letters branded into our skin
and quietly disappear,
become the nothings
they say we are, banished and vanished,
or we can wear our own words.

We can show them
women are not sheep.
Girls are not fruit.
There is no shearing of hair
or reaping a harvest from us.

We learn through breath
the difference between being a victim
and becoming a survivor
is subtle, delicate
before it grows strength:

That shift across the line
of being versus agency
is a thing danced, not learned;
sidestepping guilt and spinning it
back where it belongs
with something simple as a lifted head,
a turn around to shout back
at what is muttered under breath,
or the woman who did not stand in shame, wordless,
but blocked a door shouting for police,

The Academic Staff Union of Universities of Nigeria. ASUU. ASUU is on strike again. Who cares? They are thugs, they are always on strike, nobody seems to know why, except that it involves being paid a boatload of money by their counterparts, those thieves euphemistically called the Nigerian government. ASUU. My contempt for that body of narcissistic thugs knows no bounds. There is really not much one needs to say about how these rogues in academic robes have colluded with any government in power (AGIP) to defraud and rob generations of beautiful children what is their right – a good education. To say ASUU is on strike is to state the obvious, they are nearly always on strike, even when they are at work, they are on strike. Their members want to have sex with every child that walks into their pretend classrooms, when they have satisfied themselves, they pimp their…

Education in Nigeria is in crisis: 10.5 million children are out of school, more than in any other country, and over half of adults in the country are illiterate, a legacy of decades of poor education. In response, the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown, attended an education summit yesterday in Abuja, Nigeria, together with President Goodluck Jonathan, state governors and the education commissioners of all 36 states.

The UN Special Envoy and the policy makers were joined by major education partners such as USAID, Qatar’s Educate a Child, the Global Partnership for Education, and the Global Business Coalition for Education. They were expected to announce significant new financial support for education and discuss how it could be used to build more schools, recruit and train more teachers, and implement new technology.

A similar trip by the UN Special Envoy in July helped put the education emergency in…

For my friend, Uzo Onyemaechi, the Millenium librarian. Biri kwe!

The writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has a lovely piece in Guernica magazine, Why Are You here?. It is a sobering commentary on what passes for education in Nigeria.  Hear Adichie:

“It is not surprising that parents do not want their children to attend university in Nigeria. Many students themselves would leave if they had the opportunity. About ten years ago, I left after almost three years at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, not so much because of the conditions, which were not good, but because I no longer wanted to study medicine. Now, the student complaints are sadly the same—the classes are overcrowded, no books in the library, no computers, no chemicals in the lab, lecturers force students to buy handouts which are just recycled outdated textbooks, incessant lecturer strikes elongate programs, exam schedules are often haphazard. Private universities…

For Cyprian Odiatu Duaka  Ekwensi (1921-2007)

Deep in America’s grinding labor mines, my memories hear my childhood chiming the Angelus. I pause to luxuriate in the coming pleasure of tugging at the camphor smell of mama’s wrapper. The bugler stands, starched khaki clean, on the hill of many wars, horns hollering Taps for a warrior struck one last time by the sokugo. Our dispatch-rider, high on joy, and apeteshie, stands tall on giant Fanta bottles of ogogoro balanced on his Triumph motorcycle. Uniformed myrmidon of the coming darkness, dispatch rider of generations of Africa’s worst despots takes a break from ushering yet another coming of yet another dictator and performing somersaults on the motorcycle of many memories, and confirms the final journey of the warrior, Cyprian Ekwensi. Here in America, we shiver at attention in our blue suits – alien regalia offspring of our ancestors apologizing in alien regalia.

I…

“Look upon your brother’s sorrow – I think of the children, look upon these – look upon your brother’s sorrow, and do not add to it, stay your hand, rebuild the harmony that has been shattered; and all this not by conflict but by encounter! May the noise of weapons cease!”           

Full Text of Pope Francis Address in the Prayer Vigil for For Peace[Vatican, September 07, 2013]

“‘And God saw that it was good’. The biblical account of the beginning of the history of the world and of humanity speaks to us of a God who looks at creation, in a sense contemplating it, and declares: ‘it is good’. This, dear brothers and sisters, allows us to enter into God’s heart and, precisely from within him, to receive his message. We can ask ourselves: what does this message mean? What does it say to…

I just read this paper (see pdf below): “REINTELLECTUALIZATION OF THE DEINTELLECTUALIZED ACADEMIA IN AFRICA: PROCESS, PRODUCT AND PATHWAY” by Professor Joel Babatunde Babalola. It was graciously shared by Dr Noel A. Ihebuzor.

REINTELLECTUALIZATION OF THE DEINTELLECTUALIZED ACADEMIA IN AFRICA by Prof Joel Babalola pdf

Professor Babalola argues that:

[…] the academia in Sub-Saharan Africa has become deintellectualized over the years owing to hostile environmental conditions, depraved resource situation and compromised intellectual processes as well as poverty in the feedback mechanisms. As a way out, a system-approach intellectual revival is proposed to reintellectualize the deintellectualized academia in the continent. To this end, this paper is arguing for a process involving reinvigoration and retooling of non-organic and immature intellectuals who are based in various interacting parts of the knowledge systems in Africa to imbibe and be immersed in the global spirit of intellectualism, thereby catching the intellectual…

Professor Okey C. Iheduru teaches at Arizona State University, in the School of Politics and Global Studies.

Preface: This essay is a compilation of two postings I made beginning 28 August 2013, in which I responded to a discussion on the listserve USA-Africa Dialogue Forum occasioned by a Call for Papers by the editor of the Unilag Journal of Politics. The subject of the heated debate was the propriety of demanding upfront payment from prospective authors by a supposedly peer-reviewed journal. In that intervention, I also promised to do a proper write-up of some of my two-year sabbatical/Fulbright and LEADS Scholar experiences, particularly as it concerns higher education in Nigeria.

I am a full professor of Political Science in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University, Tempe. Given the time constraints I face (especially readjusting to life in America after two years plus the…