Skip to main content

Rudolf Okonkwo, Saharareporters And “The Trouble With Amen” By Remi Oyeyemi

July 22, 2013

“It is not enough to abhor censorship. It is essential that we make room for dissenting views if we wish to illuminate the views we subscribe to.”
 – Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo in his article THE TROUBLE WITH AMEN. July 10, 2013

“It is not enough to abhor censorship. It is essential that we make room for dissenting views if we wish to illuminate the views we subscribe to.”
 – Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo in his article THE TROUBLE WITH AMEN. July 10, 2013


 
Reading through the article of my friend, Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo of July 10, this year entitled “The Troube With Amen,” I cannot but write this response and dare the Saharareporters website administrators to publish it. I dare the website to publish this because the administrators have not adhered to the preachments espoused by the columnist in this referenced article.

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });

In the article, Okonkwo had commented on how he was “defriended” on the Facebook page by a “Reverend gentleman” who took exceptions to his refusal to be a zombie and say “Amen” to a particular prayer. According to Okonkwo, it was not the first time he (Rudolf Okonkwo ) “had reasons to challenge the reverend’s propensity to feed his flock with retired platitudes primarily aimed at eliciting amen.” The action of the “reverend gentleman” who “defriended” him had forced Okonkwo, who is a prime player as a columnist and presenter on Saharareporters website/television “to reflect deeply on the health of dissent in our society vis-à-vis that of conformity.” Rudolf informed that from asking around about this issue, the answer he got was that “once a society strangles dissent it sets itself up for a quick degeneration.”

Okonkwo then went on with preachments about how and why it is not desirable to stifle opposing views on any issue. He pointed out how “tricky” it could be when “people who suppress opposition often believe they are protecting their society.” He then postulated, “The evisceration of the right to dissent creates an atmosphere of groupthink. Groupthink has only led to group suicide and extermination. Reasoned arguments are simply those that have earned themselves a vigorous scrutiny.”

Okonkwo brilliantly went further, “Conventional wisdom is nothing but convenient wisdom. Things that are accepted are not necessarily right. Things that are accepted are not essentially settled. Sometimes things that are accepted were never really approved for human consumption. People just keep doing what others before them had done.”

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });

There is nowhere this is more germane than how this writer has been stifled by the Saharareporters website administrators other than that of commentaries and responses to the Chinua Achebe’s half truths, fictions, lies and propaganda on the Biafran issue. Almost all the articles that have been critical of Achebe written by me have been censored and not published by the Saharareporters website. Meanwhile every junk written on Chief Obafemi Awolowo has been gleefully published by the Saharareporters website. I have no problem with that. In a free society, it is within the right of anyone to criticize anybody. Anyone and or anybody is free to criticize Chief Awolowo.  If those interested in protecting the legacy of Achebe are confident of his contributions in any ramification, they should not be afraid of him being criticized or critiqued. It would only enhance his stature. The antics of the handlers of Saharareporters website handlers are nothing but unwitting efforts to diminish the stature and tarnish the legacy of Achebe. It is suggestive of a pyrrhic legacy on the part of Achebe if he could not be critiqued or criticized. But thank goodness, there are alternative websites willing to publish alternative schools of thought on this issue and any other.

It is very obvious that the Saharareporters website handlers do not share the philosophy of its columnist in Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo who insisted in the referenced article, “It is only when new truths are allowed to come in contact with error that knowledge is improved. Openness to different ideas is the only way to confirm, upgrade or discard established ideas. It is not enough to abhor censorship. It is essential that we make room for dissenting views if we wish to illuminate the views we subscribe to.”

Saharareporters website handlers are not helping to improve knowledge about the Biafran issue which is part of the Nigerian History. The handlers of the website seemed comfortable in engendering “groupthink” as Okonkwo called it, on this issue and not allowing  the market place of ideas and counter ideas to flourish. The website handlers are preventing other views contrary to the one held by the “Igbo group” as opposed to other Nigerians who were participants as well as observers to the tragedy of the Biafran war.

When Okonkwo postulated that the “evisceration of the right to dissent creates an atmosphere of groupthink,” and that “Groupthink has only led to group suicide and extermination,” he might have been inadvertently referring to the Biafran experience. Rudolf was correct when he surmised “Our better angels are often intimidated by group mentality which is often based on long held ideology that we have accepted as universal truth without sufficient questioning.”

It is one’s contention that the majority of honest Igbo sons and daughters who want to express different views on the Achebe’s glorification of falsehood have been intimidated by the “group mentality” that Okonkwo spoke eloquently about. This is a “group mentality” that is evidently “based on long held ideology” that the majority of Igbo “have accepted as universal truth without questioning.”  And the Saharareporters website handlers seemed engaged in fostering this “group mentality” while at the same time doing great disservice to extending the horizon of knowledge by censoring alternative views to Achebeism – the sweetening of fiction with the objective of making it real for the malleable. Yet, it is only through debate and counter views to long held conventional views that the society could be well served.

It is my belief that the handlers of Saharareporters have discovered that all the lies and fictions of Chinua Achebe would not be able to withstand the rigours of scrutiny to survive and endure. They are scared stiff that Achebe’s legacy would likely be eroded when confronted with emerging facts. They have decided that the best way to protect Achebe’s legacy was to censor critiques and criticisms of his utterances and claim to intellectuality. But unknown to them, especially in this day and age, falsehood would never endure, half truths would be short lived and propaganda would be defused by facts flying around all over.

Otherwise, there could be no other explanation for their acts of omissions and commissions in censoring views challenging the stands of Achebe on any issue, least of all that of Biafra where he played an ignoble role of participating in t he genocide of his kinsmen. Like Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo, an Igboman himself, had posited in the said article -  “It is only when new truths are allowed to come in contact with error that knowledge is improved.” Saharareporters handlers ought to have allowed “openness to different ideas” on the views and ideas put forth by Achebe. According to Okonkwo, this “is the only way to confirm, upgrade or discard established ideas” that Achebe represented. If Achebe’s idea was able to withstand the scrutiny, his legacy would endure because it would have been confirmed and upgraded. But if not, it would end up being discarded. Either way, Saharareporters handlers would not be able to determine the outcome because one way or the other, those of us with different views would not be kept quiet and our diverging views would be left for posterity.

Okonkwo suggested, “That injustice is everywhere does not make it right. That injustice does not affect us today does not mean that it will not eventually reach us one way or another. If we see injustice around us but prefer to join the chorus of amen because it is safe, we are mere cowards. But be afraid when you do not see injustices around you for chances are that you are part of the perpetrators.”

First of all, when you make false allegation against your fellow human being that is an injustice. That is what Chinua Achebe did to Chief Obafemi Awolowo.  Those who “see injustice around us but prefer to join the chorus of amen because it is safe” are not just “mere cowards” as Okonkwo suggested, but they are aiding and abetting injustice. That is what the majority of the Igbo are doing. But as Okonkwo also suggested, “be afraid when you do not see injustices around you for chances are that you are part of the perpetrators.”

The Saharareporters’ handlers are not just acting as “mere cowards” in this case, they are aiding and abetting “injustice.” They are disallowing “unfettered interchange of ideas on public issues” in an “uninhibited, robust and wide-open” way which “may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks…” as Okonkwo advised while quoting the United States Supreme Court in the 1964 case of the New York Times vs Sullivan.

The Saharareporters website handlers should let Chinua Achebe’s works and legacy stand on its own if they are so assured about its desirability.

They should let it be subjected to as much scrutiny as possible. Let those of us who have dissent about him and his works express it openly. It is the only favour that could be done to Achebe’s traumatized memory. His legacy would stand or fall on its own merits regardless of any form of censorship from any website or not for that matter. Same goes with any other man in the public space.

When Okonkwo insisted in the article “The world learns more from those saying NO than it learns from those saying YES. By saying yes, typically, one does not need to explain why. But those who say NO must explain,” he is very correct. Those of us who are saying NO to Achebe’s pack of lies and fiction should be given the opportunity to explain our position. Our position would further generate reactions and counter reactions thereby illuminating the stands of all sides and helping knowledge as well as posterity. If an idea is sound, it does not matter the level of antagonism, that idea will survive. If an idea is weak or untenable, no matter how vociferously propped up by its protagonists, it will fall like a house of cards without much ado. It is only the weakness of an idea that elicits undue protection and defence from its protagonists.

 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters 

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });