Category: Uncategorized

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in the library, no computers, no chemicals in the lab, lecturers force students to buy handouts which are just recycled outdated textbooks, incessant lecturer strikes elongate programs, exam schedules are often haphazard.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…

Dear Love,

I will wait for you till the end of time. You have no idea how strong I am.

X

“….the domination of Nigeria and Africa by the Igbo is only a matter of time.’’ – Charles D. Onyeama

In Chief Femi-Fani Kayode’s (otherwise more popularly known as FFK) asinine and bigoted rant at the Igbos he narrated so many things. As an Igbo, I want to place my rejoinder.

FFK seems to be know a lot of history but he doesn’t know this story, told severally across the River Niger about the confrontation between mammy water and Nnamdi Azikiwe. For the uninformed, Zik of Africa (FFK should note the Africa) and mammy water took out a bet on who will last longest when stuffed in a bottle. Zik took the first turn and went into the bottle. After a little while he signaled to the mermaid that he couldn’t hold his breath again and she opened the bottle. Smiling in anticipation of her impending victory she got ready to…

Please read today’s Kabir Alabi Garba’s interview of Professor Niyi Osundare in the Guardian, (Who Begat Literature, August 9, 2013). Ugh! Just when you think that certain issues have been laid to rest, someone comes along and asks the same questions over and over again. So, Garba asks Osundare about the dust-up regarding Achebe as the Founder of African literature, Achebe’s legacy, and of course, Achebe’s controversial best-seller, There Was A Country, the last book he wrote before he passed away ( Read my thoughts on the book here).

I respect and admire Professor Osundare immensely but the interview does him a great injustice. Our newspapers have invested in mediocrity. There is a reason why the reading culture is dying in Nigeria, these newspapers are not much better than akara wrappers. This interview should have been heavily edited, grammatical challenges make this long rambling interview remarkable…