A.B. Assensoh in partial response to Africa Dialogue #s. 115/121, and exclaims, "Long live Falolaism!":
 

I smiled a lot as I read Phillip Iloegbunam's highly "charged" remarks and a few others, including Ilougbunam's call on our editorial facilitator (Toyin) to respond to some of the remarks and queries directed at his door! I smiled because Toyin's intellectual generosity makes him so accessible that, in my opinion, it would take over a dozen Falolas to respond to all the "revolutions" (or "upheavals") his speeches, lectures and ideas generate. I am underscoring this fact for a cogent reason: for example, in the Spring of 2004, Toyin agreed to do a major histo-political keynote address on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University, a well-appreciated lecture that generated days of debate. However, immediately he finished delivering that address (or lecture), Toyin had to fly to our campus of University of Maryland to give an entirely new keynote address on Africa. While he was giving that address, a Maryland faculty member was standing by to drive him, upon completion, to the Salisbury (Maryland) airport so that Toyin could make a flight for an immediate return to Texas (via Indiana). In Texas, he had another important engagement waiting for him. Well, the Maryland keynote address, by Toyin, was another bombshell, but he was in the air when the debate was ranging and consuming some passions as well as nerves on the Eastern Shore grounds!

Of course, those of us  who know Toyin well, do appreciate his combined "intellectual generosity and democratic principles", whereby he makes himself easily accessible and, at the same time, he also believes in the free flow of ideas but not the restricting of  the same, a cardinal sin that several major African political leaders and some of our African elite either commit or cannot avoid. For example, in his 1957 autobioography, Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah believed that there should be room for a benevolent dictator, especially if that dictator is enlightened enough and knows what he or she is  to dictate. Of course, but not Toyin! If  Toyin were to respond to anything on this forum, I can hear him simply asking: "But what is wrong with that...?" Well, we need true and patient leaders like Toyin, real leaders who do not get consumed by ego and self-delusion! Bravo to Toyin, who can easily have the patience to referee the fierce street fight (in which skilets or frying pans and other hot cooking utensils can fly freely in the air) among a polygynist's four or five wives but, still, come out unscathed! That is why our Germany-based cousin (Iloegbunam) should leave Toyin alone to be our impartial referee, who does not need gloves! Long live "Falolaism"!

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