Lecture delivered by Dr Lasisi Olagunju, newspaper editor and columnist, on Unity and Community Development organized by Modakeke Development Partners at Modakeke, Osun State, on Friday, 13 December 2024
Protocols
Preamble
Four hunters lived in the same village long ago. But they never really worked together. Each was skilled, but they were too proud to unite their efforts. Whenever they went hunting, they worked separately, oftentimes at cross purposes. They always returned with little success.
A bad time came, their village experienced a great famine. Yam germinated and remained without tubers; maize grew cobs without edible grains. In situations like this, the people looked up to their strong men for solutions. If crops won’t yield food, how about meat, animal protein? Hunters were the strong men of the village, their people’s last hope. But they were helpless too, hopelessly divided. Their forest forays always returned zero. They had become women, men without balls.
But their village’s famine was fast getting out of hand. What would elders do in such a situation? The hunters added one and two and went to their village priest. They consulted Ifa. The oracle told them the solution lied in their hands. He spoke to them words of the spirit:
“A single broomstick breaks easily;
A bundle is unbreakable.
Only through unity can progress be achieved.”
“What else shall we do?,” they asked their Babalawo.
Ifa told them to make offerings (ebo). It listed the items for the sacrifice.
Hunters heeded oracle’s advice.
They offered offering as directed:
They offered Eyele, bird of peace.
They offered Oyin, totem of sweetness and love.
They offered Aso Aala, token of unity and purity.
But the real ebo, Ifa said they must hunt together in harmony. Ifa warned them specifically: selfishness and pride would always lead to failure.
They did as they were told,
They then plunged into the depths of the forest.
For the first time, the hunters hunted together.
In the bush, each hunter brought his unique skills:
One was an expert tracker; he was a master in finding the trails of animals.
Another was the baba at setting traps.
The third was an atamatase‑ marksman, master of bow and arrow.
The fourth hunted, he cooked, and preserved meat for the journey home.
Together, they succeeded in catching more animals than they ever did alone. They exchanged looks, they were happy. They returned to their village with songs of victory over famine and suffering. Their people were happy at their success.
In unity, the four hunters declared the bounty they came with from the bush: they shared the meat with everyone, ending the famine.
Their cooperation not only saved their community but also brought them closer together as brothers.
Unity brings strength.
They hailed their priest
Their priest praised his Ifa.
Love, unity, and cooperation are the cornerstones of lasting progress.
Using the above story as guide, I have read my invitation here as a call for divination. You are asking me to be your Ifa. I will try to speak the language of the oracle. And I speak not to you alone. My words speak to all communities desirous of progress.
I thank the Modakeke Development Partners (MDP) for the opportunity to be part of this important event, the 8th Annual Public Lecture of the group as part of the 39th Akoraye Day celebrations.
I welcome all of you, stakeholders, chiefs and leaders of thought, friends and members of this community. I am to speak on “Unity of Purpose as a tool for Building a Strong and Sustainable Community.” When this assignment was foisted on me, I asked for some clarifications on what exactly the organisers meant by the topic. I was told that my job is to interrogate possible strategies that could be deployed in fostering unity and development in Modakeke, particulary as the community, like others, grapples with existential issues of growth and development.
I know the organizers of this event have worked really hard to cast the topic of discussion here along the line of unity of purpose as a condition for building a strong and sustainable community. However, after seven days of fasting and prayers on what I should say here that would best address the objectives and goals of my hosts, God whispered to me that I should tinker a little with that topic, bringing to the front burner what we need to achieve first that would give what we crave. And that is that thing called Love. Without love, there cannot be unity and peace and purposeful existence. And, we all know that where there is no love, there cannot be peace, and where there is no peace, there cannot be unity. In a society that lacks any of those three ingredients (love, peace and unity) the soup of strong and sustainable communal development can never be ready.
So, ladies and gentlemen, while I am not deviating from the core reasons of why we are here, what I will stress first here is the power of love as a driver of unity and sustainable development in any human community. I hope you agree with me. Thank you.
We should now explain what each of the concepts means in the context of this discourse. What is love? What is peace? What is unity? What is sustainable development? Can we first agree on what ‘development’ means and then move to interrogate ‘sustainable development.’
My Cambridge English Dictionary defines ‘development’ as “the process in which someone or something grows or changes and becomes more advanced.” That is the general idea of that concept. I, however, thought we should go for a definition that best describes why I was invited here. And, to the United Nations I went. The UN says: “Development is a multidimensional undertaking (designed) to achieve a higher quality of life for all people.” It goes further deeper helping us to define the next concept. It says: “Economic Development, social development, and environmental protection are interdependent and mutually reinforcing components of sustainable development.”
So what is love? In seeking to define what love is, I thought I should not bore you with dictionary definitions of love and what scholars say it is. Because I am a story-teller, born, bred and trained in that realm, I thought I should just use a song and stories to tell what it is and what it is not.
You must have heard of a certain Mother Teresa. She lived between 26 August, 1910 and 5 September, 1997. She was an Albanian-Indian Catholic nun who was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 19 October, 2003. Following that beatification, Mother Teresa became Saint Teresa of Calcutta. In 1979, Mother Teresa got a Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance speech at the conferment of that honour, this catholic nun told several stories of love and compassion. She ended that beautiful speech with a personal story which I think strongly defines love: I quote her: “One evening a gentleman came to our house and said, there is a Hindu family and the eight children have not eaten for a long time. Do something for them. And I took rice and I went immediately, and there was this mother, those little ones’ faces, shining eyes from sheer hunger. She took the rice from my hand, she divided it into two and she went out. When she came back, I asked her, where did you go? What did you do? And one answer she gave me: They are hungry also. She knew that the next doorneighbor, a Muslim family, was hungry. What surprised me most was not that she gave the rice, but what surprised me most was that in her suffering, in her hunger, she knew that somebody else was hungry, and she had the courage to share, share the love. And this is what I mean, I want you to love the poor, and never turn your back to the poor…”
Now, this is where I am going: note that the person who gave the rice is mother Teresa, a Catholic nun, a Christian. She gave the rice to a hungry family of Hindus. The Mother of that hungry Hindu family collected the rice, divided it into two and took one half to a hungry Muslim family – (“they are hungry too”!). Real love is colour-blind; it knows neither race nor religion. That story is my definition of love and it is what I am anchoring this lecture on.
Everyone here is either a Muslim like me, or a Christian like Barrister Kolawole Fatoye who ‘dragged’ me here; or a traditionalist like the head of the masqueraders in town. There may even be an atheist in this hall. You will agree with me that all of us have in our belief systems that the best religious precept is love. We saw it in the Mother Teresa story above. We’ve also heard it in the famous Biblical verse (Matthew 22:37–39) : “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” And, if you are a Muslim, Quran 3:36-37 enjoins you: “And do good unto your parents, and near of kin, and unto orphans, and the needy, and the neighbour from among your own people, and the neighbour who is a stranger, and the friend by your side, and the wayfarer, and those whom you rightfully possess.” And I was told by my Babalawo that there is an Odu Ifa called Ogbe Yeku that teaches us love and kindness to our neighbor: “Bi a baniounkan/ E je a fun omonikejiiwa/ Ki aye le tuba/ Ki aye le tu se (If we have something/ Let us share that something with our neighbour/ So that the world will have peace).”
All those verses emphasize ‘neigbour’. So who is my neighbour? If you are of my generation, you will remember that in primary school, you were taught and you sang a song that best defines who your neighbour is:
“Ounl’enik’eji re ranti/ ranti o/ Ounl’enikeji re o/ Taani?/ Ranti o/ Eni kenitiiwobani pa/ L’ati se iranlowo fun o/ Ounnaal’enikeji re/ Tooju re…” (He is your neighbour/ Whoever needs your help/ He is your neighbour, your next-of-kin/ Take care of him.
There is also the ancient Indian story of four friends: Tortoise, Deer, Rat and Crow. The story is this: Deer falls into Hunter’s net; Crow sees distressed Deer from a height and informs the others. Wily Tortoise teaches Rat what to do. Rat eats through the net and frees Deer; Hunter approaches but Crow distracts him giving Deer enough room to escape. In that simple story are two timeless lessons: love is the foundation of unity, and, according to the storyteller, “unity is the bedrock of strength.”
Remember it is my argument that love rules the world and all things in it and that with love all things are possible and this includes unity, amity and development. You remember the story of the Tower of Babel in the Christian Bible (Genesis 11:1-9). That is a story that gives an incredible hint on what humanity is capable of achieving if he allows love and unity in its affairs. Because they spoke one lone language, divisions which differences in tribe and tongue could wreak were absent in their policy conception, formulation and execution. They were united in love so much that there was no dissension when it was mooted that that community of man should build a tower that would reach the heavens. They started what would ordinarily be deemed impossible, and they were succeeding until the God factor came and intervened and stopped them. Listen to Genesis 11:6: “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” The moment they could not understand one another was the end of their endeavors.
Now, back to this town, let me ask what I was told: Is it true that party politics and petty rivalries have cast asunder your unity?
One Ijesa chief told an American researcher in the early 1990s something that may be true of even this gathering: “We love ourselves abroad more than we do at home.” Should it be like that? If it is, should this not be the time to stop it and use love to conquer hatred? Remember, where there is no love, there cannot be unity and peace, and definitely no development. The result may even be worse. In particular, I go with another researcher Lotz (1971: 314) who said that “if our world is to survive, each man must, of necessity, become his brother’s keeper.”
We all remember the old story of the old man who had 80 sons but who were walnut children- omoinuawusa – sworn enemies who fought one another forever. One day, the old man knew he was dying and so he summoned all his feuding children to a lesson class on unity and strength. He gave to each of them a bundle of broom sticks, asking them to break it. None of them could. Then he undid the bundle and asked each of them to pick whatever they could pick from the loose sticks and break. All the sticks broke like legs of grasshoppers in the hands of wanton boys. The children knew the meaning. Their father didn’t have to tell them. Ladies and gentlemen, I do not have to tell you or tell myself the meaning and implications of unity and disunity.
This takes us back to the central theme of this discussion: Unity as a driver of community development. In our context here, the hometown is the community.
“Our hometowns are more than our places of origin”
This is the eighth edition of the Modakeke Development Partners’ annual public lecture. I have not bothered to ask the partners why they have to go through the yearly financial and physical strains of organizing talks and mobilizing resources for the development of a community where many of them do not live. I should not ask – and that is because as an authentic Yoruba man myself, I could connect very well with what drives us towards events like this. It is difficult to explain to outsiders, those to whom hometowns are just a dot in their family geography – and in their ancestral history. It is difficult to tell them that to the Yoruba “our hometowns are more than our places of origin.”
Professor Lillian Trager was a Professor of Anthropology at University of Wisconsin-Parkside. She was in Ijesa land in the early 1970s for her PhD fieldwork. In the early 1990s she was back for a further research into the Yoruba idea of hometowns and what development meant there. The result is her monumental 2001 book: ‘Yoruba Hometowns: Community, Identity, and Development in Nigeria.’ Trager says in that book that she explained the Yoruba obsession with their hometowns to her American students and they could not understand many things in it. She says they asked her: “Why do people who no longer live in a place, who may never have lived there, continue to be involved, to spend their money and their time there? What is the motivation for someone who may have an important job, who is well known and involved in urban organizations to come home to a small city or rural town or village” (see page IX). The late Justice Kayode Eso, in the Foreword to that book on Yoruba Hometowns (page XI) holds that for the Yoruba, the places where they had acquired their wealth pale into a secondary position” – if those places are not their hometowns.
So, ladies and gentlemen, these viewpoints explain why we are here. They are assumptions that we are a family although we may live our days far apart. You are a community bound by the ties of geography, fate and history. Let us discuss what community may entail before we go further to look at other key areas of why we are here:
Writing on the topic: ‘Community Development – A World View’, in the Canadian Journal of Public Health of July/August 1971, Jim Lotz, while tracing the origin of the term ‘Community Development’ anchors it on total education for the African child. He particularly calls our attention (on page 314) to a report that was produced for tropical Africa 99 years ago.
Analyzing the report, Lotz notes that a number of themes there should form part of the philosophy of community development in tropical Africa. He lists them as “the idea of a total, integrated approach to development and to the community, the idea of helping people to manage their own affairs, the idea of service, the coordination of all efforts in a given area to aid everyone in that area to have a decent life, the problem of material prosperity without concern for the moral consequences of the acquisition of material goods, the difficulty involved in providing education systems that did not destroy traditional ways of life, and, underlying it all, the feeling of humanism and the need to put people first in the development process.”
I observe that the 2014 Akoraye Day is not just about talk and chop. There are practical parts of the event that show how serious-minded this community and its leaders are. You want to raise funds – N1billion. You’ve always raised funds right from the very beginning. What you spent the money on, I have studied as published by the community in a press statement released last week: Modakeke High School; Palace; Police Station; Post-Office; Postmaster’s Accommodation; Olorunsogo Market; Customary Court building; Modakeke Community Grammar School; Town Hall; Ogunsua Grammar School; Orisunmibare Planks Market; Olorunsogo Motor Park; PHCN Control Room; Modakeke Civic Centre; Magistrate Court and High Court buildings. The list even includes a radio station – the Ogunsua Radio 97.7FM.
This is very impressive and no one who values development would question the quality of the minds that conceptualised those projects in the context of the periods that birthed them. Afterall, our ancestors say omoti aye bi ni aye npon (the world cuddles the baby of its womb).
Now, all those reside in the past. I want us to discuss why it is imperative that you spend today’s money for tomorrow’s progress.
Sustainable spending by the community
I started my undergraduate education at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, in the mid 1980s; I left in 1990; and so I can claim some measure of understanding of the socio-economic issues that undergird life in this area. I knew then that agricultural activities here revolved around cocoa farming and trading in cocoa. I understand it is the same now. I know that people who make big money from cocoa are historically persons we call cocoa merchants and produce buyers. Cocoa farmers also make money, but they spend and exhaust their money and wait for the next harvest season. It is a vicious cycle. I know this because I am a product of that economic reality. My parents were cocoa farmers in Ila Orangun. I experienced it and always wondered why we worked so hard and got so little, year in, year out. The few who managed to get out of that cycle were those who gave their children very good education. I know this because I am here.
American professor of Economics and History, Sara S. Berry, was around here over 50 years ago. Between 1970 and 1971, she did an original research study of cocoa farmers and their descendants in Western Nigeria. Her field of study was in two cocoa farming villages some thirty kilometres south east of Ile Ife. The result of her research is the book: ‘Fathers Work For Their Sons: Accumulation, Mobility and Class Formation in An Extended Yoruba Community.’
The book is not about this community. It is about my father’s and my mother’s hometowns: Eripa and Iree – and how people moved from those locations to places not far from where we sit today to plant cocoa, make money and go back home to spend their money. On what?
Berry (page 192) who answers that question uses it to explain why “prosperity has proven to be an elusive goal in contemporary Nigeria.” She goes further to interrogate “why agricultural commercialization has not led to sustained economic growth and diversification, either through the efforts of farmers and their descendants or through state intervention.” She describes the ways in which farmers used their income from export crop production to fund ostentation, and examines “the implications of farmers’ expenditure patterns for the changing structure of economic activity.” Her conclusion is that while farmers of that era truly made money, their “success” merely turned out as “unproductive accumulation” which translated to neither lasting riches for them nor sustainable development for their hometowns where the proceeds were repatriated to and spent.
This takes us back to how funds raised from community events such as this year’sAkoraye Day may be deployed. It is my position that all the projects of the past were good, thoughtful but they belong in and to the past. Modakeke of 2024 is not the same as the Modakeke of 1977 when Akoraye Day started, neither is it the same as the community you had in the 1980s, the 1990s and in the turn of the century. Today is very distinct in its demands and challenges- and they are not easy to contemplate. I therefore suggest the following:
Strategies for Development
I understand this to be a discourse on how Modakeke can effectively integrate its development strategies in education, agriculture, youth development, and community development. As we explore these areas together here, we should be able to come to see them as pillars of sustainable growth and prosperity in any community.
I start with education which I see as the bedrock of development. The future of every community or society are its youths. A key instrument of unity and development is education. Why education? And why not? It is said by our elders that if education and culture are found absent or dead in a community, the children of that community cannot grow – ‘grow’ here means ‘survive’ (Ilu ti ko baniekoatiasa, awonomoibe, won kiidagba). We will observe from that saying that the Yoruba are not speaking of education for education sake. They couple it with culture. They speak of education in its totality, education that teaches morals, that teaches clean labour and gives skills, that emphasizes the values of communality and that does not alienate a people from their roots, their beginning.
Let me quote Lotz (1971) again. And I quote him: “In 1925, after a study of African mission education carried out with funds obtained from an American foundation, the British government issued a White Paper entitled ‘Education Policy on British Tropical Africa’. This report states that progress in Africa should not rely only on the schools, but should come through improved agriculture, development of native industries, improvement of health, training people to manage their own affairs, and the inculcation of ideas of citizenship and service.” Lotz notes that “three main principles were stressed in the report: 1. That education should be intimately related to other efforts, whether of governments or of citizens for the welfare of the community. 2. That material prosperity without corresponding growth in the moral capacity to turn it to good use constituted a danger, and, 3. That the real difficulty lay in imparting any kind of education which would not have a disintegrating effect upon the people of the country.” That was 99 years ago.
Now, how much of that report was implemented for us by those who wrote it? How much of it has been part of our public policy on education? Are we even aware of the existence of such a self-indicting report prepared by those who brought for us civilization (olaju) that has paradoxically had “disintegrating effect” upon us (to use the authors’ own words)?
The food for the growth of the youths is education. When you educate your young ones, you free them from the scourges of hopelessness, from want and restlessness. You free them from the snares of poverty and unlock your community from the jailhouse of real and potential trouble. Look deep into the economic history of families around you. Would you agree with me that households that have managed to escape poverty in a sustainable way are those who embraced education early? You should. It is obvious. Haruna Ishola, grand old master of Yoruba Apala music in an album describes education as okun ola tikiijalaelae. The fact of me, “farmer-born, peasant-bred” being here on this podium is a personal proof of my thesis of education as the solution to most of personal and communal afflictions. So, while I stress that education is the foundation of any thriving society, I suggest that Modakeke should do more in investing in education infrastructure. Do not wait for the government. Rebuild, reinvent and upgrade your public schools with modern facilities to create a conducive learning environment for the children of households that cannot afford private school education.
You should go a step further. Encourage technical and vocational education. Doing this kills more birds for you with one stone. Your community can be the factory that produces the critical technical manpower which Nigeria desperately needs. You can make establishment of a technical school your very next project. This will equip the mass of your youths with skills in technology, crafts and trades to meet local and global demands.
Still, that may not be enough. Go further and promote excellence by generating funds for scholarships for your geniuses. Give them world class education. They are the future of your community and your people. “Genius… seeks regions hitherto unexplored” (Abraham Lincoln). And, there are geniuses everywhere in your community if you look deeply enough. They particularly abound in poor households. Omo afisewoniidagba. No child of any human community in 2024 should be left behind. No child of any home in this community should be abandoned to the ravages of want and penury and hopelessness. Engage stakeholders to fund education for underprivileged children, foster a culture of learning and a culture of knowledge.
Now, job creation
When you train people, be prepared to get them work to do, otherwise the devil takes over. There is the interesting, well documented case of a man in a town near my hometown who was educated with community money in the 1950s. The man came back from the university and was engaged as a teacher in the community’s High School, managed by the BaptistMission. He was apparently promised the principalship of the school but somehow, it just didn’t work out. So, what did he do?
“Disappointed in his hopes of becoming principal of the high school, (the man) tried to put pressure on the authorities by stirring up popular protest against the incumbent principal, who had been recruited by the Baptist Mission. In the process, he spread a rumor among the Muslims…that the money they had contributed for the construction of the high school had never actually been spent for that purpose; instead, it had been appropriated by members of the Baptist establishment for their own use. Although his efforts did not get him the job of principal, they did exacerbate religious antagonism in the town, intensify the subsequent conflict over the choice of a new oba, and hence reproduce existing patterns of unproductive accumulation and factional strife which undermine progressive social transformation in the town” (Berry, 1985: 190-191).
Agriculture as a path to economic empowerment
This year has been exceptionally profitable for cocoa farmers in Nigeria. As of today, a kilogram of cocoa beans sells for N12,200.It was less than 40 percent of that price last year. As I said earlier, cocoa farming with trading in the produce is a key driver of Modakeke’s economy. The questions I urge you to grapple with now are: How do you leverage the existing advantages you have in cocoa production to bouy development in the community? Is it not true that the cocoa trees are aging or are aged and the land increasingly getting arid? How do you get things turned around so that today’s good news of cocoa economy won’t be another story of prosperity written in the past tense? Can the Modakeke Progressive Union, the Modakeke Development Partners and other organisations in the town get involved in partnering with agricultural research institutions such as the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria (CRIN) in Ibadan to provide the right extension advice and service for the farmers to enhance the yield of their farms, ensure their personal solvency and communal prosperity?
While you do that, is it also possible to look at food crops by introducing modern farming techniques, provide training on mechanized farming and sustainable practices to the farmers to increase their productivity?Can we also engage with investors to pump resources into Agro-Processing centers to add value to crops and create jobs?
Funding
As I write, it keeps dawning on me that these questions come with suggestions of enormous challenges. They require money. Can the elite here look into how best to facilitate access to credit; support farmers with affordable loans and grants for equipment and seeds?
Harnessing the Power of the Future
If we do all these without carrying the youth population at home along, the efforts will come to nought. Oro ti a se ti a a fi hanomode, o maa parunni. So, I recommend measures that will take the youths off okada and politics as business, encourage their participation in agriculture; and make farming attractive to them through technology and innovation.
I say this because the future of this community is in the future, not in the past with all its warts and wasted opportunities. The generation that will birth and drive that future are your youths. Can we therefore go further into further strategies for youth development?In addition to what we’ve said on agriculture, I suggest deliberate introduction of skills acquisition programs. I suggest that youorganize training in entrepreneurship, ICT, and creative industries. I suggest establishment of mentorship opportunities. I suggest that you connect your young people with successful leaders home and abroad for guidance and inspiration. And you have them.
I suggest that you take deliberate steps that support startups and SMEs: Look for opportunities for funding and provide incubation spaces for young entrepreneurs in your community. And, this is very important.Since we are also speaking about unity and development, encourage civic engagement by involving the youths in decision-making processes. When you do this, you foster a sense of responsibility, you hone the youths leadership qualities; you bring out the genius in them.
Conclusion
Strong communities make strong nations. For Modakeke, I say that your strength going forward is in enhancing your infrastructure, improving roads, healthcare facilities, and other public utilities to enhance your people’s living standards. Promote unity and peace among the people, and encourage collaboration among all stakeholders to address communal challenges; leverage partnerships,work with government agencies, NGOs, and private investors to fund community projects. Encourage residents to participate in community service projects. Do periodic cleanups, health campaigns and other community actions in conjunction with the high and the low.
One lecture won’t be enough to explore all these routes to having a united community of values blessed with sustainable development. The conversation must continue after today and beyond here. As Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen wrote in 1882, “A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.” TheModakeke Progressive Union has branches all over the world. Each of those branches should take these issues (if you agree with me) as actionable charges to work on. It does not matter how much they could do at this early stage. Isunteereniidibu. Little drops the ocean make.
Ladies and gentlemen, Modakeke’s journey toward sustainable development requires a well-integrated approach. By being united and living in peace and amity, prioritizing education, agriculture, youth empowerment, and community development, you can unlock your full potential and create a thriving, self-reliant community. I urge that you work together with government, traditional leaders, the private sector, and all who matter and this includes the folks on the street—you will have aModakekethat is a beacon of progress and a land of opportunity.
I thank you for this chance to say my own. May God bless the organizers and bless all of you. Abo mi ree.
References
Berry, S. S. 1985. Fathers Work for Their Sons: Accumulation, Mobility, and Class Formation in an Extended Yoruba Community. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lotz. J. 1971. Community development–a world view. Canadian Journal of Public Health. Vol. 62, No. 4. Jul-Aug.
Peel, J. D.Y. 1983. The Ijesha in a Widening World – Ijeshas and Nigerians: The Incorporation of a Yoruba Kingdom, 1890s–1970s. Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Trager, Lillian. 2001. Yoruba Hometowns: Community, Identity, and Development in Nigeria. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
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