Simeon Onyewueke Eboh Boeken

Inalienability of Land and Citizenship in the African Unity and Diversity in the Age of Globalisation Onuganotu Lectures (Onuganotu Lectures 4)

A close examination of African cyclic symbols, spatial categories, architecture, visual art and ritual life reveals the cosmo-biological bond connecting all of God’s creation. Life is a gift of God, and everyone has the obligation to preserve and prolong it. The way to social harmony lies in going back to our cultural heritage and our past – African communalism, a system built on equity, respect for human rights and the rule of law. Any society – Church or State – that nurtures structural injustice deliberately, keeps the majority in abject poverty and installs mental and physical slavery eventually only prepares a pepper-soup for social violence and internecine civil war. In the words of John F. Kennedy “Those who make dialogue impossible, make violence inevitable.”

An African Concept of Law and Order is an excursus into the archieve of African cultural past, an exploration of African cultural heritage, a journey to the source and fountain of African cultural values in order to show the existance of an African pre-colonial democratic and republican stucture of government which is ordered, achievement-oriented, patriotic and altruistic. The structure exudes law and order. It ensures individual freedom, encourages communialism and fraternity. It liberates the human being from institutionalised injustice, slavery to power and human degradation. This system of governance is a bulwark against dictatorship and bullying authoritarianism.