Who Are We?

To fully appreciate the question of our existence as a people, we really have to look back on the years preceding colonialism. We have been fed with fallacies about how our culture and traditions were barbaric, crude and primitive only because our history was not documented but always passed down by way of mouth. We have been led to believe that prior to the arrival of the Arabs and Europeans what we had was at best a dysfunctional sociopolitical structure   and uncivilized or animist religious practice. We were painted as a primitive people in desperate need of salvation.

 There are three major ways of preserving history and documenting civilizations: documentation by symbols, oral transfer and by writing. Speech, drawing and crafts have been an integral part of African civilization from time immemorial. The foreigners brought written documentation and compelled us to dispense with our own ways. They succeeded in bamboozling us with gunpowder, textiles and alcohol, and invited their mallams and missionaries to show us the light whilst at the same time enslaving us.

I am yet to be convinced as to why your way or my way should lose its validity and existence just because it has not followed a particular path. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Ottomans and Mongols preserved important pieces of their histories and traditions using symbols and objects. The answer is simple, conquest.  The foreigners marveled at the human and natural resources that were available to us. They did not come from a land of plenty and realized that to take what they needed would require enslaving by dominating and being seemingly superior. It would be difficult to conquer without conquering the fabric and beliefs, the make up of a society. Their goal therefore was not to erase “how” our story was told but to wipe out the story itself. The alternative would be genocide and assumption of ownership of land. 

We had complex and efficient socio-political structures before we were conquered.  We had clear-cut duchies and administrators entrusted with their running through popular participation. The Yoruba had a seamless centralized parliamentary federalism complete with the principle of checks and balances where the Alaafin and the Oyomesi (council members) shared powers. The Igbo had a sophisticated and decentralized unitary age-grade democracy. The Hausa/Fulani system of government was an organized and centralized presidential federal system, with ministers in charge of various departments of government. The same goes for the Bini Kingdom and all the other sizeable ethnic minorities that make up today’s Nigeria. The same is true for the rest of Africa.

Our identity has been buried beneath the earth, just like the lot of the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas of Central and South America, whose sophistication was such that their cities and pyramids, whilst smaller in scale, were more sophisticated than what you see in Egypt today. Their command of astrology and their 18-month calendar, made up of 20 days in each month, is still today more precise than the Gregorian calendar. The Spanish conquistadores razed their cities, killed their kings and leaders and built a new city on top of what they had built, to wipe out any memory of their ancestry.   What is modern-day Mexico City used to be the capital of the Aztec civilization. It disappeared along with their riches and religion and in their stead edifices of imperialist colonial mentality and lost identity. Some of their crafts and ‘documents’, like ours, are archived in museums in Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid and Lisbon.

Let me conclude by sharing this story. A traditional African King wanted more schools in his domain during the colonial era, but the colonial authority only allowed for one native authority school in each area. When the Anglican and Roman Catholic missionaries came with education, he quickly seized the opportunity by giving them plots of land to build their churches along with missionary schools and assisted them in building.  He was of the opinion that his people should get education, no matter wherefrom as he surmised that the key to development under this shrinking world was education. Pressure was later put on him to abolish the animist religion and popular traditional Ekwechi (masquerade) festival because it was pagan, fetish and ungodly.  His response was poignant: “Who was the God of Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses and the people of Arabia before Judaism, Christianity and Islam came? Or weren’t they worshipping God then?”

We must find our own way or get lost following others blindly. We must take time to understand our history and antecedence, as we will never know where we are going, unless we appreciate where we are coming from.     

DIVERSIFICATION

Things are changing all around us but we continue as if our situation will be like this forever. No condition is permanent o!  We must change our economic dance steps to the rhythm of global reality. We must develop our human resources and diversify our consumer economy. We cannot continue to be solely a commodity-driven market and leave our destinies in the hands of others. We must have our goal and pursue it vigorously, otherwise we will suddenly find that the music has stopped and all the belles have left the ball, leaving us alone to clean up our mess with nothing to show for it.    

 Why we are so pessimistic about being a change agent? Why do we think that we cannot create the change that is required? It is the only way to go. It is something that we must do for ourselves. We must curb our appetite for immediate gratification because it blurs our vision to the path of economic growth and development. It is our addiction to immediate gratification that assumes topmost priority when we sell our God-given petroleum as crude oil and import it as finished product. It is our immediate gratification that drives us to sell our cocoa, coffee beans, wheat, cereal, groundnuts, rubber, palm oil, cashews, almonds, sesame seeds and other agricultural and mineral resources only to import them in the form of finished products at premium prices.

 This “sharp-sharp” mentality is taking a toll on us. We create jobs for people overseas by being both the producers of the raw materials required by their factories and the consumers of the products that they produce. Meanwhile these same customers are getting closer and closer to energy self-sufficiency and are producing genetically modified crops, so that the science of farming and the seed for such will be in their hands. They will take that from us too.         

 Hydraulic fracturing (also known as fracking), which is the process of extracting natural gas from shale rock layers deep within the earth, is our nemesis. Fracking makes it possible to produce natural gas extraction in shale plays that were once unreachable with conventional technologies. USA, Russia and China are said to have large deposits of such natural gas. Recent advancements in drilling technology have led to new man-made hydraulic fractures in shale plays that were once not available for exploration. Already, the US has commenced exploration using the process, and the UK and China are poised to follow suit.

 We over here have not learnt any lessons from previous drops in commodities prices and obviously are not observing oil-producing countries such as the UAE, where the income made from petroleum is used to fuel tourism development, industrial growth and retail trade. Today, 90 per cent of visitors to Dubai go as a tourist destination and centre of commerce, not for the oil. Here in Nigeria, tourism, industrial growth and agriculture can still hold the key to a diversified economy capable of getting all its citizens to work and reducing drastically the dependency on oil.

 

Instead of attracting investment, we tend to repel it. What industries there are are struggling to stay afloat because they have to put infrastructure, such as water, power, roads and transportation, in place. Having incurred such heavy set up and running costs, they end up getting penalised with outrageous multiple taxes and levies from the authorities that should be encouraging them with tax holidays. Rather than be seen as employers of men, who pay taxes, they are seen as easy targets, cash cows for revenue generation. In the FCT, for instance, where there is no industry to talk about, only recently the planning authorities raised their tariff for planning approval in the industrial estate by 500%. It will now cost circa $100,000 or N15, 000,000 to get approval to build a factory warehouse. Is this how the Federal Government and the FCT intend to attract business here?  

 Companies pay tax and are employers. Their employees will also pay tax and contribute to the nations economy. What are the implications of driving away businesses under the guise of income generation?  How will other investors receive such news? Government must understand that it must encourage the private sector. Diversification should be on the front burner and we should think seriously about what it means to open our doors to investment. All the variables are here, we need leaders who understand how to put them together.                          

 

STAND UP FOR UNIABUJA STUDENTS!

“A small body of determined spirits, fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.” – Mahatma Gandhi.

A country’s political life is not solely in the hands of political organizations. We have to also recognize the importance of the contributions of ordinary people. The average day, decades-long struggle of people finding their voice carries a lot of weight and lot of influence. We must believe and stand up to be counted. We all have to work together and that is the key. It is never about money or celebrity status; it is about us taking responsibility for our being. And like magic, believe me each voice begins to be heard and joined by other voices and that is what can bring about change. We the people, the man on the street – you and I – have to be engaged not only in protests but also in persuading business organizations and institutions to take action.

 People as a people are the makers of our own history. We have to want change. It will involve hard work and sacrifice to get this miracle underway. So we should stop pointing fingers at oppressors when, by standing by, we give them the very fuel that they need to oppress us.

When the opportunity presents itself, we have to use whatever we have, whatever place or category we hold, to use our voices, our work, our lives to speak up and to speak out. To rise in such a way that our vision transcends even what we do not think is possible. To find that thing that drives us, that thing that makes our life feel that it has a certain value, because, in the end, that is the only thing that really matters!

 It is at times like this that opportunities are created for each of us to become leaders.  We need to be prepared to step out of our comfort zone or we will push away our chances for growth, mastery and the kind of lasting achievement that we can all be proud of. We have to be symbols of a refusal to submit to mediocrity and injustice. For a start, let us stand up and all of us support the students of the faculties of engineering and medicine at the University of Abuja. Their plight is more than pathetic. These are our youth in the prime of their lives, who have endeavored and have been accepted into the university eight years ago for courses some of which are 5-year programmes, just to be told that there is no accreditation for the university to run these courses. 8 years! They have paid fees and accommodation for eight years, to whom; for what? Where is the justice? The contract agreed to by the institutions and their parents has been breached. Who will pay for this? The university cannot do what they have promised and these young men and women have no recourse. Why? They have taken their money and are stealing their lives.

 What is the Minister of Education doing? The Minister should resign in shame that this kind of thing can happen on her watch. Last month, I heard the president talking about a space programme. We really are jokers. We cannot manage power, health, education and jobs and we are following space programme. Na wah o! In case you do not know, it is these same engineers and doctors whose futures we toy with that will develop these programmes for us in the future. Where is the National Association of Nigerian Students? “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” said Martin Luther King. We must stand shoulder to shoulder when we see these cases of injustice as it is only together that we can defeat the resident evil that are our institutions in Nigeria.

Mr. President, please wade into this issue. You should be investing in the university. You should make it something that Nigeria and the FCT will be proud of and therein graduate the types of scientists, engineers and doctors who will support you in your space programme and assist you in leading the country to the future that you promise us daily.

 

THE AFRICAN UNION

“Unite we must. Without necessarily sacrificing our sovereignties, big or small, we can here and now forge a political union based on defence, foreign affairs and diplomacy, and a common citizenship, an African currency, an African monetary zone and an African central bank. We must unite in order to achieve the full liberation of our continent. We need a common defence system with African high command to ensure the stability and security of Africa… We will be mocking the hopes of our people if we show the slightest hesitation or delay in tackling realistically this question of African unity.”

 The words of one of Africa’s founding fathers, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, while addressing the gathering of African leaders which led to the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), on 25 May 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  What they missed however was the tacit realisation that without economic independence in an atmosphere of peace, political liberation is a mere declaration.      

Having achieved little in 40 years, ten years ago African leaders decided to rename the organisation from OAU to African Union (AU). Apart from being a clear imitation of the European Union (EU) acronym, it was nothing more than old wine in a new bottle. There was little in terms of reviewing the objectives and values of the organisation in a changing world where countries with better human capital and superior SciTech re-colonise those who possess abundant natural resources with little knowledge or will of how to make them count.  

 Our continent is in economic disarray. Trade and investment balance sheets among member nations are abysmal for the simple reason that individual countries prefer to open our doors to the West and Far East rather than open up collaboration amongst us. Genuine integration has eluded Mother Africa because African leaders have ignored cross-border collaboration, which would have engendered the spirit of protective mutual interest.   

      

We have failed to take responsibility. We have done close to nothing to transform the continent’s huge resources to economic growth and prosperity. We have continued to overlook capacity development and wealth creation by not properly funding education and building industries. Corrupt and in our quest for immediate gratification, we prefer to sell off our God-given commodities as commodities, only to buy them back in the form of finished products at premium prices, providing foreign businesses with employment, innovation and value added. We remain ignorant traders, buying back what we could have improved and sold in the first place providing technology and employment to our own.

We should seize this moment of the continent’s economic growth to rescue our people from poverty, disease, illiteracy and unemployment.  We are described as the world’s last unconquered frontier, but investment in Africa cannot be maximised if its leaders continue to plunder its resources. It is appalling that no African country is immune to receiving foreign aid, considering the vast resources available at every corner of our continent. History should have taught us that nothing is ever given for free!   

 The French government, through the intervention of its forces in Mali, was not embarking on a charitable mission when it reclaimed the country from the grip of insurgents. Mali is blessed with large deposits of uranium, whose mines power French military and energy needs. There was simply a symbiotic need for France to intervene in Mali. It is on this we-need-each-other basis that European economic integration is defined: Germany had to spearhead Greece’s bailout because the latter along with other EU nations provide a significant market for the former’s luxury goods, technology and machinery, while also serving their tourism and recreational needs and vice versa. It took two world wars for Europe to figure out that economic integration holds the key to political and economic stability; we should open up our eyes and learn from this.                 

The 20th century was about the colonialism of Africa.  Our leaders have still not thrown off the shackles of slavery and as a result, the 21st century is fast becoming that of economic colonisation. We must forge sustainable political unity built on economic inter-dependency or stand the risk of being re-colonised. Nothing portrays this more than the roof under which our leaders celebrated the AU at 50 in Addis Ababa; the building was donated by China, our emerging economic colonial masters!