COMMENTING ON THE ORIGIN OF RAP MUSIC IN THE USA AND ITS ROOTS

COMMENTING ON THE ORIGIN OF RAP MUSIC IN USA as having it roots in Scottish bars and not in AFRICA and Lady Wiyba Bin of Nso Kingdom.

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In Africa of the past and even hitherto Rap Music was like an open window of freedom of speech in a house where such was heavily censured.

We will dispute the above theory as slaves were not allowed to even learn the proper language (Europhone) of the slave masters (Whites), the only book they were grudgingly allowed to own was the Holy Bible. They were forced to keep their distance from their white masters and mistresses who regarded them as animals and were ever suspicious of them. A statement like this one below from Vernon Harcourt, M.P. in 1862 telling you of the relationship of the Negroes and the Whites in some of the cases is no coincidence or work of fiction: "It is provoking that  the Lancashire places should have gone so wrong. I take it to mean nothing else but hatred of the Irish, who like the niggers are most hated where they are best known." (Citing from The Life of Sir William Harcourt by A. G. Gardiner published in 1923 by Constable and Company Ltd. 

There was no open cordial relationship whereby they could be taught poetry, rap and other disciplines. The reasoning was that the language of the Caucasians was like a tool for liberation which if Africans mastered; they were going to use as a platform to stand on to demand their liberty. What most were allowed to master was smattering necessary for taking orders. Therefore to talk of Africans Americans having learned rap from Caucasians of the past without authentications is utterly unfounded and far-fetched. We will be interested in reading those isolated cases. Come to think of it, we have to authenticate our oration with nothing else but scientific facts. There is no question of sensationalized journalese of the type used by false politicians who wants to woo votes from unexposed bucolic folks.

In the past slaves were constantly transferred from one plantation or factory to another and very few were allowed to have steady families that you take for granted today. Slave masters deprived them of their languages (Africaphone) they brought from Africa as a way of breaking them down so that they could not secretly plan a revolts against them. They were raped of their African names and enforced Greco –Judea, Roman and Arabic names that meant nothing to them. However, one thing is clear, run-away slaves maroons kept their African traditions or singing and rapping and would sing their songs and rapped often as a way of transmitting coded messages incomprehensible to their masters and for entertainment. 

Those who could not run away as in those in the southern USA, when given the least time for recess and when away from their hawkish masters who treated them poorly, improvised and reminisced entertainments as back in mother Africa  by rapping. There were stories or poetry committed to memory.

What we adumbrate has nothing to do with fomenting hatred of the type we saw after the shooting by a white police officer of Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri last year (2014).  It is for our records. My family is blue black living in a sea of whites.  Any hatred of the modern whites or their hatred of blacks for their blue black color will take us no where but will create racial problems and heighten our idiocy and naivety. Remember that it was alleged in the days of slavery that one white was equal to eight Africans. (From their travel as exemplified by the photograph below, I may safely, laughing out loudly (lol) state four).  It tells you how low Africans were looked down upon. Was that true? We are looking into history now as African Americans fought hard with blood, sweat and tears to gain equality of races and they are marching forward with the first African American President Elect, Barack Obama who if given a modicum of chance could do phenomenal positive things for all irrespective of their scientific contributions in the world and colors of their skin. 

Comfortable mode of travelling into the interior of Africa After The South and East African Year Book and Guide for 1924.

Destructive past must be shelved so long as we have learned from it. We perceive a bright future, a beacon of hope of all races around one table is in the horizon.With persistent demonstration against deliberate or inadvertent shooting of African Americans, the message of equality and prayers to God to have mercy is loud and clear and one day we will have if we persist imploring amicably as Dr. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi advocated. Only a hardened person will not show remorse when a police man is killed by any person the police man is meant to protect or when a black unarmed African American child is killed by a police man. 

We recall in Great Britain where once upon a time the police was only armed with a whistle, a notebook and a truncheon. With all those alone, Great Britain was able to rule USA, including her empire. Why of a sudden do we believe that we can do better with guns when we had done well before without them?  In those days and as recently as in the 1980s, to strike or fire at a police man was rear and unheard of. If such was done it was considered a travesty and sacrilege and the defaulter was handled accordingly. If  there was an absolute need for shooting, say a mad man causing bodily harm, a special squat trained in the use of fire arms was summoned from the head office. In that case gun accidents were rare and far between. The police man was not and still should not be a bogeyman but a welcoming jolly good fellow that could knock and visit our dwellings at any time to ensure that we were all in peace and not in pieces. 

A police man polices because of us and often we live to tell our tales because of him. By virtue of his work, we should never turn our backs on him or he should never turn his back on us or some of our leaders.

Policemen in the capital city of Great Britain , London. Black and White British Police officers are no longer rare but they are there as a reflection of the multiracial new Britain.

Without being carried away by the interminable racist debacle often of our making,  prior to the blossoming of raps of recent in the West, rap music was and had been in Africa since time immemorial. Those readers who have done ethnomusicology will know that African history was essentially oral tradition. One of the ways to pass information from one generation to the next was via raps and sometimes folklore narration. It was therefore passed with ease and easily recapitulated by listeners since most of the composers injected in them natural rhyming schemes that were easily learned. We will see below that the Scots were no strangers to the Moors (Maurists), Africans who were employed in Scotland and even England to work in the courts of the earls, lords and royalties and would rap to entertain them.

Those of you from Nso Kingdom in Western Africa will recall the remarkable heroine, Lady Wiyba Bin. She was a royal composer, singer and rapper. Apart from that she was the first known single parent in that Kingdom. She decided that she would not marry as was in vogue and that was considered unique and rebellious. Apart from that Lady Bin never ever entered the four walls of a Western class room and was not fluent in English till she left this earth in the 1990s. She had never heard of American raps, yet she had been rapping since the fifties in her native Kingdom when Americans were exporting a different kind of music to Africa, country, classical and rock-and-roll music. Do you sincerely believe that she learned her marvelous chants and rapping from the Scottish bars in Scotland and translated into her vernacular, Lamnso? Rumors circulated by some readers who always want to get credit for all that sold, that rap started by the Scots in their bars. Can an Nsonite really buy this? If it did, from our allusion, the Scots learned from the Maurs who were Africans. Then they had better dwelt into its history rather than falsify it. 

You will recall that traditional African set up was not book-learned; even hitherto one way of passing information is by word of mouth. That is why the cell phone business that is not up to ten years old is perhaps the fastest growing industry after brewery and agriculture in that continent. When I look at the globe after publishing my articles, they are read in all corners of the world and not in Africa. What we have seen that Africans are perhaps innately oral and not book learned manifest itself. Or is it because they cannot afford Internet facilities? That is a different topic. 

For those of you who understand Lingala spoken in central Africa, Nso, Tiv, Hausa in North Nigeria and Niger, Yoruba, Igbo, and Shona, languages some colonialists derogatorily called dialects, griots (street singers) who sang the praises of very important personalities (VIPS), and criticize certain developments in the communities used raps in those languages. They covered their ears as they rapped current affairs, epic stories and so on. Where the local authorities did something that was disputed, elderly women rapped in the public to demonstrate their disapproval. There were no Wall Street Journal, The Times, Telegraph, Evening Standard of the Economist. It will be recalled that sporadic or organized demonstration you have in North America and other democratic states was out of question. Rap became a natural way of voicing out grievances. In a good number of autocratic states in Africa, the only voices trumpeting injustice are those of the musicians who are essentially rappers. Journalists are locked up, sent into exile or destroyed. In some cases musicians are the only ones who dare and many pay for it heavily be being incarcerated in dungeons by the government of the day. 

Having made these observations, I am not insinuating that there were never isolated demonstrations of Western type. Where it was absolutely necessary, people gathered and send an emissary to their regulatory societies in their capital cities and thus to the authorities of their kingdoms. There are cases of women marching in their birthday suits for miles to report maltreatment by men or certain rules that contradicted their traditional values they had guarded for centuries. Today, some dictators met these marches with brutal forces, shooting and rap is still the only media to report injustice, human rights.

With rapping one had all the freedom to criticize, suggested solutions and even obloquy and one was never prosecuted. In Africa Rap Music was like an open window of freedom of speech in a house where such was heavily censured or not permitted. Some of this was before Europeans came to Africa with evil or good intentions, slave trade and colonialism. Rap is still very strong in the traditional Africa set ups as some governments fight for their survival and not those of its people. Their governments are not for the people, therefore they are ever awry. They have to be by the people. 

We challenge readers to visit central Africa, western and the Horn of Africa with a tape to listing to traditional rap of those who are not educated in the Western sense of education accompanied by maddening drumming. Their sort of rapping is unique and you are going to connect with the rap as in down town clubs in Chicago, LA, NY, Georgia, Philadelphia, New Orleans, South London, Paris, etc. and in Europe. Rap is not confined to Africa, Europe and North America where there are social upheavals. It is now common in other Asian countries. Watch Bollywood, Indian films and you will have a strong influence from rappers from Africa and USA. You will know that Africans were also exported in the past to India and other SE Asian countries. They carried along their cultures synonymous to what you have in North America. 

To reiterate, it should be stated that the Scots learned from the Maurs (Africans) who were taken to Scotland to serve the gentries, lords, kings and queens before the dreadful episode in human history of Africa slave trade ever started. (For those interested readers who want to be in terms with me, I would suggest they read the biography of Francis Drake, the official pirate of Queen Elizabeth I.) These Maurs sometimes written Moors were already brought in to the UK, particularly by the Scottish sailors before the dreadful Queen Elizabeth I started her ban on miscegenation and stop the importation of Africans into the UK by falsely claiming that Africans who were essentially domestics and musicians were to pollute and debase the purity of the Anglo-Saxons. Was that true? That is a different story but I have brought this to put a period when Africans were respected as excellent musicians in Scotland and the Scots might have copied from these Maurs (Africans) rapping techniques. I am not saying that there were no poetry, lyricists from Scotland. The English poetry is enriched by Scottish writers. 

A typical Maur or Moor. This was an elite from today's region of Senegal or Mauritania as found in the national Gallery UK. He wrote and rapped.  His garb as in this portrait is still donned by natives of this region.

If one is linking the passing of rap by the Scots it had to be disputed for the following facts: If the Scots who immigrated to the USA and became slavers might have passed rapping to their slaves! Again that is disputed for some of the reasons we earlier underlined. As earlier said, we doubt this for “superior slave owners” were not even allowed to teach the slaves music or any other knowledge that would make them be respectable and get out of their alleged animalistic realm. For those still doubting this, see the outline on the breaking down of a slave by Willie Lynch in H.J. Harris book: IS AMERICA RACIST? 2008. Also, Africans were used to epic poetry as in Francis Babe's rendering: AFRICAN MUSIC: A PEOPLE'S ART (1975).

Many persons had even been trying to dispute the fact that African Americans did not teach European Caucasians rock and roll. The fact is that if African Americans were not there, there would not have been any rock and roll that we take its proliferation now for granted. The white music was essentially country music and classical  stuff that is often associated with the slaves from Africa who ended up in Persia that later on spread to Europe. That is a different story. Many a great Caucasians musicians as Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, …do admit that they are indebted to Africans for the music they play, introduced in North America by African Americans, descendants of erstwhile African slaves. 

We should have peace at home

And all things would go right

If those who made the quarrels

Were the only ones to fight.

If rock-and-roll is innately African, why would you doubt that rap is not inherently African or came from Africa? Europeans wrote plays, poetry and recite poetry and acted plays.  Old literate as we have from Chaucer, Jonathan Swift, William Shakespeare, etc, support these facts, and then it was not a way of life as in Africa that was essentially not book-learned as in European communities where many noted events and incidents by committing them into memory. We do not suggest here that whites did not commit most of the events into memory. The above rhyming scheme was song in England and one did not need to write it before singing it so are plenty of songs football revelers chant when maddened by football excitement.  

You will remember that printed writing as we know today blossomed with the invention of what was then known as artificial writing by Johann Gutenberg (1394-1468). All had to be painstakingly written by calligraphers and not all could afford any book published in that format. Not many could afford to have governors to teach them and many were illiterates and had to memorize certain events or interesting poems and songs. Thus many relied on words of mouth for communication as in Africa too. This goes to support the fact that poetry and rapping were also born locally and not necessarily imported or copied from other communities.  Even when there was writing as in the days of Prime Minister Wilson Churchill (the 1930s-40s), he preferred to write his speeches way in advance of when they were be delivered in the House of Commons, cram them before reciting them. Many gave him credit for being a good orator but they did not know his trick of writing and cramming all to recite as if reading from a text book. He was usually caught off guard, with his pants down when asked to give extemporaneous speeches. 

The truth is that many a Caucasians have invented lots of things (so did many an Africans and other races too) and we give them credit for these achievements. These are undisputed facts. When it comes to rapping as rapped by African Americans it originated from Mother Africa. Let no one not try to take away this from Africans by uplifting spurious underpinnings. Watch out for those as Dr. J. Watson who in 2008 told lies to feel good when with his neurosis and nervousness as once stated by Adolf Hitlers without a shred of evidence, that the IQ of whites was higher than that of Africans and their descendants and other non-blue-eyed peoples. That is a different story that was hotly debated and his allegation refuted and filed. Whatever the case, let no one of whatever color try to bamboozle Africans in this century by falsely putting them down as was in the past without scientific proofs or concrete evidence. Scientifically, all human being are the same and there is no question of one being superior to the other. If the first man created or evolved, call it what you like in Africa, on whose dais would you stand on to state that the first tradition as rap came from outside Africans and not from Africans? Man is one and what an aborigine can do in Australia can be done by a Russian. There should be no doubt but there are certain things and Icelander will do better because of his unique climatic and geographical factors. I have admitted other inventions or traditions but when it comes to music and a plethora of musical instruments, no matter how “primitive”, a good number of them originated from Africa.

WHY THE RAGTAG ARMY OF BOKO HARAM REMAINS INDOMITABLE

Irrespective of the fact that Boko Haram military corps is badly trained and ill-equipped, they still ransack villages and towns at will in the northeastern part of Nigeria, in the region that was formerly the northernmost British Cameroons. At the rate of their expansion, it is a matter of time before we are opening embassies in Maiduguri, a major town in northeast Nigeria Boko Haram elements are eyeing. 

I am thinking aloud in sympathy with some of the reasons Amnim Abiodun KOMOLAFE has given below as to why Boko Haram elements are still soldering on at will. Here are some of the the reasons:

• The lack of infrastructure others say. It begs a question. Does a well-trained army need tarred roads to drive their luxury vehicles on to get their enemy?
• Cooperation of the local who are promised gold and silver in the name of Allah in case the war will be won by Boko Haram
• The ruthlessness of their operation. They kill everything on their wake
• The tacit and implicit cooperation of retired generals mostly from the Islamic Northern Nigeria. They have no remorse destroying people as lately in Baka, west of Lake Chad of 2000 or more civilians and the using of innocent children as human bombs to destroy their kinds. 
• Ability to build arms and bombs at home from scraps metals 
• Sympathy of the like as Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab and individuals who sincerely believe that they are doing the work of Allah and that the creation of a caliphate will be food for the newly created Islamic state. Unconfirmed master plan reveals that their caliphate will expand  from the Sudan, in the east, traverse to Chad, Northern Central African Republic; all of what used to be called Adamawa in northern Cameroon, all of Northern Nigeria, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso  and terminate in the westernmost coast of Western African, that is in Senegal and Mauritanian. That is a far fetched ambition of disillusioned group of people. If that were to be allowed, they would bypass that of ISIS in the crumbling Arab Middle East. 
• If Nigerians died in drove during the Nigerian-Biafran war (1967-1972) to keep Nigeria one and Boko Haram is out to divide it in 2015 for Islamic religious reasons, hate of Western type of Education, democracy, as we have seen the elements of ISIS carrying on mayhem in Paris and Nigerians are shying away, we are asking now what was the essence of fighting the Igbos who declared the Republic of Biafra?
• Occasionally some Nigerians burst out that Nigeria is a conglomerate pretending to be a country. Of course, their citizens have their allegiance with their tribes first before their country.  In which case there is no patriotism. Many still view Nigeria as a British creation for its use and that usefulness had long gone.  So what do they want? How could you build a unity government on fragments that cannot be attached? 
• Today, the Igbo man is never free in Northern Nigeria for he is ever looked upon by a good number of Hausas as a pagan. It is not by virtue of him being born an Igbo, it is because he is a Christian. Christianity came to his land first. Why should he be victimized for this? Does he hate a Hausa or Yoruba for his religious belief? No. Is it not as idiotic as some persons are persecuted by others because of the color of their skin? Because they are born Jews, black or white in rare cases in the later?
• The Hausa or Fulani man who hates other Nigerians for not being Islam.  For this spurious reason  he does not know that Africans do and still have their religions and that Islam that came to befuddle them usurped their traditional values and religions. They had relied upon it for the last 5000 years. Islam with its barbaric elements is just a new comer as Christianity and others in Africa. Africans are being senseless to fight one another because of their respective beliefs. Westernization often criticized by some disgruntled Africans had brought phenomenal development in Africa for the Good of Africans and to start castigating it to the extent of killing one another is preposterous. Africans have to welcome wholeheartedly Westernization or perish or expect another recolonization. 

  

  Main Boko Haram base in northeastern Nigeria, Lake Chad Basin. The countries on the sketch map are members of the Lake Chad Basin Commission founded in 1964.

Where do Boko Haram get their food, armaments, intelligence and other supplies? If the Lake Chad Basin Commission is serious, Boko Haram will go in a matter of months. There could be their stranglehold and blocking of all routes in and out of their enclave and they will soon flay a white flag. The area is still porous for reasons we have seen.  Some of us will remember that in 1942 the Allied were able to defeat the Germans in North Africa because their supply route was cut and Field Marshall Rommel the German North African commander let his General  von Thoma commander of the African Corps to surrender to Lt. General Bernard Montgomery. Adolf Hitler had asked for the outcome of the battle of Al Alamein in Egypt to be "death or victory." That was a strong order for a man who was not on the field and who had been on a win-win situation since the beginning of the Second World War, 1939. We guess that is the motto of Boko Haram, victory or death. Therefore if Nigeria or the Lake Chad Basin Commission are sitting to allow the amber to quench by itself they may be in for surprises. 

The addendum by an officer in the Nigerian Army adds to some weight to what is preventing the Nigerian battalions from flushing out Boko Haram and their sympathizers from their enclave in the northeast of Nigeria as shown on the sketch map above. 

As soldierly as Nigerians forces look, what is hampering them is divided loyalties. A northern Hausa soldier who points his armored vehicle and artillery on what he sees as a ragtag Boko Haram army suddenly sees through his binoculars that he is aiming at his twin brother. You now can see why a country of 160 million is unable to raise an army that can crush Boko Haram. For Nigerians to cry wolf and expect Westerners to march as in France yesterday (Sunday 11 Jan. 2015) when ISIS jihadists, sadly being first generation of Africa immigrants in France who butchered 17 innocent persons is unprecedented. 

Europeans expect Africans to run their show. The right time was when Boko Haram abducted the school girls from Chibok. Africans still want to play the game of naivety. By stating that Europeans did not organize a similar three-million march in Paris is discrimination of Africans, makes one to wonder whether Africans states are independent or still attached to the apron strings of their erstwhile colonial masters?  Ideally, it should be the place of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) made up of Chad, Cameroun, Niger and Nigeria founded in 1964, to jointly control the natural resources in the Lake Chad Basin, to be responsible for keeping Boko Haram at bay.  

The present European generation openly state that colonization was evil and we do not see them coming to rescue an apparent giant of a country like Nigeria. If that were to happen today as it did during the Biafra-Nigeria war of retribution, Britain must have failed in giving Nigeria its political independence. When African states keep on running back to their former colonial masters with particular reference to ex-French countries in Africa, what are they going to present to the world that they could do single-handedly to improve their lots? When it comes to defense, economic planning, education, nomination of ministers, etc, they still want the say of the French authorities. Do they still believe that they are French colonies? Could any African who can ratiocinate actually glamorize colonialism?  Do the French not get tired and are those African heads of states not envious and ashamed of essaying to be lotus eaters? 

Why we can't defeat Boko Haram – Army Commander writes explosive letter to Jonathan

In a desperate letter to President Goodluck Jonathan and Senate President David Mark leaked to SR by an insider, a Commanding Officer stationed in Nigeria's northeast has detailed several troubling issues that are plaguing the troops combating Islamist terror group Boko Haram in the region.

The officer stated that massive corruption, lack of resources and troops motivation has militated against the quest for a successful campaign to end Boko Haram's deadly reign of terror in the land.

The top military officer's expose which he claims would lead to a threat to his life forewarns that if his pleas continue to be ignored by President Goodluck Jonathan, both the Nigerian Army and the country will soon crumble under the insurgency.

His clear warning: "If all issues raised in this letter are not urgently addressed, the Nigerian Army will soon be history and by implication there will be no country called Nigeria," the officer gravely states. "No country without a strong army will survive."

Below is the full text of the Commanding Officer's letter addressed to President Jonathan:

PLEASE MR PRESIDENT SAVE THE MILITARY AND NIGERIA FROM COLLAPSING

1. Sir, I am constrain to write you this letter which I consider it a matter of more than great importance for me to inform you and put to record issues that are happening in the North East (Operation Zaman Lafiya). I choose this medium to write you this open letter because I have written similar letter but no action was taking which I believe some forces have blocked it are now after my life. Sir I have served in 7 Division as staff officer and presently I am the commanding officer of 103Bn in the field. My combined wealth of experience as a staff officer and now commanding officer are the disturbing fact that necessitated me to write you this letter. While as a staff officer, I was among those who believed that the commanders in the field are not doing well. But presently, as a commander in the field, I found out that it is not the fault of any commander that the defeat of the so called BOKO HARAM (BH) has not been achieved.

2. First and foremost sir, the Nigerian Army is poorly equipped in the North East, if all the battalions are well-equipped as required; it will not take the Army more than two weeks to flush out the BH. Presently there are four units in my location here in KONDUGA including 21 Armoured Brigade HQ. If all the units are provided with all their requirements, we can advance and flush out BH out of North East. Mr. President sir, the Nigerian Army is well-trained and capable of defending our nation. It has demonstrated the capacity to even successfully enforce peace in other nations. Why not in our own country Nigeria?

3. The fact about NE operation is that we are poorly equipped, understaffed, high corruption from Army Headquarters down to battalion level. Commanders see it as opportunity to make money. My predecessor has complained of the same problem. Instead of ASA addressing the issue raised by him, the army authorities decided to Court Martialled him. All the units in NE are understaffed, but on payroll their strength are complete just to collect more allowances than what each unit is supposed to. The commanders see it as a personal money making venture rather than taking care of men and equipment. This ugly trend led to loss of many officers and soldiers and thereby having adverse effect on the moral (sic) of troops. Majority of soldiers in the operation area wear mufti (civil cloths) under their military uniforms in case there is an attack and the troops cannot withstand the BH, they found it easy to disguise as civilians to enable them escape. This is not the traditional practice in the NA. Though it is lack of adequate equipment and poor administration from the higher authority that resulted to this ugly trend by our troops

4. Sir, another bad and unprofessional act is that soldiers don’t take to orders from their superior officers because they have lost confidence/trust from them. The case of former General Officer Commanding 7 Division Major General A. Mohammed is enough evidence to show that all is not well in the Nigerian Army. It will interest you to note that worse cases has been recorded before that of the former GOC and more are still happening, but nobody is ready to investigate the root cause of problems facing the troops in the field.

5. This brings me to a recent occurrence which is my main purpose of writing this letter. As I mentioned earlier, due to the failure of the authority to address issues that I made mentioned, when a unit is attacked and overran by the BH not because the soldiers are unable to fight, but lack of weapons, ammunition and communications equipment, the soldiers on many occasions will ran away, and a commander cannot stand and fight alone as a result of this. Presently seventy percent of commanders in the NE are facing Court Martial due to the reasons mentioned. We the commanding officers are very worried over this development. This is because we many soon find our self as victims of this maladministration from our higher authorities.

6. There is no sincerity in this operation; this is because the present acting GOC has never visited any location outside Maiduguri town not to talk of principal staff officers in Army Headquarters or even the COAS. But we keep on hearing all sorts of lies that Generals are leading the fight against BH. These are facts that can be confirmed from officers and soldiers in this operation including those in the 7 Division Headquarters. The GOC is so afraid that even with the Divisional Headquarters; he doesn’t go out and always locked himself inside his office. Infact it is a common knowledge among officers and soldiers in this operation that the acting GOC is here to make his money and earn his promotion to the detriment of the operation. The completion of his mansion at No 8 Gwamna Road in Kaduna which the GOC ignorantly disclosed that when he completed it, will be among the best houses in Kaduna, has turned to be a subject of discussion among troops.

7. The former 21 Armored Brigade commander is facing Court Martial today because the acting GOC does not want to see him and his garrision in Maiduguri town simply because of the huge monthly allocations from the Borno State government to the brigade garrision. He wanted to be collecting his money by using 7 Div Garrison, but in reality 7 Div Garrision does not have troops to claim such money. It is worthy to note that the GOC received 33,000 litres of AGO and PMS each, 600 bags of rice monthly from Borno State government. All these items are diverted for his personal use.

8. Recently the newly appointed 21 Brigade commander lead 3 units to flush out the BH, that operation was successful, almost 300 BH were killed, weapons and vehicles were recovered from them, in the process the troops exhausted their ammunition from the Div, the GOC simply replied that there was no ammunition this made all the troops to withdraw back to KONDUGA.

9. Presently more than 3000 officers and soldiers are either killed in action, deserted, captured as POW or on AWOL. But due to lack of proper administration the army directed that their salary should be stopped. This affect the families of those that are either genuinely killed in action or captured as Prisoners of War. It has also affected some of the troops that are still participating in this operation.

10. Mr. President sir, if all issues raised in this letter are not urgently address, the Nigerian Army will soon be history and by implication there will be no country called Nigeria. No country without strong army will survive. I decided to write you this letter because the life of officers and soldiers trusted in my care are no longer save. My life is also at the stake because the NA authority as usual will say I have communicated directly to you as the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and may sanction me. As a citizen of this country and a commander in the operational area, with all the points I have mentioned in this letter, it is clearly that the Military authorities have failed the country, as such they should be held liable for their misdeeds.

I have consulted seasonal constitutional lawyers if writing you this letter will be an offence, but they said it is my constitutional right to inform the C in C about what is happening in the NE and within the military which if not address will affect the survival of Nigeria.

(Source: OluFamous) 2014.


Second Revelation appended for your review:

Al Qaeda Linked Billionaires Fund Buhari’s Campaign – By Lloyd Ukwu

Posted by adminArticles, Columnists, Lloyd Ukwu, Muhammadu Buhari (1983-85), NNP Columnists, PresidencyThursday, March 12th, 2015

By Lloyd Ukwu | Port- Harcourt | March 12, 2015 - The All Progressive Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Mohammadu Buhari recently returned from a visit to London. He went to London for a medical treatment. The grueling presidential campaign had taken a toll on the ailing Septuagenarian and he desperately needed medical attention. His appearance, while in London, at the Chatham House was merely a smokescreen; it dissembled the object of the visit: medical treatment. Although, the APC presented his London visit as a “working visit”, he failed to attend most of the programs organized as part of his “working visit”. His Chatham House appearance allowed the APC an opportunity to sell the Buhari presidential candidacy to the world, and especially, the United Kingdom. At the Chatham House, he presented a paper titled “Prospects for Democratic Consolidation in Africa: Nigeria’s Transition”.
The Chatham House hype belied the outrageous cost of that public relations outing for the APC. It cost the APC about N5 billion. The money was for the payments for the speaking engagement, numerous foreign consultants, air tickets for the huge APC delegation (including a contingent of governors), the purchase and renting of vehicles, hotel bills and other logistics.
Unknown to many, is that the London visit also allowed Buhari the opportunity to source funds from a number of Arab donors. Despite repeated denial by General Muhammadu Buhari and the APC of being sponsored by Arab countries and businessmen, intelligent sources revealed that Mr. Buhari made contacts with at least two Saudi billionaires with links to the Al Qaeda terrorist group. He solicited and received their financial support for his presidential campaign.
That Buhari is seeking financial help from Arab billionaires is fathomable. There are indications that some of his erstwhile financial backers are now withholding their funding from his political quest. Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State, an APC stalwart, recently made it clear that he cannot continue to fund the Buhari campaign because he needs money to pay state government employees. Another major financier of the Buhari campaign, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, is disenchanted with the APC. Consequently, he is hobnobbing with the ruling party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). And once provided a soft landing, he will readily return to the PDP. He has since seized to be a financial supporter of the Buhari candidacy.
Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State was one of the most important financiers of the APC presidential candidate. Notorious for his flippancy and reckless remarks, he repeatedly embarrassed the APC with his unguarded statements. In one of his brazen remarks, he said that Nigerian soldiers fighting the Boko Haram insurgency can justifiably disobey orders from their commanders. Legal experts considered his statement treasonable because Section 44 of the Criminal Code provides that: Any person who attempts to (a) seduce any member of the armed forces of Nigeria from his duty and allegiance; or (b) to incite any such persons to commit an act of mutiny is guilty of a felony, and is liable to imprisonment for life. The party tried to rein in his glibness. Piqued by his party’s remonstration, Amaechi is sulking, and in retaliation against the party, is holding back funds from the Buhari campaign.
With the once bloated coffers of the Buhari Presidential Campaign drying up, Buhari is in a desperate need of money. As such, he is reaching out to Arab donors for money. The sourcing of money by Buhari from Saudi businessmen with links to global terrorist groups is illegal. The Nigerian electoral act prohibits political candidates from raising foreign money and /or taking money from foreign donors. Yet, in his characteristic disdain for the constitution and national laws, Buhari went with cap in hand to London, begging money from fundamentalist Saudi Arabian billionaires with ties to both Al Qaeda and ISIS. It is important to note that Buhari, his Saudi sponsors and the leadership of both ISIS and Al Qaeda are all fundamentalist Sunni Moslems.
Buhari’s ties to terrorist group, Boko Haram (with its enduring ties to Al Qaeda) that has lately declared its affiliation with ISIS have never been in doubt. For an earlier proposed negotiation between the terrorist group and the Nigerian government in Saudi Arabia, the Boko Haram chose him as its representative. He once proposed a general amnesty, financial rewards, jobs and political appointments for Boko Haram terrorists. Before he started feigning the image of a national, unifying figure and trustworthy presidential candidate, he was critical of the Nigerian army for killing Boko Haram members and his supporters celebrated Boko Haram attack on Nigerian soldiers.
Lloyd Ukwu, a lawyer writes from Port Harcourt.
lawgroupinternational@gmail.com
0802 317 4444

HOW FAR SHOULD WE GO WHEN SELECTING, ADOPTING AND ADAPTING WESTERN EDUCATIONAL SYLLABI FOR OUR SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES? Commentary.

We do not need a Niagara of heartfelt words or million dollar ones to tell you that you are wrong when you take certain decisions to digress from the norm for your political or philosophical gains that are ephemeral. An African aphorism goes that if you do not accompany a neighbor to their farm you have to attend to yours. What happens when you do not have yours? You will be bound to seal your mouth when capable farmers are discussing burning farming issues. We do certain things in compliance with our jurisdictions or beliefs but we tend to forget that the authors who propounded them were for their cohorts of their era. Applying some of  them today verbatim with Teutonic or Spartan rigidity would appear like forcing square pegs into round holes. They put us at disadvantaged positions in our apparently homogenized and harmonious world of today. They need to be revamped for the contemporary users as they are already démodé. We assume or strive towards monoculture in our world and that is awry. Some intelligentsia tend to ignore the harm this is inflicting on minorities or those whose cultures cannot raise their heads above the sea-level to glimpse at the approaching yardarm. Oftentimes the values of these minorities are eroded and they come in stack naked in their birthday suits as go-go dancers who strip to entertain muzzy men after which they are hollow and are looked down upon as a horde of ner’-do-wells who cannot offer anything beneficial under normal circumstances.

Far from it! Those danseuses are not vacant. In their natural world they are queens and divine but when we drag them into ours they are found wanting not because they are born that way but because they have to adopt and adapt to our ways. Whatever we conceive them to be; in some special cases we have to adapt if not we are sent into oblivion. We will see below where there is that need to learn others’ values, let us call it knowledge or wisdom that might not have emanated from our original homes and has nothing to do with our philosophy then and in the future. However with time they might be beneficial. When welcoming or supplanting them with ours, care must be taken not to throw away the bathwater and the baby.

We find ourselves in some climatic regions that are different from what we have at our homes. The only way to be comfortable is to adopt and adapt if not we live in isolation and banish ourselves. When it comes to health as having money, many of us could do the impossible to have them: We have seen the crippled walk stalwartly, the blind seeing and mermaids turning into mermen and vice versa just to get what they want.  We are going to substantiate with the treatment of certain diseases. There are some that are confined in certain climatic regions because the climatic factors there are ideal for the growth of certain bacteria or vectors of those harmful bacteria. In that case the doctors or scientists of those regions, though not educated to our expected standards are more than qualified to handle special diseases than apothecaries in those regions where they are not inherently their homes.

A Caucasian Quebecker who was working in Gabon in Central Africa died from malaria he contacted while working over there. The locals some of you still call natives were used to it and he could have been cured in less than two weeks. Instead, he got agitated and bore in his mind that he was not to be treated efficiently in Gabon. His immediate desire was to be evacuated. Evacuated he was. On reaching Quebec his home town in Canada, he was rushed to a hospital and the local doctors who were not used to treating malaria had to take samples, fluid specimens from his body to ship to laboratories away where malarial microbes were analysed. By the time all the tests were done and results returned to the doctors the malarial microbes had spread in him enormously as those of the most dreaded Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). By the time drugs were ordered to be administered, this man went into coma and eventually died.

What happens when malarial patients show up at any tropical hospital? Their temperatures are taken and if it is above certain Celsius, his or her blood is examined not in the laboratory. How? His eye lids are simply opened by a nurse and the amount or red blood corpuscles or color tells him or her that the patient has contacted malaria. The patient is immediately treated for malaria with its drugs without necessarily waiting for laboratory results. In this way death from malaria are minimized. Thence the chances of anyone dying from malaria once it is detected at its early stage of development are slim. It goes to reason that if our Quebecer had been allowed to be treated in any hospital in Gabon he would not have died. Many North Americans on secondment in the tropics are efficiently treated this way in Africa and return home after their ordeals to tell their tales..

However the previous allusion is not our cardinal point of discussion. It is our insinuation that sources of knowledge are not to be minimized or prejudiced. Eventually all are found to be beneficial not necessarily because they could not be applicable in the regions where they are not required. In some North American classification of languages, they often ignore African languages which they minimize by calling them dialects. When it comes to some vital communication, a modicum of these dialects could mean a matter of life and death to field scientists and even others for intelligence gathering.  It tells us that it would be beneficial for Russians, North Americans and Europeans to study malaria and its repercussion not necessarily because they would one day have conditions favorable for the spread of anopheles mosquitoes but because they could have their citizens working in the tropics where assorted malaria are prevalent. They could be there for visits, military maneuvers as during the Vietnamese War with America (1959-1975), work or for other emergency contingencies. As such they could be exposed to malarial parasites as any other inhabitant of the tropics. Their foreknowledge would be beneficial.

Therefore should we be bothered teaching out students tropical medicine, geography, history or any other sciences or knowledge that is generally beneficial to those living under tropical conditions? It will be prudent to teach all subjects that may be more beneficial to people far away from us than to discriminate on the assumption that we would one day not visit those regions or have nothing to do with them since we were not a megalomaniac colonial master with colonies around the world or having future colonization ambition.

It is a fact that there are countries in Africa that have taken away the teaching of glaciology (glacier and glaciation) from their syllabi as being immaterial. Is it? It is not only glaciology but they have taken away histories of other European, American and Asian countries from their syllabi. The irony is that they teach Chinese, American English, and English, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese and other European languages. How do you draw a rigid boundary between sciences and dictate with rationales that others should not be studied as they have no positive influence on the progress of your countries? So when you see Boko Haram and all those repulsive men associated with a philosophy called Mohammedanism barring the teaching of Western type of education you have a feeling that they are short sighted, if not deranged. Here we have some third world states rejecting their bucketful of multitude of economic, social and other panacea for their vistas of woes.

We will tell them a story that will make them wonder and think if at all they could. There are ever some jokes of a ‘Swiss navy’. The reasoning is that Switzerland is landlocked and needs no navy as Great Britain, Canada, America, Brazil, South Africa or Malaysia where they have access to the seas. It does not hold as Swiss interest is not only confined within its borders. If their interests are attacked, in say Indonesia, the only solution would have to be using their frigates to fight as no other nation state is going to relinquish theirs when there are eminent treats of wars.

Furthermore we have another case where many Europeans even ethnographers casually ignored an African script for being insignificant as many still look at some African languages as moribund and not worthy of being studied. You will be surprised to find out that many learn Japanese and would never touch Hausa whose native speakers are numerically more than those who speak Japanese. Why won’t they study Hausa bakwai? They put financial remuneration to be derived from such studies above all. If there is none in the study of Hausa it is dropped. Are they following the right path?

We will proceed with another illustration, script that gainsays motive for others studying your language. The language script of interest here is that of the Vai in the Ebola riven Liberia of today. This is often compared with Bamum script in Cameroun Republique, Africa (see the plate below). These rank among the few scripts that Africans had used comparable to well-known ones as Arabic, Roman, Russian, Hindi, and Greek scripts.

Sample of Ba-Mum script, a ka uku mfe mfe. Route map from the the capital to the sovereign's estate in 1909. Primitive this script may look but it is a gem of a genius. (c) Viban Viban NGO. 2014.

The Allied Forces during the Second World War had ignored the study of Vai. The French instead imprisoned Chief Njoya of Bamum who invited the script, aka u ku mfe mfe for being recalcitrant after having learned nothing from it. The Germans who were the first colonial masters of Kamerun in 1884  who stumble on it in 1909 started learning it before being chased out when they were defeated there in 1915 by the Allied Forces. It might have been primitive to other Europeans but the primitive Vai the Germans learned gave the Germans a relative advantage over the Allied Forces during the outbreak of the Second World War, 1939-1945. While others were looking at Vai script in askance, the German Government had sent specialists who mastered it avariciously. Hitler’s navy was aware of the fact that their cousins had also mastered German and could intercept coded messages sent to their submarines, and war frigates in the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. With this knowledge they sent information around that was intercepted by Americans, British, and the French but they were Greek to them.  

The Germans went on that way and were able to inflict untold mayhem to the Allied troops. They torpedoed, lay mines and sank ships in places where they were least expected and could slip through the Allied ambuscades with ease.  We are not talking of the damage of the Soames and above all Gallipoli the Turks inflicted on the British navy during the First World War. The Germans were way ahead of the rest of their cousins and had previewed the progress of the Second World War. Before the Allied could discover that an African script was being used for communication, the damages had been done and what could have been curtailed at its bud was deadly spiraling out of control.

Why are we concerned with the alluded example? It is to demonstrate that no knowledge is useless. Come to think of it, there are few Americans who know of the Kumbo Blue Plateau reputed to having most probably the best climate in the world where spring conditions in North America are replicated as in no other place on earth year in year out. The point is that most American generically subsumes Africa under terra incognita for spurious reasons as Ebola, and other diseases. This ignorance is accentuated by charities that pay hefty sums to advertise Africans on Western televisions and other media by using skeletal kwashiorkor ridden sea of Africans children to engender sympathy and get money for their projects.  Additionally, pharmacies who want to sell their drugs and often tell them if they had been to countries or a country where there are fungi or infectious tropical diseases. The picture of the tropic is like those of the 16^th to the 19^th century when man had not discovered bacteria and diseases and sicknesses were attributed to witchcraft that bring the hearts to the mouths of most rank and file North Americans.  It is all wrong for those who are interested as modern colonialists as the Chinese and Indians quietly come and even settle to exploit. Europeans and Americans who started and even carved out colonies have to reason fast if not they may one day have not a trading inch in the vast Sahara and parched Namibian Desert not to mention the tropical jungle of Central and Western Africa.

There are people who don’t bother but learn what is considered to be primitive. They send along experts to live with the locals and learn their ways and what others may consider as primitive. Even if they are stricto senso primitive by their standards of today, it should be borne in mind that there is no single community in the world that never passed through the Stone Age and never lived in caves or some wilderness. The Americans discover anthropological studies the French had carried out prior to the beginning of the US-Vietnamese War once considered being primitive to be gems of intelligence.

Rare do we find what we have to teach to be so attractive to our students that they come to wait for the teacher in class hours before the teacher comes in. I recalled teaching GIS, Remote Sensing and Cartography. Some of my students remarked that everything was so important that ten minute of not being attentive made one felt as if one had missed a month of lecturing. Others told me that they glued to my lessons for they could preview their relevance in their future lives and that I was intelligent. On intelligence, I explained to them that I was never ever satisfied with what I had learned in class and it was ever my ambition to find out more. Owing to reading avariciously and taking note of details, I was able to be comfortable in the company of lawyers, economists, political scientists, anthropologists at my international Universities and did not find myself wanting. Others claimed that I was studying political science and not environmental sciences we will refer to below. Moreover, I believed that I did not know enough of what others thought I was an expert in and that catapulted me the more to go deeply into them. Nevertheless, I felt flattered but encouraged them too.  Whatever their perception of my teaching, not all they would come across in their lives would be dazzlingly enchanting and challenging. They might ignore them as being boring and they would turn out to be the most important in their lives.

When I first visited London and was using the Senate House Library of the University of London, I discovered that the CIA had written country book of all nation states conceivable on earth. Similarly, I discovered that the UK War Office or the Admiralty was also writing and drawing maps of countries that were not even related to the British Government during the Second World War. When I left LSE, my first paid assignment was to write a country profile of an African country. I began to know why country reports were valuable sources of information. They were objective and written by foreigners who were not prejudiced. You will remember now that at the time of writing we do not know the true population of a good number of African countries. It is because the government of the day dishes out amenities based on population of districts, regions, provinces or states as they variously call them. The tendency is for the censor officials to be bribed to falsify results, data and that is academic dishonesty. They are usually inflated. Similarly when one is reading information in national atlases they are falsified for propagandistic reasons. As such if big powers as France, Great Britain, the USA and others want to get information they do not rely on that provided by the government of the day but by their private informants. If Americans and British had ignored such regions as not beneficial to them they would not have written valuable country reports [see Google for them].

I ratiocinated why on earth those countries sent diplomats abroad where money was sunk into bottomless pits.  There were disasters in those countries and media would be broadcasting wrong information extracted from old secondary sources.  No one from the embassy would opt to rectify the wrongs. They were not of use as they had not mastered the history and geography of their countries prior to leaving for their foreign appointments. Therefore, it was usually a waste of time for foreigners to approach them for certain information. Missions relied on their information they have collected rather than on their embassies or high commissions who often painted bogus rosy pictures of their states when they were not so. The question was how they were to compare and contrast the growth of their economics when they did not even have an economic index?

When we have the likes of Taliban in Africa, Boko Haram and Al-Sahbaab that are bent on wiping out younger generation from central Africa because they were being schooled in Western Ways, you will think that it is because they are naïve and following some archaic philosophies of the Arabs in their Koran. No! When African intellectuals are advancing that African school and college syllabi should expunge North American and European history and geography from them, you are bound to question how different their thoughts are from the infamous deranged Boko Haram and ISIS?  If the ISIS as Saudi Arabia and others belonging to that Arc of Evil are bent on expunging Westernization, and education and African intellectual naively do away with glaciology, European History and Geography, what are the difference between them and the Taliban, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram and ISIS?

How do you engage in environmental scientific studies of tropical climate in isolation of the temperate and tundra climatic conditions because they are not related to Africa or because they are in Europe or Argentina thousands of miles away? You cannot scientifically talk of the formation of tropical climates without referring to those of the temperate lands, then that would be a travesty. The cold weathers in the temperate lands are affected by the tropical conditions and vice versa. Similarly, tropical conditions are affected by the winds, jet streams or high and low pressures in the temperate zones. The ice fields or glaciers have roles to play in the movement of the winds, the effect on the ocean currents that conversely affect the climate of the tropical zones. Therefore you cannot study the tropical conditions effectively and sufficiently without studying the climate in the northern and southern hemispheres. In consequence, if educationists who propounded syllabi for the tropical schools leaving out temperate and tundra zones, will only get a naught from me. It is because they are talking of a complete man minus his limbs. They forget that science is still science wherever it is studied in the world and even in the outer space.

It is not ironical that Boko Haram would massacred on 10 November, 2014,  47 students  and injuring 79 at a school in Potiskum in Yobe State of Nigeria as their way of stamping out Western Education and instilling the Koranic philosophies in the minds of innocent Africans. It is surprising that Boko Haram elements are Western educated and use Western military arsenals to massacre innocent people. In the same vein they employ Western tools of communication for their propagandistic aims yet denounce Western education. What are their intentions? Are they to turn able people to potatoes so as to ride on them? They naively believe as Pol Pot that they are making the world a better place. Did the Soviet Union succeed with their doctrine of Communism and the exclusion of Western free economic thinking and operations, capitalism? 

It woefully faltered. Thanks to Mikhail Gorbachev then president of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) with his doctrine of glasnost and perestroika who was augural and brought about a change leading to the pulling down of the infamous Berlin Wall built to separate the Western capitalists from the communists Eastern Europe. The remnants of the Soviet Union had since then been gradually reverting to be a better place even though President Vladimir Boris still singly wants to appear tough. China is similarly emulating free economy. The reward is glaring as their economy is burgeoning and rivaling the giant, United States of America for the first time in its modern history.

In a way, the Arab or Islamic fundamentalists in Arabic or Muslim influenced states are under developing their countries economically and culturally. For them to believe in a “god,” that should rightly be called Devil who advocates the denial of education from the society, wanton killing of the innocent peoples is preposterous.  The economic growth and peaceful progress in the world after the Second World War (1938-1945) have been attributed to peace and education. So, we are inclined to conclude that Islamic fundamentalists are embodiment of evil and should not ever be given an inch by any level headed person on earth. Their open animosity for the state of Israel and the Christian world in toto should not be taken lightly as given the slightest opportunity the world could see an incomparable pogrom by these individuals who show not remorse when decapitating even children. With this their attitude, belligerency, which person in his right frame of mind could invest in the Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, Taliban, and ISIS controlled parts of the world? Only devils like them could deal with them.

The call is for those advocating evil or supporting it to revert to an educational system that will bring peace and progress in the world now before it is too late. The Western sort of education is scientific and it is and has never been out to put down Islam or any other religion or old philosophies. There might have been the knighthood of the crusaders in the past but we are in the 21^st century and those using violence to push forward their agenda will not succeed. Their illusionary view to fly the black flag of evil dowers over the White House, Champs Elysee and the over Buckingham Palace and on Nelson's Column at Trafalgar Square in London, UK is a hollow cry of a moribund philosophy. America, Europe and their allies will not enter to be the ombudsman of the world but if they are going to be cornered by these elements, arcs of evil, there will be no choice other than facing the brunt even when President Barack Obama is still in office irrespective of his downy approach.

I once frowned when I read that St Augustine of North Africa, the writer of Confessions had said that he rather was with his dog than with someone whose language he did not understand. He might have had a point base on the society he was in. Mankind has since evolved and there are means now that we could learn a language within a short space of time and there is no question of isolating ourselves because we cannot communicate. St. Augustine might have meant ideologies that were diametrically opposing. Then human intercourse was not as fluid as what we have today. Similarly there are questioned phrases in what we see as holy books that cannot be taken with the pinch of salt as they were written based on the traditions of the day that had since changed or evolved to synchronize with modernity. We have cited a few lines here from the Quran for you the reader to judge for yourself if you would today Friday, November-14-2014 the year of Our Lord approve:

"O believers make war on the infidels (non-Muslims the authors expansion) who dwell around you, let them find harshness in you” - Quran 9:123

“When the sacred months are over, kill the unbelievers wherever you find them” – 

Quran 9:5

“Fight against Christians and Jews that believe neither in Allah nor in the last day…and do not embrace the true faith” - Q 9:29

“Fighting is obligatory for you (Muslims), even if you dislike it” - Q 2:216

“Do you think you would enter Paradise before Allah knows the men who fought hard and steadfast?” – Q 3:142

“Believers take neither Jews nor Christians for friends or helpers” - Q 5:51

“Let not the believers take for friends or helpers Unbelievers rather than believers.” - Q 3:28.

“Our Prophet (Mohammed), ordered us to fight you (non-Muslims, again our expansion) till you worship Allah alone or pay us Jizyah (extortion) in submission…Whoever amongst us is killed as a martyr shall go to Paradise…and whoever survives shall become your master” – Sahih Bukhari 4:53:386

“Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war…” - Sahih Muslim 19:4294

It is for that reason that some of what the Quran preaches today is decadence. How many of you will inculcate the above into your students or children?  Inciting killing in the name of religion cannot be accepted. As such when the Saudis decapitate foreigners for having stolen with the rationale that they are following the holy Quran we look at them as gaudily dressed barbarians. Should they not be ostracized from the society of civilized people if they stoically refuse to change, modernize their Quran? Have they ever heard of a disease of pilfering called kleptomania? Have they never sinned? If they have never, let them throw stone the person they claim is a sinner in the name of Allah. Of course all of them are sinners and kill as their ways of covering up their sins. How do you clean a home by putting dirt under your carpet? In this disease of kleptomania, the thief has what he is stealing in abundance yet goes on to steal. It is because he is sick and needs treatment and not being killed…. There are many in the Arab worlds who believe that an American cannot be friendly with an Arab. One of them elaborated that (12/11/2014) that the Americans’ friendship with the Arab countries was based on economic gains, fossil fuel and not natural. Friendship of convenience! So as it stands they could only be punished when the oil wells would be dried out. How long shall we wait for this to happen? It is only then that economic sanction could work when they are cordoned off from the rest of good people provided others cooperate. If the Soviet Union that is far larger could be forced to kowtow for better, what more of smaller Middle East States?

We saw above that the veracity of language learning. We do not learn a person’s language for the sake of communicating with him or her without any emoluments. When we learn French, German, Zulu or Kishwahil we do not only learn those languages, we learn the speakers’ cultures, history, philosophies and many more. Those spur us. The word ‘la nourriture’ to the French man brings to memory plenty of things: wine, sitting down of a family and friends around a table to eat, chat, exchange ideas, planning and many more. So when you learn that word, it is tagged with plenty of uncountable events or things associated with the French ways of life, now and in the past. Therefore, to restrict anyone from learning such a language is cruel and infringement on his human right or learning right we believe contradicts UNESCO’s motives.

You will observe that in librarianship, knowledge be it in book format, be it analogue or electronic, pictorial, vocal, or volumetric cannot be denied anyone if they have reached the rightful age to have access to them. If Boko Haram and ISIS are out to deny people access to knowledge because it is alleged to be Western when some of them are Westerners, it should never ever be accepted. If some naïve third world states want to deny their citizens from learning Western history, environmental studies, and glaciology as in some states in Western Africa, it should not be allowed. It is the right of all students to be inculcated with what others are learning in other parts of the world. After all they are citizens of this world and should not be denied knowledge of any part of the worlds as it is assumed that they would never have anything to do with those parts of the world.

You will see that Information Technology (IT) is highly developed in the Western world and its working language is essentially English. Students in French, Spanish and Portuguese Speaking worlds know this so well and often admit that to master IT sufficiently and effectively, it is imperative to master English. Consequently are the Boko Haram, ISIS, Al-Sahbaab followers’ right when they want to deny their people this free knowledge that is proven to be good as a teaching and working tool for the rest of mankind? Some non-English speaking countries in Europe had admitted that it were cheaper for their students to learn English as most scientific papers were first published in English before they were translated into other languages. Even when they are published in other languages other than English, it took so long before they were translated into their languages before they had that information. Then they were often late. The Dutch Government and other European nation states even including Rwanda in Africa that was under Belgium in the past that used French as it colonial language now ruled by a great tactician President Joseph Kigame agreed with me and included English as a leading teaching national language in his country. The benefits are enormous now and in the future.

Kigame’s attitude takes us to late Dr. Hasting Banda, President of Malawi (1896-1994) a graduate of a Scottish school. He set up an elite school, the Kamuzu Academy to emulate Eton of England and that had a multiplier effect. Irrespective of the fact that he was scathingly criticised for his open diplomatic relation with South Africa and the racist white regime of Ian Smith, P.M., when there were sanctions imposed on them for their despicable apartheid policies. Banda’s educational bases did have a profound positive effect on his country. My study with some students from that school who ended up studying in renounced schools as LSE and Witwatersrand University in South Africa was proof of its success. Whatever some of us still question if it were necessary to instill Latin and Greek classics in the minds of budding Africans and what good they were to be in the development of Africa. On the whole most are bases of the erudite upon which Western education is buttressed. At least he left a better system of education to his Africans and respect of women whom he stressed where not objects of dalliance as often portrayed by their revealing dressing styles and tight pantaloons which he banned from Malawi.

Having advanced some of these points, we are not endorsing the fact that there are no flaws in the Western sort of education. That is why we have all the time been advocating adoption and adaptation to meet our tailored requirements. Let us shelf that as a subject matter for a separate piece. Western education has to be welcomed as it has been proven to be a harbinger of success in Africa and elsewhere though some left wingers and Africanists may contradict our generalization. If so, let them go to their farms and prove to us that they can fend for themselves and outdistance European and others’ knowledge. However we are not going to entertain teaching Africans history of France with a beginning of a history text meant for African students starting with a ridiculous sentence: ‘We the Gauls (Gaulois)…..” The Africans who were under the French colonial regime were never Gauls or French per se and were not even, when sadly thoroughly assimilated. So, there was no question of force-feeding them with such absurd information. It is for this reason that hawkish proponents of Boko Haram and those who are not for the teaching of glaciology, temperate physical geology and European history in African schools should learn to adopt and adapt. It should be crystal clear that the content of any discipline is still the same wherever it is taught or studied.  Furthermore, it should be known that not long ago, Oxford History of Africa glaringly stated that Africans had no history until the coming of the White into Africa. That was far-fetched as the head can never be taller than the shoulders. If civilization started from Egypt, Africa before proceeding to Europe, Europeans could not have been ahead in history.  To them, if it was not recorded in written form it was not history. That is awry for oral sources withstood the test of time too. Were they right or were their reasoning prostituted by racism or another black man’s burden? That was downright a hug of patronizing-academic arrogance that cannot be accepted today without duels. Those are statements that had to be vehemently refuted.

© Dr. Viban Viban Ngo, 2014.