This, in part, is to pay tribute to Chief Richard Akinjide. He was at Channels Television as a guest on their Politics Today show. Of course, everybody knows Akinjide is a formidable legal and intellectual opponent. The well earned reputation precedes him. He is the antagonist you are enriched just for encountering and it won’t matter if you lost or not.
And he exhibited that trait, which I suspect comes from natural intelligence, reinforced by remorseless hard work. That the grand ole man is hardworking one could easily notice in his acute memory over wide ranging historical data, plus the ease with which he recounted things without notes. Of course, the idea is never to agree with him on all points. The greater point is to learn from him, his style, content and dedication to a life of the mind, even while remaining a top professional. And on this score I have a question for him.
How come we hardly meet younger lawyers on TVs these days, who show decorum, not just to their hosts but also the watching audiences, as he did at Channels? My take is that the Akinjide generation, who were trained by or under the British, failed to pass on same quality training to their juniors. And these bad mannered public appearances, it is well to remark, go beyond lawyers. It is all pervasive. It was like the British left and Nigerian civilization, to the extent there was one, collapsed. Perhaps the error of the Akinjide generation to universalize and handover the baton was a failure of omission, than one of commission.
Today it is common sight to run into younger professionals, lawyers etc, nearly one and all, rudely talk beyond their allotted time and not even listen to questions. But here was the Chief, full of the grace of his age, superlative accomplishment and wisdom, listening intently and respectfully to his host’s questions before attempting an answer. And the host was young enough he could have been his last son. It was almost like one was watching a similar talk show hosting Henry Kissinger, who like Akinjide is an ideas and not theatrical man. Well of his idea that there is little or nothing wrong with our constitution we respectfully disagree. His position appears too lawyerly to serve any development or originary purpose. For reasons that are not immediately apparent the other professions and professionals have capitulated and given up on the constitution as a legal document and nothing else. It is no such thing.
We must to have a living constitution, recover the shameless surrender that has made our constitution a dry legal pad which nobody believes in. It is perhaps when that is done that the claim; the error is in our character, according to Chief will be seen to be untenable. This present constitution even if legally perfect is a historical nonsense, is in freedom terms also meaningless. She is a dead and non living document. The gun however mighty, doesn’t make a man a nationalist. The gun doesn’t make an argument and cannot make a man wise. Alas this fraud of gunned wisdom, gunned nationalism is the uncanvassed homily of the authors, really forgers of this constitution. The present constitution is a forgery under the auspices and brigandage of gun totters who kept; it is pitiful to say, incontinent lawyers acting as Attorneys General, as retainers. But in modern times men or their nations are not to be “pacified” under one gun however mighty. No, it is under one consensus.
And this has to be philosophical, historical… sociological and never legal. The legal comes after. A society has to precede its law. A society is not a creation of law or its lawyers. The reverse is true. Americans have routinely and necessarily failed in Iraq, in Afghanistan, despite their firepower, law and constitutional dancing in the desert or reengineering. Perhaps the Imperial Life in the Emerald City, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran sufficientlybears the weight of the example. The moral is that modernity and its author, the modern man, have been successfully delivered and cannot be aborted, whether one is armed like the Americans, or the devil or the African coup makers.
A modern constitution to be operated and operable must be 360 degrees document, have 360 degree validity. Otherwise only those who authored it and or conspired to author it have a duty to so obey her. Modern society has been invented, and it is not a rule by gun or preemptive or ambush law. It is the rule of consensus. It is the consensus that generates the law and not vice versa. The constitution is the basic law. To work or be serviceable there must be a pre-norm. This we must remark is historical, is sociological, and precedes the merely legal. That is the decisive issue.
What is our pre-norm? If we don’t found it we perish. Presently, logically at least, and despite the bleeding hearts of public intellectuals, corruption is legitimate, even if allegedly illegal under this constitution, duly forged. And in millions, Nigerians are insisting and exercising the privilege to be corrupt as a last resort protest to superintending corruption. Is there then a solution? Yes, return the country to the citizens, to her owners.
Nobody pilfers from his own estate, from that which he owns. Corruption is driven by the distance between beneficial assets, both tangible and intangible, and ownerships. Corruption is a power not persons function. I rest my case here, for I have written in some details on this in my book Minorities as Competitive Overlords.
Re: Before the Americans, the Igbo were Yankees
Dear Jimanze Ego-Alowes, I had wanted to do a comprehensive write-up on this your topic as a follow-up, but I realized that whatever that I would have written, had been summarized in this quotation: “Sinners shall never find rest; the righteous do not need it” Ahiazuwa. You captured both the concept and practice of Oru na Igbo the way I never thought of. I believe that the colonialists of those days saw clearly the advantages of this God-given natural concept and practice, where it was taking us to, and smartly found a way to destroy it.
Today, there is another affront on our native African culture in the Anti-Gay Law of the Federal Republic of Nigeria under the guise of Universal Human Rights, similar to what happened to Oru na Igbo being sponsored by the same people. If we can return today (Taa bu gbo) to the concept of Oru na Igbo, come and see what would become of the Igbo race in the next ten years.
What we have expended on these alien traditional institutions cannot be quantified with particular reference to time and space. I support your motion to immediately “abolish, repackage and return to sender, to OBJ and Murtala, all these Traditional Rulers and their Princes” so that we can concentrate on the human capacity development in Mathematics, Science and Technology, Arts, Space Studies, etc.
What we don’t need, we don’t need. QED. I salute you Sir. Mike Dike. mcgeceng@yahoo.com.Dear Jimanze, in your attempt at adorning Igbo’s ascendancy, you have established the fact that Ibos are migrants from no specific part of the Universe; a fact proven by their migrant nature to infest others with their inherent greed wherever they are tolerated. Abia’s Orji expressed that trait in shipping home Ibos of other states from Abia. Where have you heard or read that migrants create empires?
Only people with natural base can talk about that. And that, Igbo lacks. Romans’ reaction to Christ was spiritual, so nothing to the contrary could have happened. But today, Christianity dominates in Rome. Your penchant for attributing to Igbo what they lack made you to relegate other works you even quote often in your spurious tribal theses to the background; to install Things Fall Apart as most important of all literary works in the world. What a damnable quintessential malady, theft, fake Yankee! LAI ASHADELE. +2347067677806
Dear Jimanze, only God knows how to reward you. You speak for us (fearlessly, truthfully) I am 100% proud of you true son of the soil. Always in my prayers. And a big THANK YOU! Lucy Udokoro. Onitsha. +2348036652532
Dear Sir, Superior cultures colonize lesser cultures. Africa was colonized by superior Europe. Superior Rome colonized lesser Israel and embarrassed and spread Christianity which the Jews couldn’t understand because of an inferior culture. +2348063898537
Dear Sir, make Minorities as Competitive Overlords available in Owerri, Enugu, Awka, Onitsha, Aba, Umuahia, etc, and not only in Lagos. +2348038571431
Dear Sir, God bless you, my eminent brother. You are indeed a blessing to Ndi Igbo in all ramifications. The almighty God has anointed you to go for us, as our mouthpiece, in a country where Igbo are almost endangered race. To this extent, therefore, your article entitled Before the Americans, the Igbo Were Yankees (2), as appeared in the Daily Sun Newspaper of 20/02/2014 was masterpiece. More grease to your elbow. Chief Ugonabo Chizoba, fsi +2348033500089.
Dear Sir, Jimanze is one of the clearest thinkers on the ofo as the leit motif of the igbo persona or cosmos, if you will. His “Before the Americans…?” was robust but he omitted ogu which is a condition precedent to ofo. Ogu is the moral force, that potent spur of righteousness that drives the innocent against his oppressor. It is symbolized by a broom stick and to break it is the height of aggression. Biafra in a sense was the culmination of several broken sticks of the Igbo experience in the Nigerian project. The national confab is therefore an attempt to gather broken broom sticks and see if the genie of strife can be enticed back into Lord Lugard’s bottle….Agu Onwuzuruoha
Dear Dr Jimanze. Thank God you have returned, from wherever, to start writing your classic zuguzaga again. Dejeeoo Nwokem. Dr Chuka +2348037254371
Dear Sir, I am glad you are back to your turf again. For a season I thought some conspirators and haters of truth would have cowed you out of business, even out of life. Thank god you are alive; please keep writing. God bless you. Nkemdilim. +2348034528879 Minorities as Competitive Overlords, is available @ Patabah Bookshop Shoprite Surulere, Lagos.
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