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February 27, 2006

Ozodi Osuji Weekly Lectures on African Countries #6 of 54: Burundi

by Ozodi Thomas Osuji, Ph.D. (Seatle, Washington) --- 6. BURUNDI

Formal Name: Republic of Burundi

Term for Citizens: Burundians.

Capital: Bujumbura. Population: 346,000.

Independence Achieved: July 1, 1962, from France.

Major Cities: Bujumbura, Gitega, Muyinga, Ngozi and Ruyigi

Geography:

Burundi is in Central Africa. Congo-Kinshasa, Rwanda, and Tanzania border Burundi. Burundi is 10, 745 square miles in area. Burundi is landlocked. Most of the country consists of highlands and plateaus of the Congo-Nile Divide. Average elevation is 5,300 feet; the highest peaks exceed 8500 feet. Because of its high elevation, Burundi tends to have less hot temperature. Average annual temperature is 73.F in the Rift valley region and 65.F in the central plateau region. Rainfall averages 40-60 inches per year. June through August is the driest months and March and April are the rainiest months.

Society:

Burundi has an estimated population of 6, 825, 000.

Ethnic Groups: There are three main ethnic groups: Hutu 85%, Tutsi 16% and Twa less than 1%.

Languages: Both Hutu and Tutsi speak Kirundi. French is the official language. Swahili is used as commercial language.

Religion: 90% are Christian, mostly Roman Catholic, 1% Muslin and the rest indigenous believers.

Education: Primary education is available to most children but few attend and even fewer attend secondary school. Literacy rate is estimated at 51.6%.

Economy: The economy is mainly subsistence agriculture. Coffee and cotton are the most important commercial agricultural products and main source of foreign exchange. GDP estimate: $700 million; Per Capita: $106. Monetary Unit: Franc (BIF).

History and Government:

The original dwellers in Burundi were the Twa pygmies. Bantu Hutus reportedly migrated to the area in the 1200s. In the 14th century, Tutsis, another Bantu group, probably from Ethiopia, conquered the Hutus and ruled them until the Germans came in the late 19th century. With the defeat of Germany during the first world war, Belgium took over. Burundi was traditionally a monarchy ruled by Tutsi kings. In 1966, the monarchy was abolished. Burundi is characterized by the struggles for leadership by the two groups, Tutsi and Hutu. Burundi is a very unstable polity. Burundi is divided into 15 provinces.


CONTEMPORARY POLITICS


To understand contemporary Burundi’s conflict ridden politics her past history and demographics must be grasped.

It is reported that the original people who lived in what is now called Burundi were the Twa Pygmies.

Beginning in the thirteenth century, Bantu tribes began to move into the area. The first Bantu group was the Hutu. In the fourteenth century, another Bantu group, the Tutsi, moved into the area. Both Bantu groups speak the same language, Kirundi; the only distinguishing feature between them is that the Hutu tends to be stout and average in height whereas the Tutsi tends to be lanky and tall.

At present Burundi’s population is estimated to be about seven million people. Eighty five, 85% of them are Hutu, the other mainly Tutsi. The Twa pygmies are a few thousands and are negligible in Burundi politics. There are a few thousand Europeans and Asians.
The major languages of Burundi are Kirundi, French and Swahili. French is the official language.

Burundi is about 90% Christians with Muslims and believers in indigenous religions making up the balance.

Whereas the Hutus are the majority population, the Tutsi, beginning in the sixteenth century, dominated Burundi politics. A Tutsi established himself as the King of Burundi in the early 17th century and his linage pretty much ruled the kingdom until the arrival of Europeans in the early twentieth century. In effect, Burundi, like Rwanda, has the political anomaly whereby a minority group, Tutsis, rule a majority group, Hutus. This scenario is tailor made for conflict and conflict the country has had aplenty.

In 1903, Germany declared the area a German colony. With the defeat of Germany during the First World War, German colonies in Africa were allotted to the victorious European powers. Burundi was given to Belgium in 1923 and thus became a Belgium ruled country under the League of Nations. With the replacement of the League by the United Nations in 1945, Burundi became a UN trust territory under Belgium rule.

In 1962, Burundi obtained independence from Belgium. Thereafter, a series of military coups ensued, with military strong men ruling the country until 1993 when there was a democratic election.

The Tutsi dominated the military and military rule essentially meant Tutsi rule. In effect, the minority population continued ruling the majority population under the aegis of military rule. The majority Hutu, of course, resented this situation and formed several militia groups to try to fight the military and take over power.

The Front for Democracy in Burundi, FRODEBU, a Hutu dominated group, mounted an effective struggle with the Tutsi dominated military government. The country was in chaos from these struggles and in 1993 the Tutsi led government agreed to a democratic election, an election whose outcome was guaranteed to be Hutu since they constitute 85% of the population.

The Hutu won and their leader, Melchior Ndadaye became Burundi’s first Hutu president in early 1994. A few months later, the Tutsi dominated military killed him and it was back to square one, civil war between the two competing groups.

Hutu extremists embarked on killing Tutsis and the Tutsi dominated army retaliated by killing Hutus. In 1994 over 300, 000 Burundians were massacred in cold blood and many fled to neighboring countries as refugees.

The latest Tutsi military strong man, President Pierre Buyoya maintained some sort of grip on power but in 2000 was forced to enter into negotiations for a new formula for ruling the country. A cease fire agreement was signed by all parties and in 2003 FRODEBU, under its leader, Domiten Ndayizeye, took power.

The new power arrangement with a Hutu as the nominal president did not change things much, for the Tutsi continued to dominate Burundi politics. Therefore, some Hutu groups refused to recognize the government and continued with the struggle for eventual Hutu rule.

In 2004 these Hutu extremists again massacred some Tutsis (in a refugee camp at Gatumba, in the Congo) and that sparked Tutsi retaliation.

In May of 2005 all parties to the conflict agreed on a South African brokered cease fire and an election was held, with predictable result. A former Hutu rebel group, National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy, CNDD-FDD won the majority in the new Parliament. The new Hutu dominated Parliament elected a Hutu, Pierre Nkurunziza the country’s new president.

So far, Mr. Nkurunziza seems to be sustaining the peace in Burundi, a much needed peace if economic development is to take place in the country.

Civil war has devastated the economy of Burundi, so much so that it is the poorest country in the world, with a per capita income of $106 dollars and a GDP of $700 million. The country is essentially sustained by foreign aid.

The politics of Burundi is characterized by the struggle of the two ethnic groups, Hutu and Tutsi. Not much else can be said about politics in Burundi. As already observed, so far, the Nkurunziza Hutu government elected in August of 2005 is holding unto power. But given Burundi’s history, no one knows what might happen tomorrow. The young president (born in 1964) appears to be politically savvy and let us hope that he can keep the warring groups in check, so that some sort of economic development would finally start in this poorest of nations.

Ozodi@africainstituteseattle.org

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February 24, 2006

Ozodi Osuji Weekly Series on Psychology 2006, #9 of 52: What is one's Vocation?

by Ozodi Thomas Osuji, Ph.D. (Seatle, Washington) --- The greatest challenge facing any human being is making a decision regarding what to do with his life. Until a person discovers a vocation that he is really interested in, a vocation that suits his nature and whole-heartedly throws himself into it, he is seldom peaceful, happy and contented.

Further more, material abundance often requires a person to be doing something that he truly enjoys doing, what he has an aptitude in doing and what there is a market for (that is, what is found useful by other people and they are willing to buy it).
It would seem that the individual has several career options to choose from. Actually, this is not quite so. The individual has only one vocation that suits his unique nature, a vocation chosen for him by his particular temperament and aptitude. The only choice the individual really has in the matter is to discover his real vocation, what he came to this world to do and embrace it with his whole heart; he cannot do other things just because other people do them and make a living from doing them.
The time at which the individual discovers and embraces his vocation may not be as random as appearances would make it seem. If he has to try many other professions, and by process of elimination discover what is for him, such is his game plan. Indeed, he may go through his life time on earth without discovering his true vocation.

I have had a difficult time making up my mind what to do with myself. I have been a dilettante all my life. In school, I found many subjects intriguing and found it rather difficult to limit myself to one discipline. I gravitated from one discipline to another and acquired several degrees. Generally, a field would fascinate me but when I come to understand it, as it is, I found it no longer fascinating. The same goes for my work life. I would go into a line of work, feel fascinated and, in fact, work hard but soon find it boring. I would start looking for something else to do with my life.
As I look back on my schooling and work history, indeed, on my entire life, what is self-evident is that I am an idealist in search of an idealistic profession.


THE ETIOLOGY AND NATURE OF IDEALISM

What is idealism, how did it originate and how is it that it predominates in certain individuals’ lives? Clearly, every human being is a bit idealistic, but some are overly so. The majority of mankind is realistic, perhaps, with a little idealism, but a small fraction of people are overly idealistic, so much so that nothing in the extant world satisfies them.
Idealism appears to originate in hatred and rejection of what is real. The idealist hates and rejects what is and yearns for what could become; he aspires for what, in his imagination, is better than what is existent in the real world. His whole life seems motivated by desire to transform what is into what could become ideal.

Karen Horney, in my opinion, is, perhaps, the psychologist that best captures the nature of idealism. Unfortunately, she gave it a psychopathological term, neurosis, hence alienates folks from embracing her wonderful hypothesis. Her most seminal book, Neurosis and Human Growth, gave me the greatest insight into me and I recommend it to all idealistic persons.
As Horney sees it, the idealistic child, in her Psychoanalytic terminology, the neurotic child hates and rejects his real self and uses his thinking and imagination to construct what seems to him an ideal self and strives to become that ideal self. What is ideal is not stable; it is always changing; as soon as one goal post is attained, another picture of what is ideal emerges hence the child, as it were, is on a perpetual trade mill, always striving to attain an ideal state that forever recede and eludes him. He is forever disappointed by his inability to attain the ideal self and is a frustrated person.
At all times, the neurotic child strives to become the idealized self and does not want to be his real self. Since the idealized self is an imaginary self, a mental construct, not a factual self, it is not ever going to be realized in the real world. In the real world, what human beings can be and or do is circumscribed by the limitations of space, time and matter. As long as the restrictions of the external environment are in place, human beings cannot possible do every thing; for example, they cannot fly, unless, of course, they grow wings. Nevertheless, the neurotic child and the neurotic adult are characterized by wish to realize his imaginary ideal self.
The normal pattern of growth, as Horney sees it, is characterized by a drive to realize the real self (what Abraham Maslow calls self actualization).
The neurotic pattern of growth, on the other hand, is characterized by desire to realize the ideal, but not real self.
As such, neurosis is a futile pattern of living; its idealistic goal is never going to be satisfied, yet the neurotic pursues it in an obsessive-compulsive manner, as if an inner pressure that must be obeyed, as primitive man obeyed his imaginary gods, a force that transcends reason compels him to pursue it. (See Eric Fromm, Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.)
Neurosis is filled with anxiety, for the neurotic child and adult are afraid of not becoming their idealized selves. The neurotic has what Horney called basic anxiety: fear of not becoming the ideal self he wants to become. The neurotic, according to Horney, lives with constant free-floating anxiety (neurotic anxiety).
Horney provided a sociological and psychological etiology of neurosis. As she sees it, neurosis is caused by unreasonable parental expectations from the child that he become perfect. In her view, all children are aware that they need the adults in their lives to survive and, therefore, are motivated to do those things that the adults around them, particularly those that Harry Stack Sullivan called their significant others: parents, siblings, peers, authority figures like teachers and pastors etc ask of them.
If those on whom the child depends on to survive expect a high standard of behavior before they accept him, he strives to accomplish them least they reject him. As Horney sees it, this conditional acceptance of children disposes them to reject their real selves and use their imagination and thinking to construct alternative selves that they believe that the important persons in their lives would accept. Thus, at all times, such children strive to become the idealized selves that they think that if they become that their society would accept. In doing so, according to Horney, such children become neurotic in personality structure.
As Horney sees it, a neurotic is a person who hates and rejects his real self and strives to become an alternative self, perceived as ideal and acceptable to society, and experiences anxiety when he does not seem like the imaginary ideal self. Not being like the ideal self arouses fear of social rejection and abandonment, which amounts to fear of death, since the child needs other people to provide for him if he is to physically survive.

Carl Rogers (Client Centered Therapy) built on Horney to urge parents to accept their children in an unconditionally positive manner, if they want their children to accept their real selves and not pursue idealized neurotic selves that could never be attained but in the meantime produces anxiety for the neurotic child.

Whereas Horney’s causal hypothesis is strictly social psychological, Alfred Adler (Neurotic Constitution) believes that biology plays a role in the etiology of neurosis. Without denying the powerful role of society in the formation of the human personality, Adler believes that those children who inherited what he called inferior organs tend to find it extremely difficult to do what the exigencies of this world call for human beings to adapt to them. As he sees it, children who inherited organ inferiorities are likely to feel that the physical and social environment is very tough on them, feel their lives threatened and develop a feeling of personal inferiority.
To Adler, no child could ever accept a sense of inferiority. Why? To survive the impersonal exigencies of this world, the child must overcome them.
Adaptation to the realities of this world require that the child become strong and powerful. Since the child is, in fact, not powerful, he uses pure mentation to imagine himself powerful. The human child, and more so, the neurotic child feels inferior and powerless Vis a Vis the exigencies of this world and uses his thinking and imagination to come up with a self-concept and its pictorial form, self-image that seems to successfully cope with the intractable exigencies of this world. He construes a fictional self, a self that is all-powerful, intelligent, handsome, wealthy etc, a self that is everything that his real self is not.
To Adler, neurosis is characterized by rejection of the real self and pursuit of a compensatory imaginary, fictional, all powerful and superior self.
The neurotic child has an all or nothing approach to his imaginary ideal self; he must become it or he feels that he is nothing. As it were, his whole reason for existing is to become his idealized, imaginary self. Neurosis thus gives the individual purpose for existence. The neurotic exists to become his fictional superior, powerful, ideal and perfect self. If he did not have that ideal self to pursue, his life would suddenly seem purposeless and meaningless. Existing to attain insane goals is, apparently, a possible reason to live on earth. (If so, could all existence on earth be motivated by desire to attain insane purpose? Helen Schucman, in A Course in Miracles, says yes.)
The neurotic often behaves as if he is the idealized imaginary, all-powerful and superior self. He presents that superior self to other people to relate to and accept as who he is.
If other people collude with him and accept his idealized self concept and self image (personality is a mental construct, George Kelly says) he feels fine, but if they do not validate his fictional self, he feels threatened and unsafe.
The neurotic child is happy (false happiness) when his ideal self is affirmed by society and angry with those who do not tell him that he is his imaginary all-powerful self.
At school and play, the neurotic child wants to be treated as if he is the ideal and all-powerful self. He wants his peers and teachers to treat him as the important self he wishes that he were, but is not, in fact.
Of course, other people know that the neurotic child is not the all-important self he wants to become and pretends as. They treat him as an ordinary self and he resents realistic such treatment.

NEUROTIC SOCIAL AVOIDANCE AND THE GOAL OF SUPERIORITY
Since the neurotic does not want to be treated as an ordinary self, he often withdraws from play and school and other arenas where he may be evaluated as ordinary. Such children would develop what we now call avoidant personality disorder, and or obsessive compulsive personality disorder, dependent personality disorder, paranoid personality disorder.
These neuroses, now called personality disorders, are characterized by wish to be an ideal self and avoidance of society in an effort to protect the imaginary ideal, perfect self.
The shy child, aka avoidant personality, keeps to himself and in his social withdrawal, uses his imagination to see himself as perfect and ideal. He feels that if he comes close to other people that they would look through his sham ideal self and reject it. To avoid rejection of his phony ideal self, he avoids other people. In effect, his social avoidance is a maneuver to help him preserve and protect his wished for ideal, perfect self.
If the neurotic, shy person did not have a false ideal self to defend, he would not fear social rejection and would readily relate to other people.
Psychotherapy for the neurotic avoidant personality, shy person, is for him to give up his quest for an idealized self and accept his real self and become comfortable with it and present it to other people to relate to. He does not have to pretend to be who he is not, ideal; he has to accept his real self, imperfect as it may be, and leave it at that.
When the imperfect real self is accepted, as it is, and when one stops desiring the impossible ideal, perfect self, one no longer has fear of not becoming the imaginary ideal self. One no longer has anxiety neurosis.
Mental health is characterized by absence of neurotic anxiety, whereas neurosis is characterized by the presence of anxiety (excessive fear).
The normal person has realistic fear, not anxiety. He fears what could harm his body and avoids it and or seeks ways to protect his real, bodily self, but does not fear what could harm an imaginary perfect self. The normal person has a realistic self and realistic fears; he does not have neurotic anxiety (disorder).

Adler, Horney, Sullivan, Rogers, Kelly, Maslow and other ego-psychologists have useful points and need to be studied and understood. However, they did not completely explain the etiology of neurosis.
Neurosis is not only a social-psychological phenomenon; it has a biological component to it. Isaac Marks and other neuro-psychologists are elucidating the biological nature of anxiety disorder.
According to neuro psychologists, those who tend to be neurotic, who have anxiety disorder, tend to have inherited bodies that are prone to excessive nerve excitation. Their bodies have a tendency to readily elicit those stimulations found in anxiety, with or without social causal factors. They seem to have inherited rapid somatic excitability. The fear and anger alerting system in their bodies tend to be over developed. They quickly perceive danger and threat to their bodies and their danger signaling system goes to work and urges their bodies to fight or flee from the perceived danger.
How this system works is not yet fully understood. Some claim that it has to do with neurochemical balance, or lack of it, in nerve cells. Perhaps, such persons have a tendency to produce excessive neuroadrenalin (neuropiniphrine…an excitatory neurotransmitter) and less GABA (an inhibitory neurotransmitter)?
The jury is still out on the cause of anxiety; no one has fully explicated the biological origin of anxiety disorder. On the subject, lots of causal speculations abound, however, interesting that conjectures may be, they are not science. Science deals with facts, as they are, not mere speculation.

What is self-evident is that anxiety disorder is a biosocial, existential phenomenon. It has its origin in biological, sociological, psychological and existential causal factors. Clearly, Adler, Horney etc explained aspects of the causal factors implicated in the etiology of anxiety neurosis, but the biological aspect of it still needs to be fully understood.
In the meantime, we can best approach anxiety disorder, aka neurosis on individual-by-individual case.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

When I was a child (and now) my body was (is) prone to quick excitation. I was almost always aroused. Heat, cold, smell, paint, food etc aroused my body. I had physical and chemical allergies.
Being close to a woman who over perfumed her body and reeks of fragrances made me faint. Being in a house where certain types of food are cooked, the smell made me dizzy.
Hot summer days made my body feel irritated and uncomfortable. Cold days made my body itchy.
Running and other vigorous exercises made my muscles cramp up (perhaps due to lack of oxygen, a product of lactic acid metabolism in the muscles). Simply stated, I inherited a hypersensitive body. That over excitable body was not comfortable to live in.

I remembered always wanting to get out of my body and live outside it. That is correct: my body was so intolerable that I did not want to live in it. I wanted to jump out of my body and be bodiless. On hot summer days, my body felt so irritated that I had to douse it with cold water to feel tolerably comfortable.
By age six, when I started formal schooling, I was aware that I did not like my body. I admired those other boys who seemed at ease with their bodies.
I loathed my body and used my imagination to wish for a better body. I fantasized for an ideal body. By age nine, I was aware that I was not only wishing for a better body but a better self. I wished for a perfect psychological self, a self that is different from my imperfect self.
That is to say that I developed what Horney called neurosis: hatred and rejection of the real self and wishing for an ideal alternative, mentally constructed self.
However, Horney’s etiological analysis is only partially applicable to me for, clearly, my inherited problematic body had a lot to do with my self-rejection.
Obviously, my society is conditional in accepting children but that by itself is not the sole cause of my self-rejection. My self-rejection was caused by a combination of biological and social psychological factors: my inherited problematic body and my conditionally accepting society placed a role in my self hatred. Biosocial psychology, I believe, is a fuller explanatory psychology.

Biological psychology is still in its infancy; the various biochemical causal explanations of mental disorders (excess dopamine in schizophrenia, excess neurpiniphrine in mania, low serotonin in depression, excess neuro-adrenaline in anxiety etc) are not persuasive; they explain nothing. Let us just say that we have not yet explained the etiology of mental states; we may do so in the future.

This paper is not really devoted to causal analysis of neurosis, I made foray into some causal analyses to set the stage for the theme at hand: idealism and choosing a vocation.
I did not choose a vocation because I was seeking for an ideal body, ideal self, ideal other people, ideal society, ideal social institutions, ideal work situations and ideal everything. Nothing in the real world seemed good enough for me.
Just as I was seeking an ideal self, I was seeking an ideal vocation. As noted, I would go into a profession, like it for a while, and then find it not satisfactory, because it is not ideal. After obtaining my doctorate degree, I taught at a university for a while, and found what I was doing not ideal and quit. I went in search of ideal work. I worked in the mental health field. For a while, I enjoyed it and was rewarded with running a couple agencies. Many folks would be satisfied running a multimillion dollar agency, but that was not good enough for me. I left and went searching for an ideal vocation.
Over time, I learned that there is no such thing as an ideal vocation. Jobs are not the issue; the issue is I, my basic self-rejection and desire for an ideal self.
To find an ideal vocation, I must accept me. But the question is: what me am I to accept?
Accepting my real body is difficult to do; nobody in his right mind would accept my body. The best that can be done with my body is to subject it to rigorous scientific analysis, understand it and device a technology, (genetic engineering and or medications) to improve it.

NEUROTIC IDEALISM

In childhood, I escaped into neurotic idealism, and in my thirties I escaped into religious idealism. These two are fantasy and, as such, useless.
In maturity, I embrace the only methodological approach to phenomena that is realistic: the scientific method.
The scientific method studies phenomena as it is, and does not waste time and energy indulging in mentally constructed ideal versions of phenomena.
The science of psychology studies human beings as they are, not as they would like to become. Psychology is not idealistic philosophy where neurotics use their minds, thinking, to construe ideal selves, ideal social institutions and ideal world. The world is not what such idealistic philosophers as Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche etc made it out to be in their philosophical systems; the world is empirical and objective and independent of our imaginations.
There are essentially two types of idealism, secular and religious (aka spiritual) idealism. In secular idealism, the individual uses his thinking and imagination to wish how he, other people, social institutions and the world ought to become; in religious idealism, although it is still the individual that is doing the wishing, the individual attributes his ideal wishes to what he calls God, Spirit etc.
The secular idealist may wish for socialism as an ideal society; the religious idealist says that God intends for humanity to be in a certain manner, the manner his idealism tells him is what God would wish man and society to be.
Both secular and religious idealism are the products of human thinking and imagination; they are wishes of how the self and the world should be ideal and perfect.
The fact is that all the wishes in this word would not change a leaf from being a leaf. Perhaps, millions of years of evolution may alter the nature of leafs. In the here and now, one can wish all one wants, the fact is that human beings are the way they are and are not going to change and become ideal.
You cannot change yourself and other people by merely wishing that you and they became ideal. Conceptualizing ideals, although understandable, are really a waste of mental energy and time.

Instead of wasting ones mental energy and time imagining how human beings should be, at the individual and societal level, the individual is best served if he studied himself and human beings in scientific, that is, objective manner. He should study things as they are, and understand them as they are and stop wishing for them to be different.
You first have to understand phenomena as it is before you can change it; if at all change is possible.
You cannot change you; you cannot change other people and you cannot change the social institutions that responded to the way people are.
People are in varying degrees of normalcy, neurosis and psychosis and these states are due to their inherited bodies and social experiences. You cannot wish that people be angels.
For example, if you see a man who is, say, paranoid in personality structure, and you wish that he were not so, you are wasting your time. What you need to do is understand the nature of paranoia at both the psychological and biological level.
The paranoid person before you probably will always feel that he is a victim of others persecution and that other people are out to harm and or kill him. He actually wants to be attacked by other people and attack people to generate their counter attack on him. He then fears that those he attacked would counter attack him and hides from them to go protect himself. From his hidden corner, he feels justified in attacking other people, verbally or physically. Moreover, he wants to be very important, grandiose, in his and other people’s eyes. He over evaluates his worth (he feels inadequate and worthless and compensates with imaginary power and worth).
The paranoid person feels grandiose and persecuted. You cannot change him, for to change is for him to accept his underlying depressed self view, his self hatred and self rejection…what led to his compensatory latching unto imaginary superior self. If he gave up his deluded (grandiose, persecuted) self, he would become depressed, and develop low self-esteem and may even become suicidal.
To avert his underlying existential depression, his self evaluated valuelessness, and anxiety, he masks them with a fictional, all powerful self. His paranoid ideations serve a function for him: they make life tolerable for him. Paranoia gives the paranoid person purpose for being; he lives to become a grandiose self and to protect that self from imaginary persecutors.
What you can do is study him and understand the biological, sociological, psychological, and existential factors in the etiology of his mental disorder. If he is amenable to understanding facts, you can tell him about the factors implicated in the genesis of his paranoia, but the chances are that he may not listen to you.
It is not your function to change other people. It is not your job to change society. The individual’s only function is to study phenomena as it is, scientifically, struggle to understand it and struggle to come up with a technology to adapt to it. He then markets his understanding of reality, as it is, and if his understanding is realistic and useful to other people, they would buy it hence gives him money to meet his material needs.

GOD

Many human beings are preoccupied with the idea of God. They want to prove to themselves that God exists, that he created this world and that if they did the right thing by him, please him, that when they die that they would be welcomed into his heaven. They fear displeasing God, so as not to be relegated to his hell.

The human mind, ego intellectual processes, cannot prove the existence of God. The ego, the human thinking pattern, is individuated, and is a separated self.
If God exists, and I think that there is something that people call God, I call it life; he is all of us acting in tandem.
God is the whole of life as one life; one life that is simultaneously all of us. Because he is all selves in one self, the separated and individuated self, the human ego, our earthly thinking, cannot understand God. No amount of earthly intellectual thinking can explain God. This is because the part, human beings, is smaller than the whole, God, and cannot understand the whole.
It seems, therefore, a waste of time trying to understand and or explicate the nature of God.
On the matter of God, one should just keep quiet. Be quiet; in your silence you feel peaceful and happy.
Do not disturb your mind trying to explain God; you cannot do so. God exists all right; he is life, one life that manifests in all forms of life: us, animals, trees etc. The real God is not the God explained by the various religions of this world.
The God of the various religions of the world is nothing but the human ego projected out and attributed to what human beings call God.
Whereas the individual should gravitate to an idea of God that makes sense to him, mine is Gnostic Christianity, he should not have the illusion that he has explained God; he has not; no religion can explain God.


REALISTIC VOCATIONS MAINTAIN THIS WORLD

In seeking a realistic profession, ask yourself this question: does the vocation that you contemplate entering enable human beings to adapt to the exigencies of this world? Every realistic profession maintains this world, as it is, not transcend it.
We live in the world of space, time and matter. We are separated selves, egos and could, and do harm each other. We want to live in safety. Therefore, we seek protection from those who can harm us. We must apprehend, try and punish those who harm us. The profession of law enforcement: lawyers, judges, courts, prisons, prison guards, police etc is a realistic profession, for it exists to catch and punish criminals. The individuated self needs protection and must demand the services of law and order professionals.
Scientists study the world in an objective manner and understand it. Technologists devise techniques to adapt to the objective world, as it is. Thus, science and technology are realistic professions, for they give to men what they need to adapt to this world.
Businessmen produce goods and services and market them to people who need them to survive. Business is a realistic vocation, for it enables people to adapt to their world and survive.
Psychologists, provided they are realistic, that is, embrace biosocial existential methodological approach to understanding man, are useful to people. People have varying degrees of neurosis and psychosis and need psychologists to explain to them their mental states and help them cope with their world without excessive anxiety, paranoia, depression etc. However, since not too many folks buy the services of mental health professionals, they are not likely to become rich from their profession.

The relevant thing is for the individual to seek out a vocation that produces goods and or services that enable people to survive in this world.
If the individual goes into an idealistic but useless vocation, he will not sell his goods and services and will be poor. Consider professional socialists and communists. Who wants to buy their idealistic conceptions of how people and social institutions ought to be? Very few persons want to buy the services of socialists, so socialists tend to be unemployed. Some of them become professional revolutionaries and get other people to go work and earn a living and support them; Karl Marx fooled around in the Libraries writing idealistic materials, whereas his friend, Frederick Engels’ workers worked to support him. Socialists cannot make a living from their idealistic thinking and writing.
Religious idealists can make a living if they become ministers and, as clerical parasites manage to play on people’s guilt and fears and get them to support them.
If they are merely intellectual about religious idealism, as are many new age gurus, they starve.
However, religion has some utility. Human beings will always have fear of the unknown. Any religion that reduces their fears and enables them to develop peace of mind and have some happiness, even if ultimately it is a false religion, is useful and should be tolerated.

FORGIVENESS AND NIHILISM

Any philosophy or religion that teaches that people should negate this world and escape into its conception of heaven, oneness, peace and joy, as new age religions do, will not enable people to adapt to this world and, therefore, will not be bought by reasonable people who want to live in this world.
If you tell folks to forgive those who wronged them, to permit themselves to be killed without defending themselves, you are not going to enable them to cope with the real world and will not be listened to. People will listen to those who talk of crime and punishment, to lawyers and judges, for they enable them to adapt to this world.
Jesus talked about forgiveness and defenselessness. His gospel would lead to death and those who want to live in this world did not listen to him and will not do so in the future, for as long as they want to live on earth, in the realm of separated self.
Those who want to die and extinguish their separated self will listen to the philosophy of forgiveness and defenseless, a world negating religion.
The individual should have clarity about his wish to escape from this world and do it if that is what he wants to do and leave other people to adapt to the exigencies of a separated world.


REAL SELF-FELLOWSHIP


Real self-psychology teaches people to accept their real selves, which include their bodily selves and spiritual selves. It does not encourage people to negate their bodies and escape into idealistic, imaginary selves. It urges people to accept their bodies and study them scientifically and use medical technology to cope with their illnesses. It validates and affirms the human body.
It teaches that there is another self, the spirit self, a unified spirit self. That unified spirit self is not amenable to ego intellectual understanding and should be assumed while attention is paid to the physical real self. The reason the spirit self has to be recognized is so that people affirm an aspect of themselves that is also real, recognition of which tends to enable them to feel peaceful and happy.
In the here and now world, the neurotic ideal self, secular or spiritual, must be given up and not defended, for the individual to not feel neurotic anxiety, depression, paranoia and schizophrenia. All mental disorders are rooted in a misguided effort to become the ideal self, an imaginary self that could never be attained in reality.

My vocation is to teach people about their real self: the two sides of that real self, the physical, bodily self and spiritual non-bodily self. I am here to teach people to jettison their ideal self, secular and religious.
All mental illness arises from people’s desire to invent idealized selves and defend those false selves. Be they personality disorders, neurosis and psychosis, all mental disorders have something to do with efforts to become an imaginary idealized self. The mentally ill person thinks and acts from the perspective of his imaginary ideal self. The mentally ill person struggles to defend and protect his imaginary ideal self.
People become upset because their ideal selves are not validated and affirmed by other people.
Shyness, a seeming minor disorder, is an attempt to be ones ideal self, consciousness of it, and fear of not becoming it.
Stop trying to be an ideal self and simply be quiet and you would be peaceful and happy.
Do not expect other people to be ideal selves and just accept them as they are, even if they are crazy. In accepting people unconditionally, as they are, you give them your peace; you become a bringer of peace to their conflict ridden world.

All mental illness is healed when the ideal self is given up and not defended. In mental health, one no longer has emotional upsets: no fear, anxiety, anger, sadness, paranoia, mania, schizophrenia etc; one is peaceful and happy at all times.
Do not think and behave from the imaginary ideal self; do not judge from the imaginary ideal self. Do not see the world from the imaginary ideal self. Just tell yourself that you do not know who you are, who other people are and what the world is and means, and stay calm.
You are already seeing the world from the separated self, a self that is not real, but as long as you use that self to accept the world, as it is, not as you want it to become, approach the world scientifically and technologically, you will be calm.
Science and technology is the ego at its best, so become a scientist and or technologist. Nevertheless, the world of science and technology is the world of illusion, a dream world, for the real world is spirit, not matter.
The spirit world, however, should not be our concern, for if we seek it we color it with our ego wishes and distort it. It is enough to attempt to see this ego’s world objectively.

NO JUDGMENT

Every time one judges ones self, judges other people, as good or bad, one has wished that one and other people approximate ones ego ideal; one has attempted to be the author of ones self, and author of other people; one has disturbed ones peace and disturbed other peoples peace, for what one gives to ones self one gives to other people.
Do not judge you and other people; in doing so, you give your self inner peace and happiness.
By not judging you and others you are not playing God; you are not expecting the world to be according to your idea of good or bad; you are not disturbing your/other people’s peace; you are a bringer of peace to you and to other people.
What is my vocation? To teach folks how to attain peace and happiness through corrected thinking and behaving; to teach folks how to live through their real self, bodily and spiritual self. I do so from my understanding of what negation of this world and escapism means. I had negated this world and sought escape in idealistic thinking, philosophies and religion. I did nothing to effectively adapt to the realities of this world. I was out of this world; I was gone from it, mentally.
I got out of graduate school and worked hard for five years. I am a very hard worker for within five years of leaving graduate school I was the executive director of a very large mental health agency. If this world had made sense to me, there is no doubt that I would have worked my way to the top of things. But the problem was that the world made no sense to me. I could not take the world, as it is, seriously. I did not embrace the world’s philosophy and left the world in search of a better philosophy to live by.
Yet what I did was in my nature to do so; as it were, I was programmed to dream for a better world, and could not have not engaged in the long, arduous search for meaning and purpose in a meaningless and purposeless world.
But out of that futile searching for idealistic state, I learnt that if one wants to live in this world that one must embrace what makes for survival in it: holding grievances and punishing offenders, for it is in doing so that the ego’s separated world survives.
If you forgive the ego and do not punish it, when it offends you, it would keep doing so, even kill you. Forgiveness and lack of punitive behavior, as was my approach to people, leads to the end of the egos world and is an escape from what maintains this world.
(I once did group therapy for domestic violence convicts and did not want to punish them; I tried to reorient their thinking via cognitive behavior therapy but not through punishment; I was perceived as soft on criminals and was actually told to go. The psychologists running the show believed in punishing people; they are egotists who believe in punishment and were gratifying their desire to punish others by running those latest ego outfits for holding grievances, feeling guilty and being punitive. The normal psychologist and psychiatrist must believe in guilt and punishment, for guilt and punishment maintains the egoistic world he lives in. And since he believes in guilt and punishment, he must be found guilty and punished, for what one believes in happens to one. Abused persons who believe in guilt and punishment and punish their abusers will eventually be found guilty of a crime and punished, for what people believe in happens to them. The normal person is an egotist and believes in guilt and punishment, punishes other people and is himself punished.)

REAL VERSUS SHAM CHRISTIANITY

It should be noted that Jesus Christ actually negated this world and escaped from it. He taught a philosophy, Gnosticism that saw this world as valueless and negated it. He did not want to be part of this world. He wanted to negate his separated ego self. He overcame this world and was not fascinated by its attractions. He allowed himself to be murdered and did not fight to stay in this world. He had the common sense not to have children hence perpetuate this world.
The early apostles, those who knew Jesus first hand, knew that he taught an escapist philosophy. They sold their worldly goods and lived for the present moment, expecting the world to come to an end at any time. Of course, the world did not come to an end, for the world will be around for several more billion years. As long as the sun shines and it will shine for at least four more billion years, the world will continue to exist.
Disappointed that Jesus did not return to come get them out of what they saw as a corrupt world, Christians distorted the teaching of Jesus to make them adaptive to the exigencies of this world. They discarded Christian Gnosticism and what we now call traditional Christianity emerged.
What folks now call Christianity is really far from what the escapist, idealistic Jewish rabbi, Jesus taught his followers. Extant Christianity, like other religions, is now a mechanism for adapting to this world. True religion is almost always eventually distorted to make it maintain the separated, ego and its world. The religion of the founders of religion, like Jesus, is not always the religion practiced by those who call them their followers. That is the only way these religions can exist, for the alternative is idealism that does not cope with the realities of this world.
The Jews did not embrace the philosophy of forgiveness that their brother, Jesus taught. Instead, they preferred to retain their Mosaic view of guilt and punishment. As we choose is done to us. They chose what maintains this world, guilt and punishment, saw their fellow human beings as guilty and punished the; and their fellow human beings saw them as guilty and punished them hence all over the world they are usually punished, killed.

CONCLUSION

I have learned about the self defeating nature of idealism, secular and religious, and gave it up. What needs done in this world is to be realistic, to study science and technology and use it to adapt to this world while at the same time acknowledging the reality of formless spirit, without getting overboard about spirituality.
Spirituality does not enable any one adapt to this world, in fact, if taken seriously, it leads to escape from this world. Those who want to live in this world must do what living in this world requires, be realistic and operate according to the egos theology of crime and punishment.
Each human being is unique, and knows it. There is no other person like the individual; he is one in all time and in infinity. The specific combination of particles, atoms and elements in his body and his social experience disposes him to be who he is and to do ascertain type of work better than most other people. The individual is suited for a type of vocation; his first job is to ascertain his vocation on earth and subsequently to channel his energy into it, to the best of his ability. He cannot do well what others do well.
The idealist is readily able to perceive the imperfections in himself and in other people and feel motivated to change them, make himself and other people perfect. He cannot make himself and other people perfect. It is futile trying to change ones self and other human beings. The realistic thing to do is to accept ones self and other people as they are, not as they should become. One must accept all people despite their imperfections and insanities and not hope to make them sane and perfect, for one cannot succeed in that idealistic endeavor.
Yet there is hope for mankind. That hope is the scientific method: it studies people as they are, not as they should become; it does not moralize about how people should be and behave but embraces them as they are and behave. The scientific method studies people’s biology, chemistry, physics and psychology, and where changes are possible do so, but where not, accept them for being who they are. People are part of the natural universe of space, time and matter; they are imperfect creatures with an unknown perfect spiritual aspect. We must love all human beings and help them be the best that they can be.

Ozodi@africainstituteseattle.org

The ego and its world are very complex and complicated; their language must address the world of differences and multiplicity. Those who write in the egos frame of reference tend to write in complicated, sophisticated language. The language of metaphysics, on the other hand, tends to be very simple. This is because metaphysics deals with simplicity itself: how people came to this world and can escape from it. When I write on secular subjects, my language is sophisticated, but when I write about spiritual matters, my language is very simple, as in this essay.
Africans and African Americans are not a psychological people. They seldom bother trying to understand themselves. In the meantime, they present with varying degrees of psychopathologies; and the sad part is that they don’t even know it. In over twenty years work in the mental health field, I have not had an African as a patient; it is almost always white patients. Black folks mostly come in contact with the mental health system when they experience psychotic decompensation and have to be hospitalized and treated against their will, or, as in Nigeria, when their underlying untreated mental health issues dispose them to over eat and drink themselves to untimely death. I hope that I am doing my bit to alert the brothers and sisters to their mental health issues; that is my goal, any way.

Posted by Administrator at 06:41 AM | Comments (0)

February 23, 2006

Nigeria Set to Plunge the World into Utter Darkness

by Charles Onyebuchi Onyenwe --- Nigeria is indeed set to throw the whole world into great darkness, because Nigeria has been persecuting the sons and people of God. She has afflicted and humiliated them; yes Nigeria has touched the apple of God’s eye, and must be destroyed without pity – Zechariah 2:7-13.

Nigerian nation is a fraud that was conceived in utter hatred for the purpose of persecution, oppression, and humiliation of the Igbos - the people of God in order to provoke them to jealousy that they may return unto God. Nigeria is the making and handiwork of the devil foisted on Ndi Igbo and the people of Eastern Region by the colonial devilish rule. Nigeria is to Ndi Igbo and the people of the Eastern Region what Egypt was to the Jews, while Nigerian ruler is the Pharoah of our time - a tormentor, tyrant, persecutor, and oppressor of the righteous.

It will be recalled that Israel was the only country that was chosen by God, the country which God had called his own - of all the countries of the world. This was because of God’s love for Abraham, a friend of God - 2Chronicles 20:7; Isaiah 41:8. Remember that Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness – Genesis 15:6. But due to the disobedience of the children of Israel, God sent them to Egypt to be afflicted four hundred years, but at the end of four hundred and thirty years, God brought them forth out of Egypt, to serve him in righteousness – Genesis 15:13; Exodus 12:40. Their sojourn in Egypt was meant to chastise them in correction as sons of God, making them to be obedient unto God, their King – Hebrews 12:5 -11.

However, the great torture, afflictions, humiliation, and shame that were meted out to the children of Israel in Egypt was unprecedented and was described by God as Iron furnace: and the nation that afflicted them did God judge and punished – Genesis 15:14; Deuteronomy 4:20. Nevertheless, those torture, afflictions and shame are reminiscent of what Ndi Igbo and the people of the East have been going through in Nigeria, where they are treated worst than slaves and common criminals. They are slaughtered in every city and streets of North and west of Nigeria, yet the world which profess to uphold human rights and dignity are saying and doing nothing. Fortunately to Ndi Igbo, but unknown to Nigeria and the world, God - the Great God is risen for their defence; and will soon destroy both Nigeria which afflicted them and the world which watched and did nothing while they were being humiliated and killed.

Here prophet Zephaniah confirms the salvation of Ndi Igbo, and the utter destruction of Nigeria the enemy of Ndi Igbo, together with the world which refused to halt the abominable things that are done to Ndi Igbo and their brothers and sisters in the East. Thus: “Sing O daughter of Zion, shout O Israel; be glad and rejoice with the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The LORD hath taken away thy judgments, he hath cast out thine enemy: the king of Israel, even the LORD, is in the midst of thee: thou shalt not see evil any more. In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, fear thou not: and to Zion, let not thine hands be slack. The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty, he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.

I will gather them that are sorrowful for the solemn assembly, who are of thee, to whom the reproach of it was a burden. Behold, at that time, I will undo all that afflict thee; and will save her that halteth, and gather her that was driven out, and I will get them praise and fame in every land where they have been put to shame. At that time will I bring you again, even in the time that I gather you: for I will make you a name and a praise among all people of the earth, when I turn back your captivity before your eyes, saith the LORD” – Zephaniah 3:14-20. Please read the following for more details - Isaiah 13:1-22, Ezekiel 38:14-23.

Let me remind you here that Israel lost the sonship of God, as well as ceased from being the nation and people of God; because they rejected God, and refused his reign in them – 1Samuel 8: 4-9. The Jews had rejected God in the days of Samuel the priest, and at the first advent of Christ, when they rejected Jesus – that he was not Christ the Messiah, which is the Saviour. Thus they did not mind the great and terrible things which God had done against the Egyptians and in the presence of the children of Israel, and inspite of the great salvation which the Lord God had wrought among his people, Israel – Exodus from chapter 7 to chapter 15; Numbers 14:22-24; John 1:11-12.

Consequent upon the rejection of God by the children of Israel, God turned to the Gentiles, promising to give his kingdom to any nation that brought forth fruits unto God, by receiving God in their body through Christ – the seed and spirit of God. The Lord Jesus confirmed it as follows: “Therefore say I unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” – Matthew 21:43. Note that the whole world is God’s vineyard from where God expected to receive fruits; and not just fruits, but precious fruits of the earth – James 5:7. And as it is with the natural fruit which must receive the natural seed in itself before it can mature and ripe; God’s own fruit must also receive God’s own seed in itself so as to be precious unto God. Now God’s own fruit is man, and God’s own seed is Christ, the spirit and kingdom of God - Galatians 3:16 and 29; Colossians 1:13; and 27; 1 John 3:9; Exodus 19:4-6. Any man who received Christ (the seed) in his body is precious and a peculiar treasure unto God – Exodus 19:4-6; James 5:7; 1 Peter 2:9.

Nonetheless, Igbo Nation (Biafra) which is in the Eastern part of Nigeria took the name BIAFRA to distance herself from the satanic country that had embarked on a crude mission to wipe off the Igbos from the face of the earth: and which resulted in the worst pogrom ever recorded in the annals of the world. This same Biafra is the country that has brought forth a precious fruit unto God. God has therefore given Biafra his kingdom, and has equally changed her name to ISRAEL, meaning the TRUTH. God has done this favour to the Igbos because one of her citizens has fulfilled the will of God by receiving God through Christ, the truth and seed in his body. This man who is of Igbo tribe has pleased God, whose will is to dwell together with members of his Family in our body – the Church, which is his house and temple – 1Corinthians 3:9, 6:19-20; 2Corinthians 6:16 -18.

This is the reason the Lord Jesus had demanded that his followers should pray that Christ the kingdom of God should be received in their body – the earthen vessels of our body; just as the will of God had already been done in Christ (heaven) because God was dwelling in Christ – Matthew 6:9 -10. Prophet Ezekiel also testified that this man who has fulfilled the will of God in his body, and others from any part of the world that will yield and receive God in their body are the house and temple of God. Thus; “And he said unto me, son of man, the place of my throne and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever, and my holy name shall the house of Israel no more defile, neither they, nor their kings, by their whoredom, nor by the carcases of their Kings in their high places” – Ezekiel 43:7.

However, the Igbo nation, the very nation that brought forth the precious fruit of the earth unto God, had remained in bondage until the manifestation of the precious fruit of the earth. Just as the world had remained in darkness until the coming of Christ – the light of the world – John 8:12, 9:5. The reason why the Igbos have been in bondage is because her people provoked God to jealousy and worshipped other gods which are not God. This made God to punish them by foisting Nigeria, a foolish and wicked nation on them.

Nigeria is one of the descendants of Ishmael and therefore a terrorist country. You will remember that Ishmael was one of the sons of Abraham, whose mother was Hagar, the Egyptian maid, that was in bondage with her children, and whose children are not heirs to the promises of God – Genesis 21:9-14, Galatians 4:24-31. Note that Ishmael was made a wicked man and a terrorist while he was yet in the womb.

Here is scriptural record confirming the same: “And the angel of the LORD said unto her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude. And the angel of the LORD said unto her, behold, thou art with child, and shall bear a son, and shall call his name Ishmael, because the LORD hath heard thy affliction. And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren” – Genesis 16:10-12. Now the descendants of Ishmael are all the Arab and Islamic world, of which the North and West regions of Nigeria are among them. These are the people that God uses when punishing those who disobeyed him, as in correction, and to destroy those that rejected God, refusing God’s reign in them. All the Arab and Islamic world still constitute a great threat to the former Israel and even the new Israel till date.

Nevertheless, both Egypt the oppressor and Israel the oppressed are allegories by which we can know and understand the real oppressors and oppressed. Here are some records to confirm same: “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” – Romans 15:4. Now the real oppressors of the people of God at this end of the final dispensation is Nigeria which represents the world; and Ndi Igbo and their brothers and sisters in the Eastern part of Nigeria are the oppressed - representing the people of God. Again, like in the old, when God came down to deliver his people from Egypt through Moses, his servant, neither Pharoah nor his people knew it, hence they fought against God and were destroyed - Exodus 3:5 -14; 7:1

Nigeria which is the last Egypt, and her ruler the last Pharoah have not known that God is already in the midst of his people of the East, ready to save them, and to destroy Nigeria and the world which did nothing while Ndi Igbo - the people of God are being humiliated and killed.
Here is a record of how God is going to wipe out Nigeria and the rest of the world for taking advantage of Ndi Igbo in their time of trouble: “After many days thou shall be visited: in the latter years thou shall come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and all thy bands, and many people with thee. Thus saith the LORD GOD; it shall also come to pass, that at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shall think an evil thought. And thou shall say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages. I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates. To take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thy hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited; and upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, which dwell in the midst of the land.

Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say unto Gog, Thus saith the Lord God; in that day when my people of Israel dwelleth safely, shall thou not know it? And thou shall come from thy place out of the north parts, thou, and many people with thee, all of them riding upon horses, a great company, and a mighty army. And thou shall come up against my people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land, that the heathen may know me; when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes. And it shall come to pass, at the same time when Gog shall come against the land of Israel, saith the Lord God, that my fury shall come up in my face. For in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath have I spoken, surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel.

So that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field, and all the creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men that are upon the face of the earth, shall shake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground. And I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith the Lord God; every man’s sword shall be against his brother. And I will plead against him with pestilence, and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him; an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone. Thus will I magnify myself and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the LORD” – Ezekiel 38:8-12, 14 -16, 18-23.

It may surprise you to know that the reason why nothing is working out well in Nigeria, is because Nigeria is the making and handiwork of the devil. It is a country satan has loved and chosen, making it his dwelling place and kingdom – just as the same satan had loved and chosen Ishmael and his descendants who are from the north countries. Thus: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north” – Isaiah 14:12-13. Yes, Nigeria is a country where evil is treasured and recognized, and where good is hated and the righteous are persecuted and killed, and those who kill are applauded and given national honours. A place where stealing, cheating, corruption, tribalism, etc reign supreme, yes a place where people proudly tell you that they are devil, even evil-genius.

Nigeria represents this wicked world (man) where satan is dwelling and ruling as lord and king; because satan is dwelling and ruling in (Nigeria) the world, while God is dwelling and reigning in the Igbos (the believers) who are the sons of God. Even as the scripture has said, “Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” – 1 John 4:4. Now the fact that Nigeria is the replica of the world, comprising of two sets of people, namely; the unbelievers who are called the world, and the believers that are called the sons of God or kingdom of Christ/heaven Romans 8:14; Colossians 1:13 and 27; Ephesians 5:5. The greater one in the above quotation is God the King who is dwelling in the believers through Christ, the Spirit and kingdom of God, while he that is in the world (man), the unbelievers is satan – and the world now is Nigeria.

The demarcation between the believers - the sons of God, and the unbelievers – the world is clearly shown in the scriptures and Apostle Paul testified that satan is the wrath of God and men are the vessels of wrath or vessel unto dishonour, harbouring satan the wrath of God in their body – Romans 9:21-22; 2Timothy 2:20. While the sons of God, the believers are the vessels of mercy or vessels unto honour - harbouring God the King in their body through Christ the mercy of God to the world – Romans 9:23; 2Timothy 2:21. Therefore no good thing can come out of Nigeria because Nigeria is the world from where satan is persecuting Ndi Igbo the sons of God. Note that the sons of God presently are the Igbos, because that is the nation that produced the precious fruit of the earth unto God – hence God has given her his kingdom and has changed her name to Israel.

The same way Abraham had believed God (received in his body) and it was counted unto him for righteousness – Genesis 15:6. Although not all Igbos are the sons of God, for the sons of God are those who have received and are led by Christ, the spirit of God – Romans 8:14;9:6-8.

However, apart from the Igbos, there is a remnant of the sons of God that are scattered in many nations of the earth. This remnant will come from other nationalities and tribes, but what made them the sons and people of God is the spirit of God that is in them. Again the fact that the kingdom of God is given to the Igbos of Biafra does not make every Igbo man a son of God, rather it is only those Igbos who received the Spirit of God in them that are the sons of God. In the case of Israel, the true Israel were Caleb and Joshua out of the 603,550 men, excluding women and children that came out of Egypt, because the heart of the two men were right with God for they had believed the great things which God had done against the Egyptians and to the nations that hated them on their way to the promised land – hence only the two of them gave the good report of the land of Cannan which they had spied. While the other ten men that went with them had given evil report and were destroyed together with all the congregation of the children of Israel that believe their evil report. To this Apostle Paul testified as follows: “Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel” – Romans 9:6; Numbers 2:32.

Likewise every other man, irrespective of his nationality or tribe, as long as he has received Christ the Spirit of God, he is a son of God, and must be saved together with the precious fruits of the earth. But woe to those Igbos who had teamed up with Nigeria, and after collecting one form of gratification or the other allowed the humiliation and killing of his people. Invariably any man or nation that want to identify with God in order to escape from the great calamity besetting Nigeria and the world soon, must rise up stoutly in defence of Ndi Igbo and their brothers and sisters from the Eastern region of Nigeria. This was how Lot was saved when the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were burnt, because Lot took to his house, the two strangers that came to destroy the evil cities, not knowing they were angels sent by God. Lot had also assayed the impossible when he offered his two virgin daughters to the men of Sodom, in place of the two strange men whom he was determined to protect from the evil men of the cities, that wanted to rape them and so Lot and his family were saved because he heeded to their word and left the land – 2Peter 2:6 -9.

Note that your objection or rejection of this revelation will not matter, nor will your prayers change any thing – for the word of God standeth firm!

Remain blessed in the Lord


CHARLES ONYEBUCHI ONYENWE
(ISAIAH 66:1-2; 57:15, MATTHEW 11:25, 1CORINTHIANS 1:26-28; JAMES 2:5)

Posted by Administrator at 08:31 AM | Comments (0)

We got Hoodwinked Again

by Chibuzo Onubogu (Clayton, NC, USA) --- I can now say with all authenticity that Nigeria is country full of wise people yet stupidity reigns supreme. The most recent magic act that was performed on us should still be fresh on all our minds. Remember the Gbenga Obasanjo interview or non interview? That was the magic act.

Think my fellow country men/women, think! If you chose to believe the company line and call it a gaffe, or if you truly believe that Gbenga spoke from his heart, somewhere in that conversation lies the truth about how my country, your country, is being taken to the cleaners. In my own humble opinion, I truly believe that the only thing Gbenga omitted was his own father’s complicity in the whole caper.

In a system of government where the 2nd in command is treated with disdain, and sometimes even below the status of a houseboy, it would be highly impossible for Atiku to execute all the shady deals all alone. How can the number one micro manager in the world allow for such independence in all the underhanded shenanigans going on in his domain, the presidency? What I believe is that Gbenga may have had a few drinks (hic) and confessed the inner workings of a rotten administration. His craftiness was the deliberate omission of daddy in all the deals. There is also another possibility that the journalist who wrote the article conveniently removed any mention of daddy OBJ for fear of real persecution.

Once again the truth about this bunch of selfish rogues in the presidency is told, and all we do is crucify and castigate the messenger. Instead of investigating to find out the truth we rubbish the guy and turn him into one without respect for elders. We even make him apologize. Don’t speak ill of the elders my foot. If the elders are a bunch of “armed robbers” will we be saying the same thing? We talk so much about fighting crime and eliminating corrupt practices, yet there is no outrage on our part after reading the interview? We continue to wait for the day God will jump down from heaven and deliver us from the evil done against us by our own brothers and sisters. Haba my people! Gbenga Obasanjo handed us a rope and all we did was hang him with it. He cried out for help and we totally ignored him. What exactly will it take for us to truly rise up and take back our country? Don’t you think we have been lied to, used and abused enough?

Another issue is General Malu’s statements which is now the new rallying cry for lies, confusion, and deception. All those ranting and raving about his statements are no more bloodthirsty than he is purported to be. From those who want him dead to those who are calling for his disgrace every one of you is pathetic. In a democracy, people’s thoughts don’t kill. Isn’t there supposed to be some freedom of speech or expression? After reading the General’s remarks I don’t know what the noise is all about. General Malu thought about overthrowing Obasanjo, yet Obasanjo in the past had ordered the killing of innocent Nigerians and we are making so much fuss about it. I wonder who the real criminal is. Once again we are being taken down the path of stupidity just to make us lose sight of the real reason the General made his statements. According to an Igbo proverb: Onye uno ya na’ agba oku adigh achu oke.” “One whose house is on fire does not spend time trying to get rid of rats.” Nigerians arise and put out the fire that has been burning your house since independence. Leave the rat chasing to cats and other rat eating animals.

Another issue I have with all the dumb attacks on General Malu for thinking about a Coup is that of pure and total hypocrisy of Obasanjo’s defenders. Didn’t Obasanjo himself carry out a coup in 1975? Yeah, so people say we are in a democracy. What democracy? The one where there is no press freedom, the brand of democracy where people are never elected but rigged into office? We certainly have a brand of democracy where the majority of the populace and citizens do not know their rights. Since it is now a crime to think about coup what do we do to all those who actually thought about it and carried it out? How about arresting all those alive who have thought about, planned and carried out a coup and publicly disgracing all of them. Better yet, let’s kill them all. Now we know that it may just be what we need to eliminate all our leadership and corruption problems.

It is common knowledge that third world leaders including the ones in Nigeria have the penchant to run their countries like a private enterprise. We know that it has taken place in Nigeria before, so why would anyone with a semblance of sanity say that Gbenga Obasanjo would not know the inner workings of his father’s kingdom. Hey remember Ghaddafi, Sadaam Hussein, Abacha, Babangida, Mobutu, and Houphet Boigny. Have we forgotten that Daniel Arap Moi wanted his son to succeed him? How about Eyadema’s son succeeding him in Togo? There are many other the third world countries where we have children of rulers occupying positions that they either merit or not.

Posted by Administrator at 07:38 AM | Comments (0)

There is Not Much to Give Credit for: A Rejoinder to Paul Adujie, Re: President Obasanjo’s Diplomatic Finesse: Unheralded in Nigeria!

by Oyibo E. Odinamadu (Mrs.) (Raleigh, North Carolina) --- There is not much diplomatic finesse to herald at home, but a lot to unherald in Obasanjo’s Administrations of Nigeria, with reference to Paul I. Udujie’s write-up entitled "President Obasanjo’s Diplomatic Finesse Unheralded In Nigeria." It is very regrettable that through some persons in Nigeria, for what can be clearly seen as pecuniary reasons, according to Femi Fani-Kayode, President Obasanjo has chosen the path of destruction, rather than of rectitude and survival. The path he has chosen to thread, through some misguided emissaries, has degenerated from the ridiculous to the sublime.

IN NIGERIA, IT’S POWER FETCHED BY MONEY THAT CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY!

Yes indeed! Generals Babangida, Abacha and Abdulsalami institutionalized corruption in high places, not because they were Four or Five Star Generals in the Nigerian Army, but because of the money they acquired by corruption while in office. But it was Obasanjo who saddled the horse of corruption, equipped it with the reins, mounted and galloped away. Otherwise, how dare nincompoops like Femi Fani-Kayode, Paul Adujie, Okey Ndibe, and others like them, ignore all that is sacred and respectable in Igbo and Yoruba culture, and have the audacity to insult elders and the cream of intellectual excellence in the world, like Professor Chinua Achebe and Professor Wole Soyinka, simply because they happen to be Nigerians; and because they have the strength of character to speak out the truth against President Olusegun Obasanjo - a man who has ruined Nigeria and become a despot in office.

OBASANJO’S BRAND OF DIPLOMATIC OR MENTALITY FINESSE

Obasanjo’s brand of diplomatic or is it mentality finesse abroad is the type that makes him cringe for the Bushes and Tony Blair and to address them as “Master”. But one of the brands at home is the one by which he prostrates to Chief Adedibu several times, in behalf of Governor Ladoja, the elected Governor of Oyo State, and dragging Nigeria with him in that prostration. Another brand that he practices at home, not abroad, is the diplomatic or mentality finesse that pursues and promotes the “Demoncrazy” of exclusion rather than of inclusion. His brand of Democratic Finesse at home is the one where there should be no opposition and no dissenting voice. It is a Finesse which allows no dissenting voice and where, if any, the dissenter is hounded and put away. It is a diplomatic finesse and demoncrazy where the Head of State takes the lead in thuggery and the State security outfit becomes the strike-squad for the Head of State. It is a One-Man-Demoncrazy with the finesse where one man is the people, the party, the government and operates totally contrary to the Constitution he swore to protect and to uphold. It is an exclusive Demoncrazy where the people he claims to have voted him into office cannot call him to order? It is a Demoncrazy with the diplomatic finesse where might is right and the person who claims to have the people’s mandate has become totalitarian and a monster.

His brand is Demoncrazy that operates where the Head of State has become tyrannical and a robot. His is Demoncrazy with the diplomatic finesse where the Head of State has become so power-drunk that everybody else is declared an enemy of the State and charged with “treasonable felony”, unless one sings his praises and kisses his behind? His brand of diplomatic finesse at home is Demoncrazy where the Head of State has become: “Eze onye agwanam”, that is: “A king of ‘thou shall not tell me’.” It is a Demoncrazy where the Head of State claims to be the State and where sovereignty belongs to the Head of State and no longer to the people. A Democracy that operates with the finesse where there is no longer any freedom of speech and association as guaranteed by the Constitution. Obasanjo’s brand of diplomatic finesse at home is a Demoncrazy where citizens can no longer live and set up their businesses in the country where they like. It is a Demoncrazy where the Head of State has the power to order, at will, single-handedly, the closure of a citizen’s businesses, and his goods dumped into the ocean. The kind of diplomatic finesse that Nigerians get at home from President Obasanjo, the Head of State, is a Demoncrazy where the Head of State has his finger in every pie!!!

WHAT IS THERE TO HERALD?

It is very far fetched to see what President Obasanjo has accomplished by jumping all over the globe, leaving the people at home to complain, without redress, about him relishing globe-trotting rather than attending to the problems of governance at home. Is part of what he accomplished in the Conference of the African Union in Egypt – the connivance of the AU Heads of State to deviate from the provision of their Constitution and to keep the President of Sudan from assuming the post of the President of the AU after hosting the Conference, and giving it to the President of the Congo? What qualifies President Obasanjo, the out-going president and the one they elected, better than the President of the Sudan? Are they less guilty of the violation of human rights or of the elimination of people? What did he achieve in his peace-keeping in Daffur when the CNN is reporting this morning (Saturday, 3rd February 2006) of the escalating carnage that is still going on there – senseless killing, arson, raping of women, even elderly women, in the presence of their children, hunger and thirst, disease, no shelter – unabated? Is he claiming the success of Lady Sirleaf in the Liberian presidential elections as one of his so called diplomatic finesse when his own PDP here could not even let a woman win the nomination for local council chairmanship or governorship?

DEBT FORGIVENESS FOR THE POOREST AFRICAN NATIONS AND NIGERIA

It is a crying out shame that President Obasanjo, who presides over the sixth largest oil producer in the world, should go cap in-hand, begging for debt forgiveness, among the poorest and most destitute countries of Africa, and counting it as an accomplishment. Does he also count it as an accomplishment to be presiding over the poorest population of the world in the midst of such oil wealth? What about the Poverty Alleviation Programme? How have Nigerians been lifted up from poverty, in fact abject poverty and destitution, which the President does not see, has said does not exists, but which the whole world sees and talks about? What finesse is there to herald that he is: “Ogalanya n’ezi, ubiam n’uno”, that is: “Rich abroad and poor at home”? What about the Universal Basic Education Programme? How much has it succeeded, while he is establishing a university which will draw its student body from traders, daily paid jobbers at “Ogbo Manu”, Agboro from motor-parks, and he like? What percentage of children of school age are registered and in school, all over the country to warrant the appellation of the name “universal”? Why are some advantaged and others disadvantaged? How well are school fees paid and school supplies provided, in order to be heralded as a laudable programme?

OBASANJO IS AN ARCH CHAUVINIST AND A MISERABLE HYPOCRITE

I read it sometime ago when he said, while addressing a democracy group in Mexico, that all the Nigerian men with him there were chauvinists, because they believed that men will always be first. You see, that is what is mainly wrong with President Obasanjo’s assessment of situations in Nigeria – he and his chorus boys discount himself as being involved. As far as I am concerned, he is the first and foremost chauvinist in Nigeria. Every Nigerian man, except a handful of them, is a chauvinistic. Of course; any man who is a polygamist is an arch-chauvinist by equating so many women to himself as wives. Above all, polygamists in public office are super-arch-chauvinists of the first order, by usually using one wife to suppress the others, and by appearing and making the people and the world believe that they are what they are not. What diplomatic finesse is there in this hypocrisy to be heralded?

THE BANJUL CHARTER OF 1981 AND OBASANJO’S PRESIDENCY OF AU

How could it be said that President Obasanjo achieved any diplomatic finesse, as the President of the AU for the last two years, to be heralded when the Banjul Charter of the OAU, which was adopted since 1981, that is twenty-six years ago, has still not been adopted and domiciled by the State Governments, let alone implemented; and there is no hope in sight of it being adopted, domiciled and implemented? Is this to be heralded?

In 1981 the Organization of African Unity adopted the Banjul Charter on Human and Peoples Rights. Certain provisions of the document may also be interpreted to create a state duty to protect women from female circumcision. The Law for the prohibition of female genital cutting and mutilation (FGM) has been passed for Nigeria, but female genital circumcision is still going strong in Nigeria as if no law has been passed. That shows that it is not the wild claims of success that matter, but how far a law or measure is being implemented and enforced? What has President Obasanjo done for the women of Nigeria in this regard, or what is keeping him from wiping out the practice in Nigeria totally? Yet Paul Udujie will expect the girl-child and women of Nigeria to herald Obasanjo’s diplomatic finesse all over the world.
President Obasanjo should take a cue from Burkina Faso’s Melegue Traore, the traditional chief and former president of Burkina Faso’s National Assembly when he said, according to the Authoritative Link: "We are in no way abandoning African culture when we abandon female genital mutilation." We also hope that the conference of politicians, health and human rights NGOs, religious experts and traditional leaders in the Senegalese capital included Nigerian Christian and other religious leaders, whose stance has been to support retrogressive native cultural practices rather than Christian progressive and forward-looking reformations. We hope that Nigerians joined them in their rejection of female genital mutilation as not being against tradition. West African religious and traditional leaders meeting with political officials the first week of December 2005 affirmed their commitment to eradicating female genital mutilation, saying that: “To abandon the practice is not to reject traditional or religious values”. Nigeria must be one of the 28 countries of Africa and the Middle East where three million girls still undergo some form of genital cutting annually, according to the UN World Health Organization, as reported by the Authoritative Link.

PUNITIVE, DEHUMANIZING WIDOWHOOD PRACTICES IN NIGERIA

The Banjul Charter also includes the right to health, the right to be free of cruel and degrading practices, the right to sexual and corporal integrity, and the right to reproduction. A right to health is also provided for in Article 16 of the Banjul Charter, which states: Every individual shall have the right to enjoy the best attainable state of physical and mental health. In addition, Article 18(3) declares that the state shall ensure the elimination of every discrimination against women and also ensure the protection of the rights of the woman and the child as stipulated in international declarations and conventions. The women of Nigeria still live under punitive, demeaning and dehumanizing widowhood practices because the woman lost her husband as a man would lose his wife. Why must widows - young or old - suffer untold torture, hardship and deprivations, INCLUDING DISPOSSESSION OF LIFE AND PROPERTIES from their husband's families? Since these punitive, humiliating and dehumanizing practices obtain in all the ethnic nationalities of Nigeria, it is a matter for the Federal Government to legislate against for the whole country, and to stop such practices forthwith. What has President Obasanjo done to effectively extricate the women of Nigeria from these inhuman practices? NOTHING! Yet he is very proud of the Nigerian women he has appointed into his Cabinet who still live under these oppressive conditions described above in their respective ethnic nationalities. What diplomatic finesse are there for the women of Nigeria to herald for President Obasanjo?

THE RIGHTS OF TRIBAL GROUPS VERSUS THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

The preference of the International Organizations to support the tribal groups right to IDENTITY AND RECOGNITION as opposed to the RIGHTS OF THE GIRL-CHILD AND WOMEN TO BE FREE FROM CERTAIN PRACTICES, SAY, CHILD MARRIAGE, is the same trend of male domination which extends from the individual, to the family, to the community, to the state and to the international organizations. Tribal identity and recognition, as it were, are only found in the practices that oppress women, never in such practices as FACIAL SCARIFICATION BY MEN (Igbu Ichi), which has been banned ages ago without any fanfare. Ultimately, patriarchy establishes interdependence and solidarity among men, which enables them to dominate women - in most cases to hoodwink women. And in Igbo parlance, they say: “Ka eme nya ife ana-eme nwanyi”. (Do to her what is normally done to women). In effect, to trick her or hoodwink her, or leave her in confusion, wondering just what is going on or what has happened, while men get on with “taking care of business as usual”. The men at higher levels can buy off those at the lower levels by offering them power over those still lower, including women. It is this interdependence and solidarity, and closing of ranks among men, which is the strength of their domination over women, and by which men in authority, who can help women, just pay lip service. What has President Obasanjo done to break this chain of injustice in favour of the girl-child and women? NOTHING!!!

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN NIGERIA

The practice of wife-battering, which is condoned by Native Laws and Customs, to tame and discipline the woman, is one of the marks of IDENTITY of tribal groups. Domestic Violence or Wife Battering is treated with levity in Nigeria. Section 252 of the Criminal Code Laws of Nigeria 1990 defines assault and section 351 penalizes assault.

The criminal code is however silent on wife-battery. In reality, wife battery is treated by the Police as FAMILY AFFAIR and is, therefore, neither investigated, nor the batterer charged to Court or even restrained from battering his wife. IRONICALLY, IF THE WOMAN IS BEATEN TO DEATH, THE HUSBAND IS CHARGED TO COURT FOR MURDER. See the case of Nafiu Rabiu Vs. The State 1980 8-11 Sc. WHY MUST THE AUTHORITIES WAIT UNTIL THE WOMAN IS KILLED BEFORE THE PERSECUTOR IS RESTRAINED OR PROSECUTED? What has President Obasanjo done for women in this regard except keep quiet and pretend that these conditions do not exist? NOTHING!!!

Nigeria is a signatory to many International Conventions and Treaties and Human Rights Laws that guarantee women’s freedoms from discriminatory practices and equal fundamental rights as men. Theses include:

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights;
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women;
Convention on Political Rights of Women;
Slavery Convention of 1926 as amended; and
Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade; and
Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery.

It is the duty of the Federal Government, headed by President Obasanjo who goes to defend the human rights of the women of other African countries, to implement the international conventions and treaties concerning the fundamental human rights of the girl-child and women in Nigeria. These have been neglected over long periods of time, ESPECIALLY BY THE MILITARY RULERS WHO DO NOT WANT THEM TO EVEN BE MENTIONED.Yet he as well as the other MILITARY MEN WANT WOMEN TO CONTINUE VOTING FOR THEM TO CONTINUE RULING NIGERIA.
President Obasanjo should tell us which one of these United Nations Conventions he has domiciled and implemented for Nigerian women in the last nine years that he has been in the saddle, as Head of State of the Federal Government of Nigeria?

WHEN WOMEN WILL NO LONGER COMPLAIN

If the Constitution would be properly amended and the provisions of these Charters and Conventions complied with and enforced in Nigeria, women would not be complaining at all. But the snag is the unfavorable attitudes of the dominant group in power - men - towards implementing them. Therefore, the Charters, Conventions and Treaties, of the African Union and the United Nations, become mere paper tigers, toothless bulldogs, and the epitome of: Justice Delayed Which Is Justice Denied! A law just on paper is a stillborn and moribund law and, therefore, useless, void and of no effect! What has President Obasanjo done to change the situation? NOTHING!!!

ABROGATE, AMEND, CODIFY, CUSTOMARY LAWS AND HARMONIZE THEM WITH STATUTORY LAWS INTO ONE BODY OF LAWS
It will do a world of good to the people, especially to women, to have the most obnoxious of customary laws abrogated, some amended, and then codify and harmonize them, with the statutory laws, into one body of laws for each ethnic people, as it has been done in South Africa. There is no need to continue to have two or three bodies of laws, complicated with the unwritten and un-codified customary laws, for one and the same people. After all, the governments – customary and constitutional - are all in the hands of the people now as there are no more foreigners to hide from, fight or compete with. When the Laws are harmonized, then and only then will women know what laws that govern them and which they have to live by; not the ever fluid and changing customary practices as they are now. This is an initiative that a Head of State will have to take for the modernization of the laws of the land and governance. Has President Obasanjo or any of his predecessors in-office done anything about it? THE ANSWER IS A CAPITAL NO!!! what then do we herald?

FEMALE GENDER SPECIFICITY IN THE CONSTITUTION

The Constitution of Nigeria, which President Obasanjo, the man with diplomatic finesse has sworn to protect and to defend, lacks specificity about the female gender. For instance: the lack of specificity or the unwillingness of the Government, and even the international organizations, to specifically write in the feminine gender separately, in the Constitution and in statements to include women as persons, causes confusion, ambiguity and lacks clarity. The idea that the female gender is inclusive in the male gender is a fallacy and unfair. It is the same deliberate tactics of leaving women out, and having them go on to protest and to pressurize to the ears of men, which have been tuned off and deafened, that is still going on. If women are meant to be included as persons, much time and energy and stress would be saved by simply saying or writing in: “men and women; he and she; him and her”; from the very beginning. This ambiguity of the female being included in the male is mischievous, trickery, hoodwinking, fraudulent and a manifestation of the Government running with the hares and chasing with the hounds. President Obasanjo should be pressurizing, in behalf of women, to have the Constitution amended to re-arrange references to women equitably and to accommodate the girl-child and women properly, rather than to amend it so that he can stay on in office. What has President Obasanjo done for women in this regard? NOTHING! And yet they are expected to herald his diplomatic finesse!!!

TRAFFICKING OF THE NIGERIAN GIRLS AND BOYS

The children of Nigeria – girls and boys - are still being trafficked at home and abroad, with impunity, for domestic labour and sex trade. What has President Obasanjo done to save Nigeria’s children from this shameful state of affairs, other than to look the other way, as the home and foreign mass media report? NOTHING! I have read of a case where more than 50 children were going to be shipped overseas in ocean-going crates used to carry fish across the ocean to Europe and America before the traffickers were caught. This may not be an isolated case. But suppose that this consignment was not caught? The economic conditions at home that make parents to give up their children, to be taken overseas, in the belief that they would soon be sending money home to them, must be very desperate.

NO SOCIAL WELFARE BENEFITS OF ANY KIND TO ANYBODY IN NIGERIA

Above all, with all the oil-wealth of Nigeria, which Udujie says she is awash with, there is no Social Welfare Support for anybody in Nigeria - indigent widows and orphans, the unemployed and elderly or handicapped and destitute, etc. Why? It is because the Treasury of the country is looted by the men in high offices; there is no transparency in accountability; there is widespread financial impropriety and mismanagement; there is insatiable appetite of those who loot even though they have become richer than the State and Federal Governments; and because they have no PATRIOTISM and SHAME! THEY HAVE DONE NOTHING FOR THE PEOPLE! YET THEY ARE REQUIRED TO HERALD WITH FANFARE WHAT THEIR PRESIDENT HAS BEEN DOING FOR OTHER COUNTRIES!

THIRD TERM OR FOURTH TERM BID IS REAL

It is very good that Mr. Udujie outlined some of the things that are wrong with the PDP as well. Well placed PDP members have said it that what is wrong with their Party is President Obasanjo himself, because he would not let other people elected into offices do their jobs. He tries to do his job as well as the jobs of the other people. In other words, he meddles too much in other people’s jobs and businesses beyond what it should be. The President has also been reported as saying that he is all and all in the Party and in the Government, and that no one else in Nigeria can do the job as well as he would or better than he.

PRESIDENT OBASANJO’S HALLUCINATIONS OF GRANDEUR

President Obasanjo should know that he has lost the confidence of Nigerians, except those of the ones he pays to keep on singing his praises and to go on telling him what he wants to hear. He is even too cowardly and arrogant to talk to Nigerians directly himself. He keeps mute but prods other people with back-hand to go on saying one thing or the other or yes or no; in his behalf. But General Gowon has let the cat out of the bag by revealing part of the letter written to him by Obasanjo’s third-term promoters, prompting him to support his third-term bid, so as to enable him carry on with his programmes until he could see the light at the end of the tunnel. When will that be? When he chooses?

This is hallucinations of grandeur; the conceitedness of a man who has lost his head. Can the people supporting Obasanjo not see that this man has become too drunk with power; has become a robot; has no intelligible limits and, therefore, has to be stopped? If he cannot be made to understand that he should leave now that there will still be some ovation left for him, at least by his henchmen, he has to be dragged out of office, and be booed out in ignominy. It is said that: "Ijiji na enwero ezigbo ndumodu ka aneni nya na ozu”, meaning that: A fly that does not have good advice is buried with the corpse”. IF HE IS LEFT TO ACT BY HIMSELF, FOR 2007, OBASANJO WILL RIG THE ELECTIONS AND DECLARE HIMSELF WINNER, WITH THE HEEP OF HIS MENTORS, AS USUAL!!!

Is this not self delusion? The reason he wants to stay on in office is the very reason for which he should get out. Does he not know that Nigerians believe that he has exhausted his tricks and wits about governance and about staying in power? He does not even have to wait to exhaust his tricks and wits before leaving. He has exhausted his terms of office. Period! His problem is that he cannot get himself to leave the glow of the aura and trappings of the office – the limelight! This is the mindset that makes him see himself above the law and so cannot operate by the rule of law. In a way, it is the effect of faulty home up-bringing. If he had obeyed his parents as he should have, he would know that this stubbornness to hold on to the office is very counter-productive.

But leave he must. Governments are supposed to be progressive, successive and continuous, one person handing over to the other. Any Government that is worth its salt has a series of programmes on hand: some starting; some in progress; and others finishing, at any given time. For a Head of State to want to stay to see all of his programmes materialize means that he would be there till the end of his life, succeeding himself. Does he know that by that bid to stay, he is giving the impression that he has skeletons in the cupboard that he would not want anybody else to see? But the skeletons in his cupboard must be seen. His programmes must also be seen, assessed, evaluated, and some discontinued or continued, according to how relevant they are to the people’s needs and aspirations. Eleven years are enough for him to prove his mettle in the governance of Nigeria. It is time for him to throw in the towel!

OBASANJO IS “A DOG IN THE MANGER” WITH NDI IGBO

It is odd how President Obasanjo is using the Igbo to play on the Igbo – all for money. Are these Ndi Igbo trying to live up to the proverbial Igbo whose death is tested and confirmed when he does not awaken to the sound of a few pieces of coins in a tin-can, shaken at his ears? Almost all of his chorus boys are or have been Igbo – Ojo Maduekwe, Paul Udujie, Okey Ndibe, Frank Nweke Jr., Chris Uba, Governor Chimaraoke Nnamani, etc inspite of all the atrocities Obasanjo has committed against Ndi Igbo, and continues to commit on daily basis. Obasanjo’s latest on Ndi Igbo is his order to close Ibeto’s Cement Factory in Port Harcourt, which provides employment for hundreds of people that he could not. There is no Federal Government presence whatsoever in the South East, especially in Igbo land, except civil war memorials. And what Ndi Igbo are able to do for themselves, Obasanjo closes down and destroys. Is this the type of Obasanjo’s wicked diplomatic finesse that Ndi Igbo should herald?

This is a proper case of “a dog in the manger” – who would not eat what is in the manger, but would allow the any one that would eat to come close or to eat. How much more wickedness could President Obasanjo exhibit towards Ndi Igbo to satisfy his sadism and cruelty, simply because they had to defend themselves in a war that he and his colleagues unleashed on them? Are Ndi Igbo the only people that have ever been involved in a civil war? Ndi Igbo have been made to understand, according to an interview granted to Chido Nwangwu by Ikemba Odumegwu Ojukwu that he, President Obasanjo, has asked Ikemba Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu to denounce Biafra so that they could work together. I suppose, by extension, so that he could also forgive Ndi Igbo. I think that he would wait forever for Ikemba to renounce Biafra. Ndi Igbo would also be ready for more of Obasanjo’s antics; continue to work for the realignment of Nigeria; and to outlive Obasanjo and his ilk!!!

NDI IGBO WHO ARE PROMOTING OBASANJO TO BEWARE

Ndi Igbo who are promoting Obasanjo for credibility and a further term of office, like Chris Uba, should: “Fie isa n’anya”, which , literally, means to: “Wipe their eyes with all their fingers seven times”, as Ndi Igbo say it. Furthermore: “Onye atu gbulu nna ya ejiro mpi atu anwu mmili”, that is to say that: “One whose father was killed by a buffalo does not drink with the cup of a buffalo’s horn”. Besides, “Ejiro okwu ochu amu okwu”, and that is to say that: “One does not learn to speak by adopting murderous words or terms”. Ndi Igbo who are supporting and promoting Obasanjo should know what they are doing and where they are heading. They should take a cue from the cases of Major Hamza Al Mustapha, Lt. General Ishaya Bamaiyi, and Co. with General Sani Abacha. THAT DIRECTION WOULD APPEAR TO BE LEADING TO THE PROMISE OF: GOD’S CASE, NO APPEAL!!!!

Oyibo E. Odinamadu (Mrs.)

Posted by Administrator at 07:17 AM | Comments (0)

Ozodi Osuji Weekly Series on Psychology 2006, #8 of 52: A Brother's Call for Help is Ones own Call for Love

by Ozodi Thomas Osuji, Ph.D. (Seatle, Washington) --- All human beings want to be loved. Why so? They are love and only feel at home in love. In their original home, heaven, they live in love. Heaven is love; love is union.

They are perpetually connected to one another and to their creator, God. God is love and his children are love.

God’s children only feel happy when they are in love with one another and with their father. When they are outside love, union, they are unhappy.

Heaven is love and the earth seems the opposite of love. But because their true nature is love and they are happiest when they are in love, they are hurting when they are in a loveless place. The earth is a loveless place and the children of God are hurting, they live in pain and are crying out for love, for union with one another and with their father.

We are all calling on each other to love each other. We engage in this call in different ways. The best way to seek love is to love. If I love you and you love me that is the way it should be. Unfortunately, the world is not an ideal place. In this world, we seek love in different ways.

One of the ways we seek love is to attack people. All attack on other people is a call on them to love one, to love the attacker. All attack is a call for help.

The attacker believes that the person he attacks does not love him and he attacks him to offer him an opportunity to do one of two things: to respond as an ego and counter attack him and both separate from each other and go defend their individuated egos.
The alternative response to attack is to choose love. Our true self is Christ, the son of God who is as God created him, loving. When we live out of our Christ self, we can only love. In Christ consciousness, if other people attack us, we see their attack as a call for love, because they perceived us as, hitherto, not loving towards them (as having separated from them). Their attack on us is their call for us to forgive them, which means to love them. Their attack is a call for loves, which means to overlooking their attack and in doing so seeing their true self, the loving Son of God, the Christ, and loves them.
When we choose to overlook attack, to forgive and love attackers, we have behaved defenselessly, that is, we chose not to defend our ego.
Our ego and the body that houses it feel hurt and pained when attacked and respond with anger and counter attacks to defend it.
The ego feels hurt and seeks revenge; the ego bears grievances and wants to punish those who attacked it. The ego, the self that we are currently aware of as our self is always defensive, feeling attacked and defending itself, bearing grievances and seeking punishment.
Unfortunately, if the ego defends itself by attacking the person who attacked it, now that person feels attacked by him and counter attacks the person to defend himself and that way the world of mutual attacks continues. Thus, we continually attack, defend and attack each other. The consequence is living in a world of conflict and war, a world lacking in peace and happiness.
The egos pattern of response to attack is guaranteed to perpetuate a world of attack. The world of Christ, the world of forgiveness and love, on the other hand, is guaranteed to bring about peace, happiness and joy.
If a person attacks you and you forgive him instead of counter attacking him, that is, overlook his attack, you have ignored the reality of the ego and overcome the ego and its world and operated from the world of the Holy Spirit, the world of love and forgiveness.
The reward of forgiveness and love is peace and happiness for you (the forgiver). Your peace and joy you give to the person you forgive. (If that person is not a forgiving person hence not a loving person, he would not receive the peace and joy that you gave to him; but do not despair for the Holy Spirit receives it on his behalf and holds it for him until he does what would release it: forgive and love all children of God.)
The forgiving hence loving person is a bringer of peace and joy to a world at war with itself.

Any brother’s attack on you is his call on you to forgive and love him; his attack is a call for help from the person, you, that he feels is capable of helping him, teaching him the true meaning of love as forgiveness. It also means that the attacker is ready to learn the true meaning of love.
When a student is ready the teacher will appear; the attacker is a student of love, the attacked is the teacher of love
One must, therefore, forgive the attacker, that is, love him; in so doing, one gives him peace and joy; commodities lacking in his egoistic life.
What one gives to a brother is what one gives to ones self. One too is an ego and lacks peace and joy, so if one gives another brother peace and joy, one gives ones self peace and joy.
If I give a brother love and forgiveness, I give myself love and forgiveness; conversely, if I give a brother attack and pain, I give myself attack and pain.
The person you attack is likely to attack you and the person you love is likely to love you.
The other person is an extension or projection of ones self. What one does to him, one does to ones self. Love that person means love you; forgive that person means forgive you; attack that person means attack you. What you do to others you do to you. Giving is receiving; as you give you receive.

If you choose to respond to others attack from your separated, individuated self, your ego, you will feel hurt by their attack and feel angry and defensive. The ego responds with fear, anger, sadness, depression, paranoia, mania etc when it perceives itself attacked.
On the other hand, if you respond to attack from your Christ self, from forgiveness and love, you do not feel fearful, angry, sad, paranoid, manic etc; you feel at peace and are happy.
The choice is up to us how we respond to others seeming senseless attacks on us, to respond from ego frame of reference or from Christ frame of reference. Whatever frames of reference we choose to respond from we take the consequences.
If when attacked we respond with fear, anger and counter attack we experience lack of peace; if we respond with forgiveness and love we experience peace.
What do you want, peace or war? Others attack on you offers you the opportunity to decide how you respond and what consequence you receive, peace or war.

Other people are external pictures of us. Other people and the world mirror our thinking. The world is the out picturing of our individual and collective thinking.
We think in images and project those images out and see them as if they are external to us. The world is like a dream and whatever we see in it is a mirror of our thinking.
Because the world is our out pictured thoughts, the individual should not go about trying to change other people, the external world but, instead, should change his thinking. If you change your thinking, from attack and war to forgiveness and love, you see a world that mirrors peace and joy for you.
If at the present time you see a world where other people attack you, and attack each other, it means that they mirror your attack thoughts.
If you do not like the world you see, you should change your thinking rather than try to change other people’s behaviors.

A BROTHER’S CALL FOR HELP


Last night, I was at a meeting with some Nigerian brothers. One of them, for any number of reasons, became enraged at my wife and berated her. For a while, I sat quietly and observed the show he was putting out for us to see. Here is a middle aged man behaving like a five year old in his temper tantrums.
At a certain point, I made the mistake of trying to bring reason to bear on the situation. The first lesson we teach folks in anger management classes is never to argue with an angry person.

ANGER MANAGEMENT

If a person is angry he is semi insane. The thinking part of his brain, the cortex, has shut down and he is mostly operating from the hypothalamus, the animal part of the brain. He is now in attack-defend mood. He feels threatened and is defending himself, physically and or psychologically. He is like an attacked animal and is motivated to counter attack his attacker so as to survive. He is not amenable to reason. Therefore, you should not try to reason with him.
If you see an angry person, you should just walk away, or if you cannot walk away, you should try to keep quiet, as much as you could. You can aid your effort to remain calm by counting to ten, taking a deep breathe and holding your breath and then let it out slowly. You may visualize beautiful scenes, like walking on a beech, in a bed of roses, or whatever makes you feel good.
Whatever you do, do not respond with anger to the angry person’s outburst. Anger management inheres in keeping cool when others are loosing their tempers.
I should have said nothing when this brother was verbally and emotionally abusing my wife, asking her who the hell she thinks that she is insisting that he follow set procedures etc. I piped in with what seemed a redirect and he shifted his anger to me and actually got physical. He was, more or less, like a menacing gorilla, beating his chest in an effort to seem powerful and scare other predators away from his territory.
When he became enraged, I remained calm so as not to provoke him further. Apparently, my demeanor irritated him further and he asked me to leave his house (the meeting was at his house). I got up to leave and he followed me, literally pushing me. It was a mess. But I managed to keep my head cool and left.
I could not believe what happened. I have run many groups for domestic violence batterers and know enough about anger management to know that a man who behaved as this brother did is probably a danger to those around him. Obviously, the brother has anger problem. The chances are that he abuses his wife and children and probably needs to receive anger management training. (His anger is probably rooted in paranoid grandiosity, sense of persecution and jealousy.)

THE PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CAUSES OF ANGER

People feel angry for a number of reasons, including a feeling that they are physically attacked. Anger is a response to perceived attack, real or imagined, on ones integrity. The angry person feels attacked, threatened and his body pours out adrenaline, a neuro exciter which speeds all the organs of his body urging him to fight back. In anger response, the individual perceives an obstacle and is trying to remove it; he feels frustrated in his drive to realize a goal and anger is a mechanism for removing that obstacle on his path to goal attainment. People can kill those they perceive as obstacles to their doing what they want to do.
In our modern world, seldom are people physically attacked to make them angry, so as to defend their lives. The most common source of anger is feeling of psychological attack. It goes like this. The individual has a certain haughty self concept. He imagines himself very important and powerful. Of course, he is not. It is fictional superiority, power and importance, not real power and impotence.
The personality disordered individual presents his desired ego ideal, the important self, to other people to relate to.
When he feels that they did not validate his fictional important self, he feels denigrated and made unimportant. He experiences narcissistic rage. His anger is really from hurt pride.
He uses anger to restitute his injured vanity. His intention is to seem powerful and in anger he is powerful.
The angry person is motivated by power and control. He is what psychoanalysts used to call a neurotic, a man chasing a false important self concept, self image. In today’s psychiatric terms, he has personality disorders, most probably narcissistic and paranoid personality disorders.
(The angry brother has all the indices of paranoid personality, I could see his quest for grandeur, persecutory feelings and inordinate jealousy, all features of paranoid personality. He probably beats up his wife when he feels that she is fooling around with other men and or accuses her of fooling around. He probably intimidates his wife and children with his terrorist behaviors; his anger is psychological terrorism at work; he wants to use it to get folks to feel fear and out of fear do as he wants them to do.)
To heal neurotic anger, one thing is required: the anger prone person must change his self concept and desist from questing after fictional superiority and importance.
The individual must have a realistic self esteem that sees ones self as the same and equal with other people, but not as inferior or superior to them. If he corrects his neurotic self concept and self image he would no longer be misinterpreting other people’s innocent behaviors as attacks on his imaginary important self-concept.
This brother has a false important self concept, self image, and a deluded, grandiose self concept and believed, falsely, that other people insulted his imaginary important self and his anger was a futile effort to seem important.
Alas, acting angrily made him seem like a five you old boy; he seemed pathetic in his flailing around in anger.

When I got home I wrote a memo to those present at the meeting stating my surprise at what transpired.
In the morning, I woke up to see more than five emails from the brother. He wrote at length about his understanding of what transpired.
He boasted how he is a rich man, a successful man and how I am a poor man, a failure in life etc. He bragged and praised himself in every which way his infantile thinking could imagine. At some point he began to read mind and said that I had asked my wife to insult him so as to provoke his outrage and that we had planned it to sue him to get his money! Now we are talking about transient psychosis, delusional disorder with aspects of mania. Clearly, the brother has an underlying sense of inferiority and inadequacy and felt a compulsive need to mask it with his desire for superiority; he pursues the fiction of superiority; he is a pathological liar; he is always hatching tales of how important he is; how his father is an ambassador, how his family are millionaire; how he was a professor at a university…he had at one time taught at a community college and that is the only truth in his fanciful yearns.

For a while, my ego kicked in and felt insulted by this man. My insulted ego asked me to respond in kind to the brother’s verbal onslaught. My responses would be in the nature of defenses, trying to present me as right and him as wrong.
Luckily, I remembered A Course in Miracles famous quote: would you rather be right or happy? If you insist on being right and in seeing others as wrong, and your rightness pours patrol unto fire and you experience conflagration all around you, is that what you want?
Even if you are right, why don’t you allow the other guy to feel right and let go of your own ego’s desire to be right? So, I decided not to defend myself. I went to Church and came back from church and wrote this essay. (This essay is based on Helen Schucman’s A Course in Miracles philosophy; a philosophy that I independently arrived at.)

At Church, the minister talked about how people have pain in their lives and are carrying that pain to wherever they go to. We tend to engage in geographic therapy, thinking that if we go elsewhere that our issues would be resolved. But the fact is that we take our psychological pains with us to wherever we go to. We must, therefore, stop and look into our minds and understand our issues and try to solve them rather than run from them.
Most human beings are walking wounded persons. They experienced psychological injuries and are living in psychological pain. At best, they are worried well neurotics.
What needs to be done is to pause and understand ones issues and deal with them rather than deny them.
This boastful brother obviously feels inordinately inferior and has a need to seem very superior and important. His life is geared towards seeming like he is a very rich, powerful and important person. He goes about calling himself professor when he is at the moment unemployed. Apparently, being called professor makes him seem very important.
Long term psychotherapy and anger management would probably help him deal with his unresolved issues. For one thing, he would learn to accept himself as he is and no longer have to put on airs, wear the mask of being an important person. He is suffocating in that mask of importance he wears. He lives in psychological pain, anxiety and anger, and paranoia. He would develop unconditional positive self acceptance. He would see his real self as good enough and no longer have an inner compulsion to tell lies about his non-existent accomplishments.
The brother’s issues are not the essence of this essay but my reaction to them. His behavior is an opportunity for me to choose once again, to choose differently. Hitherto, I had chosen the ego (separated self) and behaved like the ego. In ego state, I am motivated to counter attack, to punish my attackers etc. That path only leads to defense and more defenses, hence the world’s conflict.
This brother’s attack offers me an opportunity to choose differently, this time, to choose to respond to him from my Christ self.
Christ is the son of God as God created him. Christ is our true self. Christ is love. When Christ perceives attack on himself, he forgives the attacker and loves him.
Christ does not defend himself; Christ does not bear grievances and grudges, Christ does no seek punishment for the wrongs done to him; Christ knows that this world is a dream of the opposite of heaven. Heaven is unified and this world is a dream of separated self.
In heaven, we share one self, the unified self, Christ, the Holy Son of God. Christ, the son of God is in his father, as his father is in him and he is in his brothers. There is no space or gap between one son of God and another and the son of God and his father. God is in his son and his son is in him; the two share one self. God is one side of a coin and the Son of God is the other side of it. God and his sons share one self and one mind.
Christ is always forgiving and loving. He sees others attack on him as a call for love when love is missing. In that light, this brother has attacked me. Why did he do so? He probably felt that I did not love him. How so? He probably felt that I did not respect his desired power and prestige.
He goes about calling himself a professor and I call him by his first name. That probably makes him feel disrespected. All told he probably sees me as not validating his assumed important self. Obviously, he wants to seem important and powerful and wants those around him to collude with him and see him as such. If he is affirmed as an important person, his ego feels good but if not his ego feels humiliated.
Moreover, in the said organization he was bucking to become the president. He tried his best to make alliances with other members so that they would vote for him as the president. Unfortunately for him, he does not have leadership and managerial skills. He is not a doer, he is a mere talker, a man who wants the world to see him as a boss but does not understand what bosses do; bosses work harder than the average worker. Where the average worker puts in eight hours of work a day and goes home, managers often work double that time.
Apparently, he saw me as a rival, as an opponent for leadership position. I did not see him as a rival. I did not see myself as in competition with him. What is there to compete for? I am not interested in false power and wealth.
So how do I respond to him? I was tempted to respond to him from my ego. But the ego is a false self, not my true identity.
My true identity is Christ and that means that I must forgive and love him; his attack on me is a call on me to love him, for he perceived me as not loving towards him.
I choose forgiveness and love. In forgiving and loving him I give peace and joy to me; so I am not doing him a favor by forgiving him, I am doing me a favor.

MY ALLEGED HATRED OF IGBOS


In one of this man’s letters to me, he talked on and on about how I hated Igbos.
Translation? He believed that I hated him, an Igbo. Do I hate Igbos? Do I hate him? Nothing could be further from the truth.
Somewhere, I pointed out that Igbo culture is very conditional in accepting its people; people tend to be accepted when they succeed and ignored when they did not. This produces fear of rejection in Igbos. Many of them strive to succeed and, in fact, as the world considers these things, but not as God knows them, succeed. However, they tend to pay a heavy price for living in a conditionally accepting culture.
Karen Horney, Carl Rogers and other psychologists have taught us that a conditionally accepting culture tends to breed people who hate their real selves and identify with false ideal false selves. They invent a composite picture of a successful person and want to be like him and hate themselves to the extent that they do not approximate that ideal social self-concept and self-image. They have an obsessive compulsive desire to measure up to the picture of success and fear being a failure; Igbos, in general, fear not being like the person their society would not accept.
Where this fear of failure is intense, some Igbos use creative imagination to invent fictional successful selves for themselves and identify with them. In doing so, they develop neurosis, personality disorders, even psychosis, such as delusional disorder and mania.
(In mania there is excited thinking and behaving, a feeling of euphoria, a belief that one has enormous powers, powers that one dos not have, poor judgment and some delusional beliefs, such as seeing ones self as wealthy and all powerful, when one is not. In delusion one believes what is not true as true, such as the brother believing the make belief world where he is very rich and all powerful and others are poor and weak. There is grandiosity, persecution, jealousy etc in delusional disorder. Such persons tend to be very fearful and angry. The brother is obviously a fearful and angry person. He does not even know what true courage is: to forgive and love all God’s children despite their different conditions on earth.)
Conditionally accepting Igbo culture produces people who feel inadequate and seek adequacy and that often lead some to denigrate other persons so as to obtain compensatory sense of superiority to them.
Who does not know that Igbos would like to feel superior to Yorubas and Hausas and other Nigerians?
No human being is superior to others. The very desire for superiority is neurotic; if that desire is believed it is psychotic.
An insane person is a person who believes that he is superior to other persons. A sane person is a person who knows that he is the same and equal with all human beings. The president of a republic is exactly the same as the beggar on the street.


The brother’s mail to me tried to convince me that he is a successful person and that I am a failure in life. He struggled mightily to present himself as powerful and me as powerless. (Clinically, these are classic paranoid symptoms. See David Swanson et al, The Paranoid; William Meissner, Paranoid Process; Psychotherapy for the Paranoid Process; David Shapiro, Autonomy and the Rigid Character and, of course, DSM IV sections on the various types of paranoia: schizophrenia, delusional disorder and personality disorder.)
This man’s claims about how rich and powerful he is, his boasting about power he does not have made the point that I was trying to make that Igbo conditional acceptance of people produces neurotics and psychotics.
Now, suppose that it is, in fact, true that he is richer than Bill Gates should not that make him humble?
He is rich? The man’s credit rating is so abysmal that when we sought certain securities and asked him to secure them he said that no financial institution would look at his request. He is so rich that I essentially foot the bill of the organization.
I have seen mentally ill folks who were eating out of garbage dumps but still claimed to be billionaires, or if they have religious ideation, Jesus Christ or whoever their paranoid grandiosity could latch unto. These people feel inferior and want to seem superior and tell tall tales of how powerful and rich they are.
If, in fact, a human being is rich and powerful common sense ought to teach him to be grateful to God for blessing him. But this deluded brother feels a need to tell the world that he is rich even though he is demonstrably dependent on his wife for supporting him. The poor woman works double shifts to help support him while he presents an image of a successful rich man to the world.
The real issue is that somehow I had given him the impression that I hate him and hate Igbos. I have heard that some other Igbos apparently read my constructive criticism of their culture as hatred of them.
It is sad that in my effort to understand people, as they are, I had given some persons the impression that I do not like them. This is a mistake. I apologize. I love Igbos and all human beings.


IGBO SENSE OF PERSECUTION

It is necessary to understand that this brother’s boastfulness and anger is partly rooted in his Igbo sense of persecution. Many Igbos, apparently, believe that other Nigerians persecute them.
(Anger is biosocial in origin; in this essay, I stress the social aspect of it; I am, however, mindful that there is a biological aspect to it; angry persons tend to be excitable persons; they probably inherited a tendency to have quick somatic arousal; a situation that suggests over active adrenaline and other neuro exciters and or low neuro inhibitors like GABA. This paper will not address the biochemistry and biophysics of human thinking and behavior.)
This sense of persecution is partly empirical and partly rooted in their personal psychologies. It is true that some Nigerians do not like Igbos and in the past had killed them. Yet we must observe that the psychology of Igbos contribute to their unfortunate fate. Generally, they present a fictional important self to other people and bid them to acknowledge that grandiose self concept and self image. When their false self is not acknowledged by other people, they feel paranoid sense of persecution.
The solution to this insanity is for them to deconstruct their self concepts, give up desiring ideal perfect, all powerful self concepts, reconstruct their self concepts and accept their real selves, a self that is the same and equal with all persons. Each of us is the same and equal with all persons. As long as the individual pursues superiority and power he would be prone to paranoid fear, anger, sadness and hypomania.



SOME METAPHYSICS


It is doubtful that human beings can live without religion (metaphysics). A true metaphysics enables folks to develop inner peace and happiness; it enables them to have equanimity and not be disturbed by the exigencies of this world.
Here is a metaphysics that might help folks with anger problems. Anger is never justified just, as fear is never justified. Where there is anger and fear there is no love. Fear is the absence of love; anger is the absence of love. Love is union; only separated persons, egos, feel fear, anger, depression and paranoia, mania and other mental upsets.
God created us; he created us by extending his one self into each of us. Each of us is an extension of God, a part of God, a son of God.
God is union. We are eternally unified with God and with each other.
God has one self and one mind. We all share the one self, one spirit and one mind of God. In eternity (which is forever, including the present) all are unified.
At some point, a point that has never occurred, we desired separation from God and from each other. We sought to go seem special, to go seem to have created ourselves. Apparently, we resented the fact that God created us and wanted to create God, create ourselves and create each other.
Our wishes for self creation and separation are impossible of gratification, for God created us and we cannot create God or create ourselves.
What we cannot satisfy in heavenly reality we dreamed.
This world is our dream of separation. On earth, each of us dreams that he has a separated self, a self housed in body, a self living in space, time and matter. He sees gap between him and other people; it takes time for him to reach other people. His body is wired in such a manner that he feels pain when it is hurt hence feels fear of being hurt.

THE EGO

On earth, each of us invents a separated self concept and translates it into a pictorial self image for him to see. Each of us also invents self concepts and images for other people and for whatever he sees. The world is a place where self concepts, that is, separated selves, seem to interact.

THE HOLY SPIRIT

When the Son of God, all of us, seemed to separate from his father, God, and from each other, God the father entered our world as God the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the correction principle. He is here in the temporal universe to teach us that our real home is unified, not separated.
Now there seem three Gods: God the father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. This phenomenon is also called the Holy Trinity or Triune.
God the father is the transcendent God; God the Holy Spirit is the immanent God in the temporary universe; God the son is us, the collective us, all creation.

Our ego is our earthly personality; it is the separated self that believes that it created itself and created God. We navigate the world with our ego, our earthly personalities.
In our earthly mind are three parts: the right mind (where the Holy Spirit and Christ are), the left, wrong mind, where the ego is and the unified one mind of God and his Son.

On earth, each of us thinks and behaves from his left mind, the ego mind. The Holy Spirit, the right mind, urges him to try to think and behave from the right mind.
The right mind, the Holy Spirit, Christ mind, is the mind that forgives and loves all people. It sees the past, present and future and overlooks them and knows that there is only one time, the eternal present of God.
The ego mind is the mind that bears grudges and grievances and does not forgive those who attacked him. The ego mind sees the attacker as guilty and wants to punish him. The ego mind maintains this world.

The mission of the Holy Spirit is to teach us to remember our real self, the Christ self, which is represented by the Holy Spirit, in the right mind, and respond to others attacks on us from that perspective, that is, to forgive and love the attacker.
If the individual responds from the right mind, forgives and loves all people, he is rewarded with peace and happiness.
Peace and joy are the gifts of God, the gifts of behaving as God wants us to behave, forgive and love one another.
If you forgive others their attacks on you, you are doing yourself a favor, you are giving yourself peace and joy, and extending that peace and joy to the person you forgive. However, if the person you forgave is not yet a forgiving person, he will not receive the peace and joy you gave him; the Holy Spirit will receive it for him, waiting for him to learn to forgive and love and then receive those gifts of God.

REAL SELF, HAPPY DREAM, GATE OF HEAVEN AND HOLY INSTANT

When an individual consistently forgives and loves all people, he lives in peace and joy. He is metaphorically living at the gate of heaven (though separated, he is near union). He is not in heaven for heaven is a place of formlessness and perfect union.
(Only the formless, the same and equal can unify; heaven is the abode of the formless, same and equal persons. The earth, on the other hand, is the abode of form, differences and inequality; the different and unequal cannot unify, they must be separated. If you desire heaven’s union you must accept our sameness and equality and stop defending ego differences and inequality. The brother sees himself as better than me, that is, he is defending his ego, and that is, he is insane for sanity lies in accepting all people as equal.)
On earth we live in forms, in bodies and therefore are not in heaven. But if we approximate heaven’s condition, love, via forgiveness, we are at the gate of heaven. We are still living in the world of illusion, still dreaming that separation is possible but now we are having a happy dream. We are now living in the real world, a world that though still separated approximates the world created by God: is peaceful and happy, what Bahaullah called the lesser peace; heaven is the greater peace. The happy dream, heaven’s gate, the real world, purgatory, call it what you like, is our world reinterpreted by the Holy Spirit and made a bit loving, a bit unified.

The forgiving and loving person, though still in the world of space, time and matter, occasionally experiences union with God, heaven; he occasionally perceives the empirical world disappear and he enters the spiritual world, the abode of oneness, a place where there is no you and I, no subject and object, no seer and seen, a place of perfect oneness, hence perfect peace and happiness.
Heaven cannot be described in words, so we cannot describe it. It is, nevertheless, real; in fact, it is the only reality there is. Our world is a dream, a fictional place with fictional selves, ego personalities, and dream figments going about thinking that they are real and are important. Important, indeed, their bodies are food for worms and worms are food for other organisms.

SALVATION, REEMPTION, DELIVERANCE, CHRIST’S SECOND COMING, LAST JUDGMENT

Each of us meets heaven’s conditions at his own time. He does so when he learns to forgive and love all people. Salvation, redemption and deliverance means that one is now totally forgiving and loving; they mean emancipation from the clutches of the ego and its pain, fear, anger, sadness, paranoia etc. To live in ego state, on earth, in the world of separation is to live in fear and anger; to feel fear and anger is to live in hell. (Our temper tantrum throwing brother lives in ego state, in fear and anger, in hell. Have pity on him and forgive him; but know who you are having pity for; you. You are having pity for you, for the collective son of God. The son of God sentenced himself to pain and suffering by seeking separation.)


When a person consistently forgives other people, overlooks the attacks on him, he has passed the last judgment on the ego and its world; he has renounced the ego and returned to his true identity, Christ, the unified self, the Holy Son of God who is as his father created him, unified with his father and all his brothers. He now lives in peace and happiness (the lesser peace).
The forgiving and loving person joins the saviors of the world (a savior is a person who forgives and loves all people) and works with them in trying to save those who still live in the ego, in fear, in anger (he teaches them how to overcome anger, via forgiving attack).
When all of us have learned to live from our Christ self, the self directed by the Holy Spirit, are forgiving and loving, the world disappears and we all experience formless oneness, heaven; as it were, we the sons of God disappear into God and he into us and the dream of separation ends. We résumé our eternal mode of existing, in unified spirit.

The end of this empirical world may take millions of years before it is accomplished. In the meantime, each of us must seek salvation, that is, learn to forgive and love all persons at all times. To the extent that each of us learns to forgive and love he is saved and lives in peace and happiness and experiences occasional Holy Instant, union with all.

GOD, LOVE, UNION, PEACE, JOY, BLISS

In reality, we always live in love while imagining ourselves in a loveless place; we are always in union while dreaming that we are in the world of separation; we are always in God while thinking ourselves in ego states.
To know this fact, one must forgive and love at all times. Forgive others attack on you, which forgives your own attacks on other people, and experience oneness, unified spirit, heaven.



SUMMARY

Last night, a brother verbally abused my wife and me. My ego perceived his behavior as a psychological attack on it and urged me to counter attack him. If I do so, he would defend himself and counter attack me. The result is that we would separate from each other and perpetuate the world of separation.
We came to this world by attacking each other and the world is maintained by our attacks on each other.
Our mutual attacks push each other away, thus enabling us to experience the separation we wish to experience. This brother attacked me thus urging me to separate from him and if I fall into his trap, I would separate from him and in so doing continue living in my ego state, in separation hence feeling the gifts of the ego: fear, anger, sadness, depression, paranoia, mania and other mental upsets egos experience.
This brother’s seeming uncalled for attack (at an unconscious level, I asked him to attack me, for there are no accidents in God’s universe; we experience what we desire to experience, what we want to learn from; I wanted to learn about his angry nature and, perhaps, help him heal it) offers me an opportunity to choose again, to choose differently, this time to love rather than hate, to forgive rather than bear grievances.
Actually, to forgive him is very simple. Everything he said about me is false. Not one word he said about me is correct. His perception of me is delusional, paranoid, period. He is not processing reality accurately, not even in ego terms. He is operating from an excited nervous system and is actually in a minor manic episode (hypomania…he said all sorts of rubbish about me that any one with the slightest knowledge of me would know that he was not talking about me; he was projecting his paranoid thinking to me). Because I realize that he is experiencing transient psychosis hence had thought disorder with characteristic word salad, confabulation and illogical association I do not have to be angry at him. I must overlook everything he said.
To overlook others verbal and or physical attacks is to forgive them. To forgive is to love, for in a world of mutual attacks forgiveness is the true meaning of love. (On earth to forgive is to love; in eternity there is no attack, only pure love, that is, union and its peace and joy.)

I choose the gospel of the Holy Spirit rather than the gospel of the ego, forgiveness rather than grievance and attack. I totally forgive this brother. I totally love this brother. In doing so, I give me peace and happiness; in giving me peace and joy, I give him peace and joy…though he may not yet receive it, given his confused emotional state, the Holy Spirit has received my gift to my brother for him. He will receive my gift when he heals his psychological disorders.
The brother obviously has personality disorders and anger management issues that he needs to go address in psychotherapy. He needs to deal with these issues at the secular psychological level and finally seek some spiritual understanding as to why we live on earth. He will find his God and his real self, Christ, in his own way, not my way, for each of us came here alone and must find a solution that fits his issues. We, however, must return home in the company of each other, when we forgive and love one another.
Brother you did not attack me. You did not do anything to my real self. You abused my false separated self.
That which can be abused and eventually destroyed has no worth. The ego and its body are valueless.
The part of us that has worth, our spirit cannot be attacked and or harmed by any one; he is safe in his father’s mind, for our minds leave not their creator’s mind.
Brother I forgive you but go seek help for your anger and psychological issues. However, it is not for me to worry about your issues. The sole function of an atonement worker is to atone for his own sins, to heal himself by forgiving all people. I have healed myself by forgiving you and all of us. And in doing so find the peace of God. Peace and joy is preferable to the transitory wealth that tickles your fancy.
The reader of this piece may think that I made this brother out as the guilty one and myself out as the innocent one; him as the sick one and I as the healthy one. Nothing could be further from the truth than that. The brother is obviously sick. His sickness, however, is my sickness projected out for me to see and heal. He is me mirrored for me to see. His Igbo culture based issues are mine, too. His temper tantrums were the way I used to react many years ago. When I was eighteen years old, I remember reacting exactly as I saw this man react to attack, real or imagined. I acted out at others, was angry at those that I thought had done something bad to me, when, in fact, they had not. This man thought that I did something bad to him when in fact I did not. He is me writ large. He presented my issues for me to see them clearly and heal them. (He is also you, for his apparent paranoid reaction is the way human beings react when they feel attacked, real or imagined.)
As for guilt and innocence, he is innocent, for all children of God are eternally innocent. They have not separated from God and have not done what we see them do on earth. They do what they do only as in dreams, and what is done in dreams is not real.
We all remain as our creator created us: innocent, guiltless and sinless. But in time, on earth, we seem guilty. We do bad things to each other. What we need to do is to correct our errors and mistakes, not to crucify each other. (The Holy Spirit’s mission is to correct our errors.)
The brother has to correct his ego based mistakes and learn to love people. In the meantime, it is not my job to worry whether he forgives; my one task is to be the one who forgives all God’s children. In forgiving all of us, I become an example for other people to imitate.
The ego is a tricky thing and those who trust and ask it to guide them always lose. We worked hard to achieve an objective and just as we achieved it our egos clashed and self destruct.
Those who redirect their ego goals and make them in alignment with the purpose of the Holy Spirit, God, that is, make them forgiving and loving, ultimately, achieve their goals.

Peace and joy to all my brothers in Christ, the one holy Son of God.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji
Ozodi@africainstituteseattle.org

Posted by Administrator at 06:43 AM | Comments (0)

Why Kill Another Man's Wife

by Chibuzo Onubogu (Clayton, NC, USA) --- I read with bewilderment and utter surprise the article where Abubakar Rimi claims that he knows his wife’s killer. He went further to say that it was some businessman residing in Abuja. My God, is this the state that our country has really degenerated into.

The brutal killings of Barrister Igwe and his wife is still fresh in our memory, and an unsolved mystery. Also we have the murders of Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, Marshall Harry and others still in question, now its Abubakar Rimi’s wife? I am not a saint, but it is near impossible for me to really understand the idea of taking an innocent life. I am assuming her innocence based on the fact that she may have been killed for what she did not know. If Rimi is to be believed, then this must either be a business deal gone bad, or the businessman in question does assassinations for a living. If the target was Rimi, what then is the meaning of killing his wife? Is this the part of the murderous villains residing in the ruling PDP as described by Wole Soyinka? We can recall the statement made by the Professor after Bola Ige was brutally assassinated.

What is it that could have transpired between Abubakar Rimi and the person or persons he believed killed his wife? Whatever it is, does the end result have to be the death of another? In Nigeria of today, it has become quite obvious that human lives now have equal or less value than that of animals .The wanton and reckless murders occurring now seems similar to the slaughtering of cows, goat and sheep. In fact, human lives really do not have any value in Nigeria except if the dead person or persons were rich.

Case in point; while on my recent trip home to Nigeria, I saw a very highly preventable accident while travelling from Onitsha to Lagos. A truck travelling from Lagos to Onitsha overloaded with what appeared to be bags of Tom Tom mints, went from its side of the expressway to the other side and ploughed into a bus and a 504 car killing all except the driver of the truck. First issue here is that the truck had no business going that distances carrying more than its capacity based on the deplorable state of parts of the road. Where were the police and Road Safety? Another issue with the vehicle was how it looked like it belonged to the junkyard instead of being used as a means of transporting that much cargo. Again, whatever it was that caused it to lose control may have been unavoidable, but the thick forest in the median had no business being there, because when it lost control it showed that it went a long way in the median before it got on the other side of the road destroying unsuspecting lives.

In a country of so much unemployment, would it be a crime to get people employed to cut the grass on the expressway before they grow into forests. All these are simple safety matters which could have been addressed if there is value placed on the life of every Nigerian.

In the case of the assassination of Saudatu Rimi are we going to have the same endless and fruitless search for her killers? Is this going to fall by the wayside as per the deaths of Dele Giwa, Alfred Rewane, Moshood Abiola, Kudirat Abiola, Barrister Igwe and his wife, Bola Ige, Musa Yaradua, Tunde Idiagbon, Marshall Harry, and Chuba Okadigbo? Wow we now have surpassed The United States in terms of unexplained mysterious deaths of prominent citizens. What it tells me is that there is total official misconduct, connivance and collusion in these deaths. I have not even done a death count on the lesser known Nigerians who have been killed by the Police, by unnecessary accidents, by worthless arguments, by armed robbers, by their own family members and other avoidable means. I reiterate that we have become a society with no value or premium placed on human lives.

Just like Rimi pleaded in his statement about finding his wife’s killers, I join him in his appeal for the truth to be made known to the public. Wouldn’t this be a nice addition to Obasanjo’s so called war on corruption? Maybe this time a killer will be unmasked and end the spate of unsolved mysteries. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. Adieu! Saudatu Rimi! Maybe your death will mark the beginning of something new in Nigeria…the search for the truth.

Chibuzo Onubogu writes from the USA.

Posted by Administrator at 04:10 AM | Comments (0)

Those 12 Offensive Cartoons-Caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhamad (PBUH)

by Paul I. Adujie (New York, United States) --- What if I was a Muslim? Would I, have liked this idiotic portrayal of Islam’s Prophet Muhamad? But of course not! So, why is such portrayal acceptable to some?

In my opinion, that is all the questions that the journalists at Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten and their sympathizers all over Europe needs to answer or resolve.

How would they feel, if their holy of holies is desecrated and demeaned?

It will be recalled that Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten in September 2005 published their silly series of cartoons which portrayed or depicted Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) as if with a turban, but grenade like turban, with a lighted fuse.

In essence, it suggested that the prophet was a violent symbol or an explosive representative of Islam and by extrapolation, Islam itself is violent.

Expectedly, adherents of the Islamic faith, took strong exception to these calculated affront committed by these journalists in the name of press freedom. But press freedom must be exercised with a great sense of responsibility.

And media freedoms cannot be limitless or irresponsibly exercised.
How would Christians appreciate the portrayal of the Christian Cross and Jesus Christ if depicted and portrayed, in such depraved and violent manner? How would the Christians feel if the Cross on Christ’s shoulders is cartooned-caricatured to look like a shoulder-fired surface-to-air-missile (SAM)? Or Stinger Missile similar to the ones given to the Mujaheedeen by the CIA before Afghanistan morphed into the hands of Taliban?

And would the Jews not rightly call anyone anti Semitic if such non-Jew was caught depicting the Star of David as weapon or tool of violence?

Why does the world, particularly, Europe expect a different sorts of reactions by adherents of the Islamic faith?

The enthusiasms with which other European newspapers and publications embraced the denigration of Prophet Muhammad and the spiraling willingness to engage in these disparagements of the symbol of Islam is, to say the least, disturbing; It creates and reinforces the impression that there is an orchestrated war against Islam by America and Europe. Particularly since September 11, 2001, the appearance has been created and nurtured, to the effect that the so-called war against terrorism is actually a war against Islam. Contest between religions, Christian and Islamic civilizations.

It is therefore safe to say that this latest siege and unified attack from the European Press against Islam, is merely a continuation of a clash of cultures of Christianity and Islam.

Christianity postures as the superior culture, the superior religion and the superior civilization. And to that extent, it does appear, as if, there are repeated attempts to humble and defeat Islam through the contests of civilizations in wars, in portrayals and even the ridiculing of Islamic symbols as was engaged in by Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten and its copy-cats sympathizers all over Europe ballyhooed last week.

And of course, we are to pretend and feign surprise when our Muslims brethrens react to lampooning of their holies? Some prefer to believe that Muslims are just being unreasonable! That is not so. Muslims are merely resisting unwarranted attacks.

Here in the US, I have witnessed protests and picketing of movies and theater plays that are satirical of Christianity or Jesus Christ, notably, Jesus Christ Super Star.

And more recently, Mel Gibson was criticized by some Christians but more severely by Jews because of his movie "Passion of the Christ" Mel Gibson had to engage in repeated explanations and at some point his movie was edited to assuage the feelings of his critics. Where was press freedom and artistic freedom as defense or superior argument when Mel Gibson was severally severely mauled by the critics?
Why is everyone now suddenly hiding under freedom of expression and press freedom as the excuse for tolerating and perpetuating what is clearly an inappropriate portrayal of Prophet Muhammad and Islam, with the subliminal auto suggestion, that Islam, its prophet and symbols are interchangeable with war, violence and terrorism in the same sentence? Why the linkage of Islam, its prophet with violence or tools of war, grenade?

Whatever happened to the Christian admonition of Do Unto Others as you would have them do unto you? I thought true Christian values requires that Christians have, and demonstrate respect and tolerance toward the holies of all others? Or is it The Inquisition all over again?

But why is it, that when it comes to Muslims, we pretend, that their feelings do not matter or that the rest of us are not obliged to respect their feelings and religious sensibilities? And when Muslim therefore reacts to these shortsighted policies, we are shocked and dismayed? Or conclude that Muslims are just unreasonable?

Why can’t Christians and Jews demonstrate the same respect and care, when handling Islam and Muslims’ holies? Why can’t Christians and Jews simply put themselves in the proverbial shoes of Islam and Muslims as it were?

Christian Conservatives also known as the Evangelicals the US, currently drive and propel public policies in America foreign and domestic policies that is, however, same Christians Conservatives, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed etc who are excited agog at their policies successes at home and abroad, but are loathe to have Islamic influenced public policies in Palestine, Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan! But why is this fair?

Why is it okay for Pat Robertson to issue Christian fatwa against President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, but somehow, it is not acceptable for religious clerics in Iran, Afghanistan or Iraq to issue Islamic fatwa against a person or persons who affront their religion?
I personally abhor violence, but if force be the measure of strength and if might be deemed right, who is to determine who gets nuclear weapons power and who is to determine the superiority between Evangelical Christian propelled fatwa and its Islamic version?

I was raised as a Christian of the Catholic faith, even though I am now semi-retired Catholic, I would not intentionally or deliberately disrespect what the Catholics hold dear; Similarly, I would expect all of us, in the finest Christian tradition to show and demonstrate respect towards other peoples holies. Long Live Islam!

Paul I. Adujie
Lawcareer@msn.com
New York, United States

Posted by Administrator at 01:48 AM | Comments (0)

February 02, 2006

Nigeria: "A Paradise in Hell"

by Peter C. Eze ---

“Give me liberty or give me death”…,

“People have right to elect a government to serve its needs according to the rule of law and if that government does not meet the people’s expectation, the people have right to remove that government and elect a new government that will meet its expectation” ~~~ Henry Lock.

May I also add the popular saying that those who make a peaceful revolution impossible make a violent revolution inevitable.

By so saying, I ask, how did Nigeria degenerate and sink to the level she is now? How did the country get to this state of monumental ineptitude? How did Nigeria allow an untamed, un-rehabilitated ex-convict and a tribal zealot to acquire such an absolute and unprecedented power to oversee the nation’s affairs, it’s abundant human and material resources? How did people in a country that can conveniently pride itself to have the most educated people of every profession of human endeavors on African soil, keep mute while the nation is sinking? Why did the national weather service men and women fail to warn Nigerians of the impending hurricane? Who provided Olusegun Obasanjo with ‘MAD’(Mutual Assured Destruction) weapon he has been un leashing on Nigeria and Nigerians? Who invented for him the political acid he has been pouring on the nation’s political waters? Who made him the judge, the prosecutor, the complainant and the jury? Who made him, the president, the nation’s financial controller and dispenser, the legislature, the chief justice, the police commander, the military commander, the security chief, the destroyer-in-chief, the killer-in-chief as well as the investigator-in-chief? Why and how did Nigerians allow an emperor and a despot in the nation’s political soil as against a democratic leader and still refer to what she has now as a democracy? Who brought the idea of making him the president? The simple answer,….. the northern military and it’s arm of political vampires Why? To keep igbos out of Nigeria’s political and leadership parameters.(Revisit the political fraud and tribal exhibition during the PDP convention in Jos in 1998 between Dr. Alex Ekwueme and Olusegun Obasanjo).

Obasanjo’s presidency is the product of the then Hausa dominated military and it’s civilian paymasters, the Yoruba and the southern Nigeria’s minorities’ complicities in their conspiracy to perpetuate marginalization, dominate, demoralize and debase Ndigbo and keep them out of Nigeria’s political equation and economic main stream. By so doing, they had bargained more than they could chew. There has been talks about the agreement Obasanjo had with the north before he was made president of Nigeria in 1999. Agreement for what? What were in those agreement? Were the Yoruba leaders in the picture or in the know of the agreement? If the north according to it, conceded the presidency to the southwest to placate the Yoruba for the nullification of the late chief MKO Abiola’s presidential victory of 1993, why did the Yoruba community reject him? And why did it not pick someone acceptable by his people? Charity they say begins at home. And why were igbos not placated for the murder of General Aguiyi-Ironsi who was murdered by the rampaging northern military in July 29, 1996, even though Ironsi’s military and political actions were more pro-north than south? Even at that, why Obasanjo, who still had a hangover of treason, felony, anger and resentment? Why not Olu Falae or any other Yoruba man? Why, why, and why? Because Obasanjo is a member of the inner group and a signatory to the conspiracy against Ndigbo. Pure and simple. Pundits will mention the presence of Ebitu Ukiwe in the deputy’s office during the administration of IBB and the zoning of the senate president to the southeast. That is political hogwash and fraudulently pedantic. These were nothing more than political camouflage.

Dr. Alex Ekwueme was Shagari’s vice president in the 2nd republic. The palace coup of December 31, 1983 was a face saving for the north and it’s political establishment, because it would have been difficult for the northern political establishment to explain to their people why they should support an igboman for president in 1987 (according to the NPN zoning formula) against the article of the conspiracy. The north was aware of Ekwueme’s loyalty to the north and alhaji Shehu Shagari, but why did Shagari and the major northern political establishment not impress it upon their military wing in 1998 to support him for the president despite the fact that he was founder of PDP when Obj was in jail? It is no secret that the leadership of Nigeria is the prerogative of the north, so it thought, the Yoruba as the junior partner, with the southern minorities…( the bearer of some crumbs of the national pie and some political appointments), as long as they support and help to keep the igbos away from the national political scene. Another angle to the Obasanjo presidency was made possible because Yar’dua was dead. Were he alive, the presidency would not have come to the south. Never mind he was Obj’s partner-in-fraud and corruption, 1976-1979. There was a story from a well placed source that some time during the alhaji Shehu Shagari’s presidency, while on tour to India, inside his plane, he beckoned one of his aids to come to see him at the presidential cabin. When his aid came, he pulsated, before telling the aid his encounter with Brigadier Shehu Musa Yar’dua in his office. He told his aid that Yar’dua came to his office and was furious about the NPN zoning the presidency to the south. He (Yar’dua) told him the presidency would only go to the south over his dead body, that they spilled their blood to preserve the presidency for the north, so if he Alhaji Shagari was tired, he should relinquish the presidency to another northerner. Apparently, he did not feel comfortable with the president’s demeanor, so he perhaps alerted the northern military establishment. Hence the palace coup of December 31, 1983. The southern presidency was of-course made possible over his dead body. He was dead right. So in 1998, the north and it’s power structure… the military, seeing the United States and other western angst on the pariah nature of Nigeria with her abundant oil reserve, ordered for a political package, but when they opened it in 1999 on it’s delivery, it found that it was not what it ordered and that Babangida and it’s military hierarchy had 419ed it. Hence it’s call for the gentleman’s agreement.

The diluted version of what is now known to be Nigeria’s constitution by General Abdul Salami Abubakar was made with the certainty that Obasanjo was either not going to serve out the constitutional four years or at best he would only be there for 4 years and then handover to a northerner who would continue to implement the constitution as was diluted. You will recall that Abdul Salami Abubakar refused to release the constitution until after Obj was sworn in. Now the angry Obj capitalized on the northern grand design and political miscalculation to amass an unprecedented and monumental power. He has gone into the presidency with vengeance. With the help of the United States and Britain, he fired the first thunder on assuming office in 1999. After the rain, the cannibals, the pot bellies and professional coup mongers in the military uniforms saw them selves packing home to enjoy their loots. With the exit of the cannibals - the military, otherwise the main northern political power structure for leadership domination, the north capitulated. The northern strength and power caved in and collapsed. The so-called northern unity or what they would like us to hear and believe,(The Ahamdu Bello phenomenon) became a myth. The army, trimmed off excesses fat is now under Obj pocket, he moved and got the police under a Yoruba command.(see Alhaji Muslin K. Smith, later, Alhaji Mustafa Balogun and now Sunday Ehindero). With the army under the American and British telescope and the police well under the control of Obj, he broke into the nation’s treasury, off loaded whatever naira found there into GMG (Ghana Must Go Bag) took them to the national assembly. The official ‘Nigerian language’ (Corruption) was spoken on the floor of the NASS and bam! chief Evan Ewerem was appointed senate president and Salihu Buhari the speaker of the House. When the senators exhausted all they got from Obj to corruptly appoint chief Ewerem as the senate president and with the certificate scandal that took Buhari out of the House of representative speaker’s chair , some decent and few honest ones among them impressed it upon the NASS on the need for the legislatures to see it as the symbol of democracy, hence the dumping of Ewerem and the election of the late Dr. Chuba Okadigbo as the senate president and Gali Umar NA’aba as the House speaker.

With Okadigbo as the senate president, and Na’aba as the House speaker, the nation began to see some flashes of legislative independent. To the chagrin of Obasanjo, naira again was deployed, the tribal irredentists and igbo hate mongers, led by Idris Kuta and Jonathan Zwigina went to work. Within few days, Okadigbo was removed and an ‘ex-bomboy’ was appointed in his place by Obasanjo to camouflage the treatment Ndigbo is getting from Obj. From thence the senate surrendered it’s independent and it’s constitutional power on the alter of corruption and become the appendage of the executive. Why was it so easy to remove Okadigbo as the senate president, but somewhat hard rock to knock out Na’aba? This was because igbo man lacks political backing and is dispensable in Nigerian political environment due to irredentism and hatred igbos are subjected to in Nigeria. With the army, the police and the NASS under his control, the shuffle and maneuver saw the head of SSS, an igboman out and Kayode Are a Yoruba man in. The military intelligence a Yoruba, the commandant, Jaji, a Yoruba, the central bank governor a Yoruba, de-facto minister of finance, a Yoruba, PPRA chairman (Petroleum Pricing Regulation Agency) a Yoruba, DPR, director (Department of Petroleum Resources) Yoruba. Minister of petroleum, Yoruba, specifically Obasanjo. Minister of justice a Yoruba. Minister of education a Yoruba. NUC (National University Commission) chairman, a Yoruba. Accountant-General, Yoruba. Auditor-General, a Yoruba. The ‘amalanization’ and ‘owambenization’ of his administration is complete. Even at that, Obasanjo became one man cabinet, minister, foreign and domestic, the chief justice, the financial controller-general, legislature, the traditional king maker and the chief political and economic adviser to his own government.

The intimidation of Nigerians became obvious. First, the police would go to the senate president at 3.00 a.m. and intimidated him. Next, the military visited Odi and demolished the town and it’s people, with thousands dead. Next military stop would be Zaki-Biam. The command was “demolish any moving and non-moving objects”. For the first 4 years 1999-2003, Obasanjo vented his anger and rage on Nigerians, even at the situation where Nigerians were in the shallow of death, like the Lagos bomb explosion, he would not give a damn about the lives of Nigerians and their feelings in the midst of death, hence his outburst at the dying residents being bathed with bombs.
His ministerial appointments and board chairmanships then, showed that sensitive and lucrative positions were given to his sycophants, boot lickers, concubines or I may say, agents of his concubines or his match makers. The post of minister of works was assigned to a dismissed corrupt police officer who can not differentiate between asphalt tarring and coal tarring and yet 300 billion naira was made available to him which he shared between himself, Obj, his other political vampires and their contractors. With the legislature annexed as extension of the executive, the military and police under his pocket, the security, legal, academic and resource control, completed, political control was to be embarked upon.
The PDP must be ‘Aremunized’, therefore all the foundation members must be fired. On their exit, PDP has become personal industry for corruption and terrorism. He employed and empowered some disoriented and fraudulent members of the society into the new party as chairmen of the party and BOT, and renamed it PDP--- Peoples Dysfunctional Party.

Mission accomplished. He now attained the position of emperor and heartless dictator. He requested and was granted by the senate, EFCC, known as the police arm of PDP government to be used to whip up political enemies real and imaginary, into submission or outright removal from office. The emergency of EFCC has robbed the regular police a major economic bonanza and financial exhortation of lump sums hence the police regimentation of 20 naira from the motorists and periodic threat of strike. In his new PDP, a killer squad was established for political assassinations. There is also trained and well financed mules, young and old of every class in PDP for infiltration and destabilization of any unsanctioned organization whether cultural, social and or political. All the organized and non organized bodies in the country have been infiltrated , be it NANS, legal profession, even the trade union and political parties. Common civil demonstration to express constitutional rights of free assemble as enshrined in the constitution is completely banned by the dictator-in-chief. All symbol and ingredients of democracy have been disbanded by the political czar. The nation’s constitution is irrelevant to him.

In the United States there is CIA whose primary role is the external intelligent security net work for security, military, political and economic efficiency of the country. There is FBI for national investigation and dictation of crimes such as murder, fraud and corruption. There are federal, state and local government police with lines drawn on sand for their operational parameters, whose primary focus are the protection of citizens of the United States wherever they may be. There is legislature that makes laws for the good of the people of United States. There is a court of law which is the last hope of the common man. What do you have in Nigeria? SSS for intimidation, abuse and violation of human rights. EFCC, PDP police arm for emasculation, humiliation, intimidation and suppression of vocal political critics of his fraudulent political gamble and his life presidency. There is another police that go with the acronym NPF, whose primary assignment is for political terrorisms against Nigerian citizens, agents for crooks, political and economic vampires. There is INEC whose purpose is to select people in various political positions against the constitutional provision of democratically elected officials. Ever since Prof. Humphrey Nwosu, the country ceases to have a genuine INEC chairman. One wonders how Obasanjo’s Nigeria would have been without people like Odumegwu Ojukwu, Gani Faheimni, Wole Shoeinka, Falana and great many Nigerians I would no be able to name here due to space constrain.

It is not a happy sign for a country to be in economic quagmire, it is more dangerous for the same country to be in both economic predicament and political uncertainty. If one speaks his/her mind, more so on the nation’s political, social and economic whores, he/she is sure to be visited by the SSS, EFCC and the police. Where the intimidation, humiliation and harassment fail, assassination squad takes over. No group of any kind can now assemble for ordinary social or political gathering. Even family reunion is monitored and infiltrated. All the political parties including his PDP have destroyed or destabilized for fear of opposition. The vampires have now introduced political weddings, where all the execu-thieves and murderers assemble to exhibit their fraudulent and sprawling political life styles in the face of grueling poverty, hunger and starvations. Simple political criticism elicit police and security terrorism. The nation is scared. Scared to the point where political campaign is now extinct in Nigeria. Only one Nigeria is bold enough so far to tell the nation that he is running for the president of Nigeria come 2007. His name is Orji Kalu, Abia State governor. Corruption and fraud are more daring in Nigeria now than ever. Armed robbers now operate with complete impunity. The country has never been that bad and dangerous. Obj has trained and maintain infiltrators of the nation’s honest groups and society, but could not train infiltrators to criminals, armed robbers, corruption monsters and cultists. He has scared day light out of the governors that they are now willing to subvert the constitution to avoid EFCC expose. In Nigeria only the economic fraudsters are the ones bold enough to vie for political offices. EFCC has assumed the job of both investigation, jury, judge and prosecution. The presidency stinks. There is no difference between Obj and Atiku as far as corruption is concerned, except that Atiku steals with his name, Obj steals through fronts. If his anti-corruption war is real let him tell Nigerian who owns Gwarimpa housing estate. Fellow, Nigerians, wake up and retake your God given country before the darkness replaces day light.

By Chidi P Eze
email: pceze@academicplanet.com

Posted by Administrator at 06:14 AM | Comments (0)

The Oil Companies are the Real Terrorists

by Chibuzo Onubogu (Clayton, NC, USA) --- Here we go again Mr. President Obasanjo, opening your loud mouth and again spewing out trash. The Niger Delta Freedom Fighters are terrorists and criminals? Not a chance Mr. Obasanjo. If these were times of Slavery you would qualify for an “Uncle Tom” or maybe a “House Nigger”.

For those of you who do not know what these terms mean, these were names given to blacks who helped the white master further oppress other blacks. These Negroes received special favours from their masters for keeping other blacks in check, snitching (reporting) on others just to make the Massa (master) happy. The Nigerian oil fields are like plantations, and Obasanjo and his ruling buddies continue to watch over it for the European and American oil interests.

What if I may ask have the Niger Delta people gained from the oil drilling that has been going on in their land since it was discovered? For an area that boasts of the highest percentage of exploration in Nigeria to be so poor and depressed is unacceptable by any standard. Sometimes I wish all the oil wells in Nigeria would dry up completely. From the American Department of Energy comes the following analysis of how Nigeria has fared since oil was discovered.

Ever since the discovery of oil in Nigeria in the 1950s, the country has been suffering the negative environmental consequences of oil development. The growth of the country's oil industry, combined with a population explosion and a lack of environmental regulations, led to substantial damage to Nigeria's environment, especially in the Niger Delta region, the center of the country's oil industry.

Furthermore, it says,

The Niger Delta region remains fraught with ethnic unrest. The Ogonis, an ethnic group that predominates in the region, have protested that not only have foreign oil firms degraded the local environment, but that the Nigerian federal government also has acquiesced by not enforcing environmental laws and regulations. Clashes between tribal groups and security forces have resulted in numerous deaths, as well as periodic disruptions in oil production. Protest actions occur with regularity, with local youths seizing oil platforms or taking hostages and forcing oil companies to withdraw their staff and/or to halt oil production until their demands are met.

The same memo also has this to say:

These protests are the result of the environmental degradation that has occurred--and is perceived to be continuing to occur--in the region as the result of oil development by multinational oil companies.

There have been over 4,000 oil spills in the Niger Delta since 1960, and gas flaring from oil extraction has resulted in serious air pollution problems in the area. One of the most visible consequences of the numerous oil spills has been the loss of mangrove trees. The mangrove was once a source of both fuel wood for the indigenous people and a habitat for the area's biodiversity, but is now unable to survive the oil toxicity of its habitat. The oil spills also had an adverse effect on marine life, which has become contaminated, in turn having negative consequences for human health from consuming contaminated seafood. The damages caused, and the continued exploitation of the people of Niger Delta leaves no doubt as to whom the terrorist and criminal is.

The other two negative by-products that the discovery of oil has brought about in Nigeria are; the almost near total abandonment of a once booming agro economy, and the three year civil war between Nigeria and Biafra.

Chibuzo Onubogu writes from the USA

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Ozodi Osuji Weekly Series on Psychology 2006, #7 of 52: African-Americans, as I see them

by Ozodi Thomas Osuji (Seatle, Washington) --- PREAMBLE Like all people, African Americans are individually unique and no two of them are the same. It, therefore, seems a mistake to talk about them as if they are all the same. Be that as it may, the fact is that there is such a thing as group character. For example, I am an Igbo African. There is such a thing as an Igbo character type, within which are individual Igbos who are unique in their personality types.

I understand why folks are leery of talking about national character types; it tends to lead to treating people as members of groups but not as individuals hence stereotyping them. This is a noble intention. All human beings ought to be treated as individuals, not as members of any given groups. Nevertheless, it is silly denying the obvious, that there are national character types.

There is the generalized English, French, Italian, German and American personality type. If you do not accept this fact then randomly select a German and a Russian and give them work to do and see how they do it. The German is more likely to be methodical, thorough and efficient and produce high quality product, whereas the Russian is more likely to be lackadaisical, carefree and inefficient and produce a shoddy product. All said there is such a thing as group personality type, within which there are individual differences.

African Americans have a group based personality type, within which is individuation. Making stereotypical statements about them may be unfair to those who do not fit the group stereotype; nevertheless, we must attempt to understand the generalized picture of the African American. We must do so with the understanding that every general rule has exceptions to it.

I have lived in North America from the time that I left secondary school in Africa. During that time, I have had occasion to interact with most of the ethnic groups that constitute the great mosaic called North America: whites, Asians and African Americans. As a result of my relationships with these various people I come to certain conclusions about them. This essay is not going to dwell on the other ethnic groups that constitute North America but on African Americans.

The individual is seldom objective in his perception of other people, and perception of anything for that matter. He looks at whatever he sees with his past learning, and his internalized presuppositions and preconceptions of what is good or bad. We all seem to wear lenses through which we look at the external world. These myopic lenses probably mean that none of us ever sees anything as it is. In that light, I probably do not see African Americans as they are? My past colors how I see the present.

Having admitted the probable prejudiced nature of my perception, yet my perception is my perception. I am entitled to sharing that perception with those who care to know about it. They can do with it, though admittedly biased, whatever they want to do with it. My obligation to myself is to be honest and describe things as I see them. If my perception is not correct, which is probably the case, I stand to be corrected. You, the reader, please feel free to correct my misperceptions; and while you are at it, please do remember to do so, on rational grounds, not by begging the issue, or merely telling me to share your perception just because it is yours.

There is a common adage that admiration is the highest form of compliment. You want to be like those you admire.

I do not want to be like African Americans. That just about says it all, does it not?

If I were an idealist, I would set about trying to change African Americans. But I am a social realist and know how difficult it is to change people.

My goal in this essay is merely to describe African Americans, as I see them, and leave it to them to ponder how this African sees them. If they think that there is some merit in my perception, they could decide to change what is changeable in them and live with what is not changeable in them. My function as a social observer is to describe phenomena, as I see it, and, hopefully, that description enables individuals to better understand it than they did before.

I should say that the sword cuts both ways. Just as I have my perception of African Americans, they have their perception of me and other Africans. Their perception of us may not be positive? That is their prerogative; they are entitled to their perception.

Each of us behaves in light of his perception of phenomena; his only obligation is to ascertain what that perception is and strive to make it as synonymous with the truth as is possible.

(What is the truth, Pontus Pilate asked Jesus? I, a mere man, certainly do not know what the truth is. May be the alleged only son of God, a Jew, Jesus, knows what the truth is. Those of us who are not sons of God, are perhaps sons of an unknown God, do not know what the truth is. But please do not tell us what the truth is until our unknown God tells us.)

Every human being operates within a context; he operates with a frame of reference that his context gave him, a world view that he internalized while growing up. It is, therefore, necessary to know something about the individual’s context and frame of reference before we can understand him and his perceptions.

I am an Igbo Diala. I was socialized into Igbo Omenala. I internalized Igbo culture and operate from its parameters.

Igbo culture is very republican and democratic. Igbo culture is individualistic, achievement oriented and realistic. Igbos are not a sentimental people, they accept life as it is without unnecessary adornments. Their language is overly realistic. Consider: Owu manu ji ara edebere otu? (I will not interpret it for you, you try to figure it our for yourself, after all, if I have taken the trouble to understand your language, English, the least that you could do is take the trouble to understand my own language, a language, we believe is the best in the world. The Igbos say: Speak Igbo and then die, indicating how proud they are of their language.)

My grandfather grew up in the early 1900s Alaigbo (Igboland), a world that the British had recently conquered. What did him and his contemporary Igbos do? They would tell their children: Look, children, the British defeated us, not because they are better men than we are but because they have advanced science and technology. We must acquire science and technology, if we ever want to compete with them. Therefore, we must all go to school and study science and technology. We must work hard. With science and technology and hard work, in a few generations, we shall be able to do what the British do. We might even surpass them. Thus, these hardy men and women resolved to send their children to school. Going to school and working hard became their mantra. Today, many of these amazing people’s children are university graduates and are found in the best universities of the world.

The Igbo does not countenance laziness. He does not listen to excuses as to why one is poor. He says: if you say yes, your Chi (personal God, your real self) will say yes. (See Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart.) He does not accept the thesis that he is a victim of circumstances. He sees himself as in charge of his life. He has internal locus of control and believes that no matter what the external environment is like that it is up to him to do what he could to extract a decent living for himself and his family. However, he is not naïve as to the powerful effect of the external environment on the individual; he recognizes the reality of the external world but does not resign himself to it.

My grandfather’s generation recognized that, for the time being, the British were in charge of their affairs. But that was a temporary situation. With hard work, they believed that sooner or later they would be able to compete with the British on their on terms.

The Igbo does not want you to pity him, see him as a victim and give him anything out of pity.

(When the Igbo comes to North America and beholds such policies as Affirmative Action, he is annoyed by it; he says: if you cannot get into the school you want to attend on merit, and then do not go to that school. When I was in secondary school, my father would say to me, Tom, I want you go to Oxford or Cambridge University. To do so, you must have excellent grades in your studies, including your GCE Advance Level. He could not tolerate mediocre grades. I had the requisite grades to attend those top colleges, not because I was particularly smart but because father could not let go of my case until I behaved realistically, studied hard.)

The Igbo context from which I came from is one where individuals are expected to compete and receive from their world whatever their abilities could give them in the competitive world they live in.

I am an Igbo and carry the Igbo culture in me to wherever I go. I brought that culture with me to North America. I view the social phenomenon of North America through the lenses of my Igbo worldview. My perception is biased by my individual personality and by my cultural upbringing.

LACK OF INITIATVE

In my perception, African Americans, on the whole, seem to lack initiative; they seem to lack entrepreneurial and business skills. Generally, I see a people who do not start their own businesses; I see a people who wait for others, whites and Asians, to start business ventures and then come around and employ them.

(My parents were small business persons; my father started trading from age fifteen and by the time he was twenty, had gone to most West African countries, buying goods from them and reselling them at a small profit in Alaigbo; my mother ran a restaurant at an army barracks).

The African American that I see does not seem to realize that he can start his own business and employ himself and employ his own people. He stays around waiting for other persons to employ him. And when they do not employ him, he complains, bitching about discrimination against him.

Of course, in North America, discrimination is real. What do you expect? Human beings seem self-centered. (See Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.) Human beings seem motivated to first help themselves and later help those like them.
Whites start business to help themselves and help their brothers and sisters; Asians do the same.

Human beings seldom identify with those who do not look like them. White Americans generally feel comfortable among whites and generally will employ fellow whites before they employ those who do not look them, those they do not feel comfortable around.

In North America, African Americans are generally the last hired and first fired in the workplace.

As soon as he obtains the token jobs white Americas give him, he feels very important. As it were, he says: see, I am now somebody important because I work at a prestigious white outfit.

The African American seems to derive false social importance from his proximity to white folk, folks he, apparently, assumes are superior to him.

The few African Americans that attended Ivy League colleges, such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, even Stanford, tend to think that they are very special persons. They tend to carry themselves like they are godlike. Apparently, it never occurs to these folks that they attended schools that were started by individual white men and that they, themselves, can start their own schools and build them into top ranked schools.

(The so-called Negro colleges, such as Howard, Lincoln, Fisk etc were actually started by white men of good will, those invested in training Negroes during the era of Jim Crow and racial segregation).

On their own, African Americans have not really started great universities and large business corporations and made them outstanding. African Americans, apparently, wait for whites to achieve excellence and they come to bask in reflected glory of white achievement.

Generally, African Americans work for governments (city, county, state and federal) and major American corporations. They seldom start their own business and work for themselves.

Those of them who mange to be in positions of authority in white started employment places seldom employ other blacks, certainly, not in positions that they believe that those fellow blacks would compete for their positions. When they see a talented black person, they become afraid of him and do everything in their power to get rid of him. They surround themselves with mediocre persons and or with white women who would not threaten their positions.

The African American manager is perhaps, the most insecure human being on earth; he feels so insecure and protective of his sinecure position that he spends most of his energy keeping other blacks out. At the various universities, if a token black man is hired, usually to satisfy affirmative action requirement and have one Negro around, he proceeds to do whatever he could to keep other blacks out, certainly to keep out those blacks he believes are more talented than him. But when his unproductive position is challenged, when he does not secure tenure on the basis of his scholastic work, he suddenly seeks other blacks help and starts talking about discrimination against him. But when he has used black support to secure tenure in his school, he could care less about other black folks. In fact, he seldom mentors and nurtures other blacks to become scholars.

The African American is very jealous and perceives any talented black competitor as his enemy, a person to be kept out of his work environment.

African-Americans do not encourage each other to become the best that they could be.

EXPLOITATION OF AFRICANS

Africans who have had extensive contact with African Americans generally report that the brothers are generally intent on using them rather than helping them. They say that African Americans would like to use Africans’ labor for free and not pay for it. A young unemployed African PhD told me that a head of a black studies department had asked him to come teach a couple of courses at his school and that he did so but found out that the man had no intention of paying him for his services. He wondered how the Negro expected him to pay his bills. He concluded that African Americans, no matter how educated they seem to be, are pimps and hustlers, and that if you do not protect your interest that they would use you for their own good and dump you, just as they use defenseless women as prostitutes to make a living for themselves.

(Actually, to make money to buy drugs, for a pimp could never respect himself; how could a person who exploits another human beings suffering respect himself? No, the pimp must be self a self loathing and destructive person and be addicted to cocaine, crack cocaine, amphetamine, heroine, and the other staple drugs these living dead persons are prone to).

SELF DEVALUATION

African Americans seem to not value their lives. In their great ghettos, black on black crime is very high. For the slightest excuse, they kill each other. One would think that they would reserve their anger for the group that oppressed them, white folks. Instead, they seem to tolerate white abuse and seem to displace their repressed rage at whites towards fellow blacks. If their brothers, sisters and wives do anything to them that they consider disrespectful, what is left of their pride and vanity is pricked and they strive to rehabilitate their injured vanity by killing them.

These people seem to have no respect for each other’s life. Apparently, their experience of slavery and discrimination so devalued their lives that they do not place much value on black person’s lives.

Not valuing other blacks, not seeing them as important enough to be respected, they find it easy to kill other blacks.

Moreover, the white controlled environment made white life seem very important and blacks accept that feedback and seldom harm whites. At any rate, given the racist nature of American jurisprudence, if a black man committed a crime against a white person, he is most likely to be quickly apprehended and put away in prison than if his victim is another black person.

White judges seem to relish putting black Americans into jail; apparently, they define their role as protecting white society. In America, a minor crime would get a black person prison term and a slap on the wrist for a white person.

Institutional racism is a reality in American jurisprudence; we do not need to deny reality.

(As an Igbo, I am extremely realistic and accept things as they are without illusions that they could be ideal. I expect discrimination from whites, receive what I expect, and am not bothered by it, for, I assume that whites do not owe me anything in life. As I see it, by and by, we, Africans will come to our own and do unto whites as they have done to us. There seem a principle of cause and effect operative in the world; as we sow we reap; by discriminating against other people, whites have sown hatred for them and will so reap. For now, we, Africans, have to take it on the chin, and still keep our heads up and work hard. We must file away all grievances we may have, since you do not have the technological means to retaliate in kind for the injustices we currently experience in the world. We must work towards a future where Africa would have science and technology, nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction and thereafter we must insist that we be respected. No body respects weak persons and since extant Africans are too weak, no one respects them. So be it. Such is life, cest la vie. I do not cry over reality, I accept it as it is, stoically. But make no mistake about it, every insult Africans have experienced is filed away in our memory banks and in time some one must pay a heavy price for our degradation. Mark that point in your memory bank. Africans are not a forgiving people. All though many Africans are learning the Christian theology that folks forgive those who abused them, however, forgiveness does mean condoning of abuse. Abuse must stop, period; if the imported Jewish God tolerates abuse, he must be given back to masochistic. Our African God, Chukwu, Olorun, Obasi, will do, thank you).

AFRICAN AMERICAN PERSONALITY

In the past, social scientists tried to describe what they called the Negro personality. See W.E.B. Dubois, Souls of Negro Folk; Kardinar and Oversay, the Mark of Oppression; Karon, Negro Personality; Franz Fanon, Black Skin-White Mask; Thomas Pettigrew, A Profile of the Black American; Franklin Frazier, The Negro Middle Class; Kenneth Clark’s studies on Negro children choosing white dolls over black ones; Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, Omanini, Prospero and Caliban, The Psychology of the Colonized persons; Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized.

These largely psychoanalytically oriented observers essentially concluded that the Negro is infantile in personality structure and that he is terrified of harm from his white oppressor and does whatever he does to obtain approval and attention from his white master.

Apparently, the person who is oppressed internalizes his oppression and comes to see his oppressor as superior to him, fears him and tries to emulate him, albeit in a childish manner.

In the Negro Middle Class, Franklin Frazier describes that annoying behavior still seen in many so-called Negro Middle Class (such as the petty clerks who work at the post office, licensed nurse’s aids, teacher’s aids etc). These marginal middle class Negroes seem to devote their entire lives to efforts to seem like they are very important persons. A Negro who is merely a clerk at a post office would buy a Cadillac and other expensive cars and dress in expensive attire, doing every thing in his power to impress other Negroes into thinking that he is a very important person.

A person who in the larger white controlled world is a no-body, in the ghetto, pretends to be a very important person. In the meantime, he does not do what real middle class white folks…medical doctors, lawyers, engineers, college professors etc…. do, work hard and compete for promotion on the basis of merit and train their children.

You seldom see Negroes sacrificing for their children, saving most of their monies to train their children in colleges; no, they would rather drive a Mercedes Benz, or whatever car they associate with high status symbol than pay the school fees of their children. In fact, if elementary and secondary school education were not free in North America, Negroes probably would not even have that marginal education.

These people often seem pathetic in their infantile efforts to seem important. They ape appearances of importance when clearly they are not important. It is not ones appearance that makes one important, it is what one does that is useful to other people that make one important in their eyes.

Are you the best medical doctor, or lawyer, or engineer or professor in town? If you have demonstrable work that makes you stand out from the crowd, you are important, if not, you are not.
(Do what those of us who have failed in the world’s rat race do: accept our failure; we do not attempt to seem what we are not, somebody important. What is important, high social position or peace of mind and happiness? Some of us accept our real self and leave it at that. What is the real self? Is it body or spirit? That is a topic for another essay).

RESIDUAL SLAVE BEHAVIOR

I believe that though the African American has been theoretically emancipated from slavery that he is still a slave, psychologically. He is not psychologically independent, yet. He lacks internal locus of authority. He sees himself as a victim whom whites control.

He may talk volubly about victim-hood and seem to give the impression that he resents it, but, in fact, he seems to relish his sense of victim-hood. He likes the complaining rights being a victim gives him.

In fact, the African American seems to like whites to tell him what to do. Though he complains when his white masters call him boy, he is still a boy, psychologically and seems to like to take marching orders from those he perceives as adults, white men.

SELF CENTEREDNESS

My belief is that to be healthy a person must work for what Alfred Adler called social interest, that is, for the common good of the human community. Those who are pro-social in their behaviors tend to be healthy persons.

On the contrary, as I look at African Americans, in the main, they seem self-centered in the extreme. Those of them that seem to have attained so-called middle class status, generally run from their fellow brothers and sisters and disappear into the white world, where they are nonentity and are invisible men.

These people do not reach out to help their fellow black persons. Black children grow up in inner city ghettoes without black adults caring for them. Black men get black women pregnant and disappear. They do not seem to have a sense of responsibility for raising their children. (Of course, I am exaggerating the situation; I am employing the literary device of hyperbole to make a point that needs to be made).

Over seventy percent of black children are raised by single teenage, and virtually illiterate black mothers. These children feel abandoned by the male folk. They grow up feeling angry with the men who did not care for them. They resort to taking drugs in an effort to salve their pain. They engage in petty crimes to obtain money for their drug habits and, of course, are picked up by white police officers and put through the kangaroo criminal court system that seems to exist with one thing in mind: jail young black males.

It is reported that one out of every four young male African Americans between ages 14-24 is either in jail or is being supervised by parole and probation officers. Society spends over $35, 000 a year to keep these folks in jail and spends less than $6,000 a year to train each child at school.

I believe that the intolerable state of black children in North America is largely produced by the self-centeredness of adult African Americans. In my encounter with these people, I often wonder whether they are animals. To me, a human being is a person who struggles to transcend his own self-interests, which is admittedly difficult to accomplish, and helps other people. But here are African Americans and their fancy cars and fancy Super fly clothing not bothering to care for their own children who are starving and craving for adult attention.

I must confess that I tend to not have positive regard for those who abandon their children. If truth must be told, I see them as the dreg of humanity. How can a human being abandon his children? If my poor mother and father could send all their children to university level by working two jobs, I see no reason why African American adults should not help their own people. I resent their tendency to ignore their people’s suffering and not intervene to help.

Consider Michael Jackson, the absurd one who turned his beautiful black skin into hideous looking pseudo white skin. The man has probably cut every bone on his face in his misguided effort to transform his face into Caucasian futures. This is clearly self-hatred at work. The man obviously hates and rejects his black self and thinks, erroneously, that white skin is better than black skin.

One assumes that there are some black psychologists and psychiatrists? How come they did not counsel this confused young man on the need to accept his real self, which includes his skin color?
Generally, a person is living dead and unproductive if he rejects his true self. See, when Michael Jackson lived comfortably in his skin color, he made beautiful music, but now that he is a pseudo white man, his creativity has gone to pot.

From where I stand, African American mental health professionals ought to have intervened and helped the confused soul called Michael Jackson. I think that these self centered folks should quit their annoying tendency of not caring for one another. There self-centered and social disinterested behavior reduces them to animal status.
As I see it, a human being should live to serve other human beings and not just exist for the sake of his own self.

Without other people, there is no such thing as the individual self; over emphasizing the separated self is a waste of time. For example, one cannot talk, for speech presupposes the existence of other people. We are social creatures and are fully alive when we are socially engaged, helping one another.

HOMOSEXUALITY

And here is the saddest part of it all. African American men and women are increasingly embracing the absurd life style of homosexuality. This phenomenon is seldom talked about but when you get to know these people well, you will be surprised at the large number of them that are gay and lesbian.

Actually, it is understandable why African Americans are turning to this absurd life style. The homosexual person is a person who society has thoroughly emasculated. All power has been taken from him. Civilization makes him feel like he or she is powerless. His government has so oppressed and reduced him to powerlessness that he feels lower than animals in worth. Now, he is below animals and does what no self-respecting animal would do, place his penis into other men’s anuses and mouths and call such nonsense sexual activity.

As Alfred Adler pointed out, these people feel so powerless that they can only derive vicarious power by engaging in absurd acts. Defying the obvious natural sexual processes apparently makes these pathetic folks seem powerful, when, in fact, they are as powerless as powerless can be.

Consider the American lesbian feminist woman who raves and rants about power. This woman is so powerless that she cannot even get her oppressive government to give to her what governments in Western Europe have given women: paid for childcare centers and medical insurance. The raging campus dictator called lesbian feminist who gets cowardly liberal professors to teach that her insane behavior is a legitimate alternative life style lacks real power to get her abusive government to do the right thing: give all children day care centers and health insurance.

No, the American is controlled by his oppressive government, so much so, that the only way he seems to derive some sort of existential efficacy is to do the absurd, such as engage in the bestial behavior called homosexually. (Very soon they will be having sex with animals, why not? Who should tell them not to do anything? Tell them to not do something and they defy you, for the sake of being defiant. One expects these folks to soon embrace bestiality and pedophilia. When society begins to go down, it does so rapidly. Rome embraced homosexuality and declined and America is doing the same).

African-Americans, the most emasculated and powerless group of Americans, are sadly embracing the absurdity of homosexuality. And since whites could care less whether they lived or died and since every homosexual act places the individual at risk of contracting diseases born by virus, bacteria, fungus etc these African American homosexuals will probably die out. Who cares if niggers die, and homosexual niggers at that?

AFRICANS AVOIDANCE OF AFRICAN AMERICANS

I know many Africans who would not permit their children to play or befriend African American children. Apparently, they believe that their children would incorporate what seems to them the unacceptable culture of the African American. In fact, when I was in college and associated with African American students, other Igbos used to pull me aside and tell me to avoid those people, Ndi Akata, they called them. They saw them as hot headed and imprudent persons who are more likely to resort to violence at any time and might use a gun to settle a minor dispute rather than reason it out. An elderly Igbo man once told me:

If those African American friends of yours ever have a dispute with you, you are dead meat; they would shoot you. They do not believe that black life has worth and upon killing you would not feel guilty or remorseful. If you value your life, avoid them.

It should also be noted that Africans tend to consider African Americans as not particularly intelligent. I do not know where they got this information from, from white stereotype that blacks are not intelligent?

If African Americans are not intelligent and since they are Africans, Africans, too, are not intelligent?

I do not believe that there is any truth to the belief that African Americans are not intelligent. The so-called fifteen points’ difference between average African Americans and white-Americans score on IQ tests (85:100:115….blacks, whites and Asian average scores) can be fully accounted for by cultural differences. There are African Americans who score at the superior range (IQ over 132). Logically speaking, if one black person scores very high on these tests, you cannot make a categorical statement to the effect that all African Americans are unintelligent.

Intelligence is a product of biology and social experience. The experience of being black in America, being an ex-slave and a second-class person can fully explain whatever differences exist in-group scores on intelligence tests.

FEAR BASED PERSONALITY

African Americans were slaves. This means that they permitted other people to oppress them and use their labor for free, rather than fight and, if necessary, die fighting than tolerate others abuse. To tolerate others abuse, they must have been afraid of harm and death.

African Americans, of course, were not the first human beings to tolerate others abuse. Slavery existed in Africa and, indeed, still exists in Sudan and Mauritania where Arabs enslave Africans. In Alaigbo some dialas enslaved other Igbos, called Osus. The Osus still live as second class persons in Alaigbo.

Whites did enslave other whites. Indeed, until recently most whites were serfs. In Western Europe, the aristocratic element, who were equivalent to today’s criminal gangs, prevailed on the masses to kowtow to their criminal will. It was only in 1862 that the criminal elements that ruled Russia, the so-called nobility, freed the Russian masses from serfdom.

The point is that all human groups had history of slavery and, as such, contain folks who so feared death that they permitted the sadistic psychopath called slave masters to oppress and abuse them.

Nevertheless, I believe that African-Americans developed fearful personality structures from their recent history of slavery and second class social status in America. They seem like cowards who are fearful of harm and death and will obey white men rather than fight for their freedom.

I believe that it will take a couple more generations, say two hundred years, before African Americans are fully emancipated from their slave psychology and begin to live like free men.

I do not think that we can readily change the personality of the African American. I certainly do not expect him to immediately change the character traits that I delineated above. What I hope is for him to become aware of how other people see him and, if that perception makes sense to him, for him to start working on changing himself.

It is not for me or other people to change African Americans. Only a people, in fact, only the individual, can change themselves. I do not have the delusion that I can change any other human being, both at the individual and group level. As it is, I have a difficult time changing my own negative traits. It is enough for me to struggle to improve me. My sole task, as I see it, is to improve me and in so far that all human beings help each other to become improved, to tell African Americans how I see them and in so doing, perhaps, motivate them to change themselves.



MASOCHISTIC PERSONALITY

As I pointed out in another essay, African Americans seem to have developed a masochistic personality structure that allows sadistic white persons to oppress and abuse them. They formed a sadomasochistic relationship with whites, whereby whites act as sadists, abuser, and African Americans act as the masochists, the abused. Both parties in this pathological relationship tolerate their unnatural situation. (See Eric Fromm, Escape from Freedom for elaboration of sadomasochistic, symbiotic relationships).

I believe that both whites and blacks in North America need to emancipate themselves from their pathological relationship.

A healthy human being does his best to help other human beings, not abuse them. It is obvious that abusive white Americans are psychologically sick creatures and if they have not learned this fact by now, the rest of the world will soon teach them that lesson. As they go to the rest of the world and try to relate to them as they relate to their Negroes, abusively, they will learn that to others they are no more than sick persons whose warped and stunted approaches to people would not be tolerated. Americans are about to be disabused of their neurotic sense of superiority by the rest of the world; they are about to learn the truth of all human beings equality and sameness.

I am not here to advise white Americans. I am here to focus on black Americans. I have done so and if African Americans see any credence in my obviously negative perception of them, they could work to change it. If they do not want to change, that is their choice. My existential function is to tell folks how I see them, and for them to tell me how they see me, even if all our perceptions are biased.

CONCLUSION

In this essay, I chose not to wear the blinders of a particular profession, from whose parameters I see the African American. I did so for a purpose. I just wanted to describe the typical African American that is before me. I did not want to do a study of him or try to understand why he is the way he is.

The African American is probably the most studied human being on earth. White scholars have studied him to death. The conservative ones like Arthur Jensen see his faults as either in his genes or weaknesses of character; the liberal ones have offered every possible excuse for him that the human mind can come up with. Why is he not doing the right thing? Why does he abandon his children, why is he unable to do well at America’s schools’ and job places? Tons of liberal environmental explanations have been offered. These studies, by and large, see him as a victim of his external environment, as determined by the racist milieu he lives in. In effect, they make excuses for him. It is not his fault that he is the thing he has become, it is other folks faults, so, do not blame him, blame white Americans.

(In the real world, only a child is made excuses for; adults are blamed for their poor behaviors; thus, liberal scholars actually treat African Americans like children by making excuses for them. In my part of the world, we say: do not make understanding excuses for the individual, just provide him with equal opportunity to work his butt off and take the consequences of his performance, no rationalizations for his failure, please. White liberals have killed African Americans with their pseudo understanding of why they do what they do).

In the 1960s, a northern liberal, Daniel Moynihan, provided one of the first in dept study of the African American family. He alerted folks to the fact that over 25% of black children are raised by single parents, specifically female headed families. Psychoanalysts alerted us to the danger of raising boy children without the presence of men to exercise authority over them, the danger of their not internalizing law and order and behaving lawlessly and winding up in jails. Boy children are naturally aggressive and wild and it takes a lot to tame them, to make them obey the laws of society. Sigmund Freud and his disciples tell us that we are born with the instinct of Id and need the Superego (introjected and interiorized social norms) to tame it and a strong ego to balance our nature and society’s needs for law and order.

Today, over 70% of African American children are raised in single parents home, not the 25% that alarmed Daniel Moynihan. Today, America’s jails and prisons are practically the second home of African American young men. That is, despite all those social science studies, or, as I call them, rationalizations for the shiftlessness of African Americans, the problem has worsened.

I am not motivated to make excuses for any one. Of course, I do try to understand why people do what they do. I am a social scientist and if I choose to I can don the academic hat and provide us with a study of why African Americans are who they are.

In the light of social science, if I see African Americans not helping one another, I would approach the problem from a historical and sociological perspective: they were slaves and a salve’s humanity was systematically destroyed by the slave master; they were transformed into things and made not to care for other people; they were socialized to not care for their children and fellow slaves; they were made not to care for the future but to live for present, for immediate gratification..

In this essay, I am not interested in providing external environmental excuses for African Americans seeming shiftlessness. I just wanted to describe them, as I see them. As to why they are the way they are, I leave it to you to use your methodological approach to phenomena to explain it to your heart’s content.

I have honestly described the African American I see with my two eyes. I do not like the character of the African American that I see. I would like these people to change and become “better” persons. (I do not want to engage in a philosophical discourse as to what are better persons).

I really do not want to hear why African Americans are not doing well at ridiculously easy American schools; all I want to hear is that they are doing well. I want them to do as well as Asian students, to come to classes and make excellent grades. I want them to become diligent workers and responsible parents who stand by their children and do whatever it takes to provide for them. I want them to stop stealing so much so as to stop winding up in jail.

Of course, I understand the inherent institutional racism in America. I understand that many white racist judges seem to gratify their sadistic nature by looking for every opportunity to put blacks behind bars. Be that as it may, in this essay I am not interested in the behavior of white America.

I do read history and appreciate that whatever goes up must come down. America is an empire. We have had empires before. Just as soldiers come and go, empires come and go. The American empire is, in fact, rapidly burning itself out. China is already knocking on the door. Soon, a resurrected Europe would start making noises, asking to share power with America.

Within two hundred years, Africans would have gotten their structural issues settled and undertaken industrial revolution and begin to ask to be taken seriously. Africans will acquire nuclear weapons and there is nothing any one can do to prevent that from happening. The genii are out of the bottle.

America, for a while, out to protect its self interest and prevent its enemies from using such weapons on her, may retard the spread of weapons of mass destruction, but history shows that once a weapon is developed it is only a matter of time before most people have it.

Physics increasingly understands phenomena and soon what we consider today’s advanced physics would become child’s play. So, in time, all people will have advanced science and technology and will challenge their present oppressor, Americans. That is guaranteed. Therefore, I do not loose sleep thinking about white Americans’ current hegemonic control of the world. The sole superpower has her rendezvous with destiny and when she has performed her historical tasks would wither away and be replaced by other equally temporary powers.

I am not motivated to offer excuses for why African Americans are who they are; I am interested in providing a gut level picture of how they come across to me. In this essay, not study, I described how I see them. I relate to them as I see them.

Generally, I do not take African Americans seriously; I tend to assume that they are irresponsible folks who cannot be counted on to stand up for commitment to issues outside their immediate self interests. I tend to see them as folks who when the going gets tough run and make excuses for their cowardice.

If I need things done and done well, I tend not to go to African Americans, I go to white folks. White folks understand the need for working hard, and for volunteering and doing something because it is worth doing.

I expect African Americans to be lazy and uncommitted workers and to exploit folks if they could get away with doing so. Simply stated, I do not have a positive perception of these people.

Of course, I would like African Americans to be different. What I would like and what is, however, are two different things.


Ozodi@africainstituteseattle.org

January 31, 2006.

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