Wednesday 14 November 2012
Wednesday 24 October 2012
Wednesday 10 October 2012
Tuesday 9 October 2012
Monday 8 October 2012
Wednesday 29 August 2012
A lost republic; where did we come from?
A lost republic;
where did we come from?
As the world
turned the lens with keen attention to where I grew up to know as country, I
was tempted with a desire to grapple with an imagination of the future of a
wanton state of nationhood. To be candid and as for me, this may have been a
written soliloquy of despair and desperation perhaps as I really can’t help
wonder about where it all might probably end. The leaders from the south had
said that if the eventual decision from the referendum is to split Sudan into
two, the emergence of a new nation will not be an end in itself but the
beginning for something new. That, myself and I guess so many others world over
would have supposed too. Observers had
not only gone from world over to Sudan to see for themselves, they had been
commenting since it was decided that the future of the country will be
determined by the referendum. More importantly, they wanted to know what would
happen to the existing structure of the country with reference to the
dimensions of the proposed border lines, the existing rich oil reserve located
at that same border, the existing wealth and debt of the country among many
others. I really did not blame anyone for desiring to know all that, on a
backdrop of our knowledge of what happened in that country when it was yet a
single entity, more so, comparing that
with speculations of what could happen after, i.e. now that everyone had made
up their minds; they had to go their separate ways. I had believed there would
be a sought of more, though camouflage, responsibility to the nation and the
people when it was yet one entity than when it is divided into a northern and
southern nation. I thought so because a war quest to defend your nation’s
sovereignty is easy to sell much more than a civil war in the market place of
international politics and power play.
My anxiety then
was probably focused on what the means of resolution might be, in a case that there
arose further disputes as to who got what and as to who gave what after the
referendum was far over. How will both nations perceive themselves? What
behaviors will be formed from those perceptions? Will it not be an African
version of Seoul and the DPRK? All these however, were best being thought of
when I first contemplated on the issue of having two Sudan. I am still thinking
though. These and more were as much as my thoughts and paranoia for a Sudan
that was very much an important part of the Africa I came from.
However, as
important as it was, the referendum and events that followed after and is yet
occurring there did not come close to my heart as much as it could have been if
it were to be a case dealing in issues about the Nigerian state of nationhood.
However, I did fathom a point of congruence with regards to current occurrence
in both countries. That was a hope that as the Sudan has divided, she will be the
last great national entity that would voyage into a search for a new beginning
on the continent. In my opinion, national breakups are not as demanding as the
need for nations to grow up on the African continent. On many occasions though,
breaking up and growing up had both been inevitably bloody.
The most populous
Black Country in the world is Nigeria. When compared to many other African
countries, Nigeria is of greater concern in many spheres. Sometimes I feel
Nigeria’s popularity is also quite enviable. But, I am compelled to note that
though the world was not watching Nigeria as much as it watched Sudan, Egypt
and Tunisia at those moment in question, the events that simultaneously
occurred in Nigeria was also worth looking into then. As the Sudan waited for
the results of their votes on whether to either stick together for life or to
split up and as the northern nations of Egypt and Tunisia were experiencing
political unrest due to their people’s call for an end to oligarchy, Nigeria
was getting ready to decide a new leadership. The Nigerian media had already
been flooded with many campaign jingles and divers, some sort political
propaganda from all kinds of would be elected Politicians from the Good luck –
Sambo duo, to Atiku, Babangida (that was before the emergence of the northern
consensus candidate for the PDP and prior to the party’s primaries’) and the
Ribadu presidential aspirants, as well as other gubernatorial, senatorial and
house of representative hopefuls. Not left behind were the local government
chairmanship aspirants too.
What had primarily
held while I first wrote this piece were the numerous party primaries and the
voters’ registration. Some of the parties had essentially decided on who will
be bearing their flag for the gubernatorial and senatorial cadres. Some others
were still slugging it out. The big one is who would be the presidential
candidates for all the vying parties and of more importance is that of the
ruling People’s Democratic Party. It was known then that General Buhari was
contesting on the CPC platform while the former Vice President; Atiku Abubakar
and the incumbent president had worked tirelessly to clinch the PDP’s ticket.
The caliber of men
that desired to rule in Nigeria was one that is most amazing, perhaps, the most
amusing phenomenon of the country’s politics. This has been so since the days
of dictatorial and deadly military regimes to the partially democratic and
somewhat oligarchic regime of an assumed democratically elected president (who
then, had recently visited the Ivory Coast to mediate, not realizing that there
was little difference in Mr. Gbagbo’s actions and the third term agenda). What
made it all so stunning then was the fact that it was yet rare to find a
contemporary new breed politician holding sway as the Obama’s of the west did.
I thought any
curious person would want to know why these men were all we’ve got or perhaps,
as it seemed, why they were the ones that had been able to plant themselves
like canker worms within the Nigerian polity. And annoyingly, the more we
secretly wished them away the stronger they became and unfortunately the more
“dead weight” we became. All these continued to defy possible change, despite
Mr. Chukwumerije’s comment, after winning his party’s ticket, which I implied
to mean the cost of running for political office in Nigeria only skyrocketed
with time and possibly the only thing that might be capable of going higher
than the country’s inflationary index.
Truly and
painfully, the old blocks have refused to cave in. They are still the ones we
continued to see so glaringly. And, anyone may want to ask if it isn’t probably
because they are the ones that not only decide the cost of politics in the
country but also because they are the only ones who can pay for it financially
and otherwise? This vicious circle keeps going round and round. From the
governors who had won second terms, to another governor who, from second term
in office sought to become a senator, as well as other house of representative
and senate members who came again for fresh terms, and not forgetting the
sibling and ward of former and present politicians who wanted to become
governor after a relative who just signed out. There was also one that sought
to continue a dynasty built on the father’s life and still another who had been
around for quite some time who profoundly worked to exemplify the character of
her father’s ruler-ship legacy and ideology of presiding over a generation.
Alas I bemoaned,
if I must not be afraid for Nigeria maybe I can despair a little, or at least
take solace in wondering. This is because the political continuum has generated
much concern than it should have, if there were actually apathy on the part of
other citizens; the ordinary and the not so ordinary. What we have is not a
consequence of apathy. I believe Nigerians are not apathetic towards politics.
I believe politics here is merely worse than the devil’s nightmare. If you
don’t have the guts to get in its trenches, you will be doing well by truly
staring clear. Who can’t bear witness to
the gruesome abuse of many bright, well-meaning and sometimes neo-Nigerian politicians?
Who can’t bear witness to the cruel termination by assassination of others alike?
I wonder if we have soon forgotten about the killing of chief Bola Ige, Mr.
Funso William and many others like them. Most of which happened at the zenith
of their political endeavors. Who then will not be afraid for a dear life and
the future of a dear spouse and children? I know it is not legally right to say
that the cold blood murdering of well-meaning individuals from that of chief
Bola Ige to the least of it all were political killings but what more can
anyone assume especially when these men in black (now with a touch of blue and
a ash coloured camouflage) called Nigerian Police yet have never been able to find a
single suspect to the termination of any one of these great individuals.
Instead, they have not shown to be ashamed of corrupting their priceless badge,
uniform and a pledge to protecting life and property, so shamelessly, as much
as they are forcefully, in collecting twenty naira bribes, in the public view,
from ordinary Nigerians trying to make ends meet by transporting other fellow
Nigerians. It’s jokingly said that they report to a crime scenes, to round up
and arrest sightseers, when the least of the real criminals is long gone and probably
snoring away on his bed.
Bye and large, as
it is now, it is either the old blocks or the chips of the old blocks. Per se,
it is not only unsafe to rub shoulders with them. It is expensive as well, with
chances that allows for ghastly and costly consequences for anyone who dares
well enough. The means remain with the people that have the means. Those means
they have acquired by less hook and much more crook means since the Nigerian
Nation came into existence, having all it takes in its very crude form too.
Now, the question
is: will this continue to be the way the Nigerian nation will continue to
evolve? If the answer is yes, it simply means, among many other things, that
the cost price of politics will continue to climb to higher grounds, with a
continual creation of financial and moral barriers for other new aspiring
political markets prospective entrants or person with a good will but with
little or not enough means. This high cost price will only continue to be
within the reach of these few crooked elites and their dynasty members. Well observed
though, but then, that will not be where it will all end. The financing of
these cruel and gruesome ventures of the democratic “powers” of Nigeria must
always come from somewhere. And, more than often, from the black market of
financial corruption; the market where it had always come from. If you think I
have erred in this aspect you may try to present an argument for the most
wealthy of Nigerians, as to their source of wealth in difference to a time or
term of active politics (military or democratic) or of affiliations to active
politicians. Sometimes ago, grapevine had it that one of the quite popular
governors from the western part of the country donated a whooping sum of hundreds
of million Naira towards the funding of the incumbent president presidential
campaign. That same governor is acclaimed on the streets to have mortgaged
almost all his state’s assets and future viability. The arm of government
responsible for providing water in that state does not live up to their call,
not until residents agree to buy water again from the agency (through its water
tanker supply services) and that is after having paid your monthly water bills.
It is said, that if it were possible, the governor will have the people living
in the state pay for the air they breathe. Why will such a person contribute
that much to another’s political agenda if it is not because it is surely a
viable form of investment?
Funny enough
though, as well as being the climax of it all is the dynamics added to this drama
by the fact that an economic and financial crimes watchdog called the EFCC Is
all over the place more or less like a restless dog. The agency’s activity and
all what is happening is like a chase after bandits of national treasure
hunters. Unfortunately, by the time they all get to the presumably location of
the great wealth or treasure they all want to take (the national cake as it is
called in Nigeria) and thereafter, by the time they have finished digging to
the bottom of it all, it could all be gone. By then we will all (actors and spectators)
be in trouble for making so much fuss about what was either actually not there
anymore, what was gone before now or what was nonexistent in the first place.
The market place
term for what everyone wants in Nigeria is the “national cake”. The political
elites and their cohorts are plundering the little (although believed to be
much by the leaders and generation that existed back then before and since
independence) wealth of the country. They are digging it all up for themselves
alone wherever and whenever it can be found on the corridors of power and
governance and at the expense of all other things including the simple dignity
of humanity. The common man, hence, is left to his own faith. The government
doesn’t seem to appear to care as much as to even provide him with the basic
human needs like food and water, shelter, security, electricity, education and
transport not to talk of employment. This simply means: if he must survive, he
too must learn to fend for himself by becoming to himself what the government
should have been in a rightly behaving system. Most Nigerians are rather a
government to and for themselves in the current situation. Being a government
to and for you and you alone is mostly what the average Nigerian does by any
hook and every crook means, denying also his immediate and other neighbors the
rights to sanity and other basic human needs.
The meaning of
this hence, is that in Nigeria; the people are basically and actually of the
same kind in terms of nature and reasoning, at the moment, whether in
leadership or followership. But there is a more important truth: we are a
reflection of all these powers and forces that rule over us politically as a
country. Some other people have argued otherwise; that the leadership however
is a reflection of the type and nature of the Nigerian people themselves,
hinging their arguments on notions such as the ones that says what a person
really is can only be manifested when that person becomes someone of reckon.
But I differ from this arguments on the grounds that every man is an “either
or.” He has both inclinations to be good
and to be bad in any given circumstance. What we are is what we chose and
continually choose to be in the situations we find ourselves. The politicians
have chosen to be mostly manipulators and plunderers of their own accord and the
populace have followed suit in their own simple ways. The government agencies
is now chasing after anybody and everybody in phony and unprecedented manner.
The ordinary Nigerian now runs and seeks for his own self alone as does his
political leader. They all have an important objective of being able to locate their
own slice of the national cake or their own share of the national treasure
before it’s all gone to another whether on the streets of Nigeria or in
government circles from every local government council to Aso rock.
The average Nigerian
really wishes to collect what he can for himself and thereafter disappear into
a thin air, in no time, before any one from any of the anti-corruption units or
other government agencies called in. So what can we hope for in that kind of
social system? I think, you can only expect or hope that by the time we all get
there, what we came looking for, thinking to be there all this while would not
have disappeared into a thin air too. I
also think, you can only expect or hope that we have not followed directions
found in a vain map of vanity, holding on so powerfully to and allowing
ourselves to be led to the nowhere we would eventually find ourselves. This may
unfortunately be that point where we’ll come to learn and understand, though
being too late; that what makes a nation is actually what each and every one
concern gives to it and not what each and every one concern can take from it.
What makes a nation is what government and citizens put into it and not what
they took or can take from it.
That place too, on
its own will not be an end in itself but it will be the beginning of a new
thing, as the leader of the south Sudan had said about the prospect the new
South Sudan. Notably, however lofty a new nation had been for the people of
south Sudan who have suffered severally over the decades from the western
concept of what a people and a nation should be (like Nigeria is also suffering
today, though with more propensity towards mediocrity and fear of confronting
the lie) and especially in the hands of the northern powers led by a man wanted
by the international community for crimes against humanity, the Nigerian
version of societal progressions, sovereignty, national emancipation may not
lead to or be as much as a “good end – new beginning” story as that of the
Sudan. That is because, one way or the other, we have bought and bonded into
the ideology of the Nigerian state of nationhood unlike the people of the
Sudan, willingly (or unwillingly as it is claimed in some quarters) while
hoping there will be nothing wrong in being a mediocre country and people, as
long as there is a chance to one day take out of the country what we can get
for our individual selves and our individual selves alone.
I believe this to
be so because when we get to our own version of a national dead end as it is in
Sudan recently, where everyone must have taken out of the nation his own piece
of national the cake, the only thing we will be able to say to ourselves will
be to ask a question: “where is Nigeria”? Where is my beloved country? Where is
the nation I used to think of myself a part of? Now that the plundering is over
with nothing to show for it and nothing left to take out of it or to build
upon, where is my country going to be? What will it be called and what must I
do with myself now? Now that the bandits and the treasure hunters, the national
plunderers, the scavengers and the phony agencies have found themselves on the
same spot with nothing to take away and not enough evidence to prove that the
men we are now meeting and standing with face to face, steering at each other’s
face are the thieves that needed to be caught. Where is my country? Where is
the nation we have all made bankrupt in the process of living for our own
selves alone? Where would be the Nigeria the politicians have thought us how to
pilfer and led us to plunder?
Nothing has the
power to break up this country as much as financial and political corruption.
Not religion or ethnicity but corruption. Let us not wait till when we can only
ask; where did we come from? Where is our country? Is it now a lost republic?
Are we the Scum of the Earth?
You Lazy (Intellectual) African Scum!
They call the Third World the lazy man’s purview; the sluggishly slothful and languorous prefecture. In this realm people are sleepy, dreamy, torpid, lethargic, and therefore indigent—totally penniless, needy, destitute, poverty-stricken, disfavored, and impoverished. In this demesne, as they call it, there are hardly any discoveries, inventions, and innovations. Africa is the trailblazer. Some still call it “the dark continent” for the light that flickers under the tunnel is not that of hope, but an approaching train. And because countless keep waiting in the way of the train, millions die and many more remain decapitated by the day.
“It’s amazing how you all sit there and watch yourselves die,” the man next to me said. “Get up and do something about it.”
Brawny, fully bald-headed, with intense, steely eyes, he was as cold as they come. When I first discovered I was going to spend my New Year’s Eve next to him on a non-stop JetBlue flight from Los Angeles to Boston I was angst-ridden. I associate marble-shaven Caucasians with iconoclastic skin-heads, most of who are racist.
“My name is Walter,” he extended his hand as soon as I settled in my seat.
I told him mine with a precautious smile.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Nigeria.”
“Nigeria!” he exclaimed, “Yaradua’s country.”
“Yes,” I said, “Now GEJ’s.”
“But of course,” he responded. “You just elected the Otueke fisherman as your president.”
My face lit up at the mention of GEJ’s moniker. Walter smiled, and in those cold eyes I saw an amenable fellow, one of those American highbrows who shuttle between Africa and the U.S.
“I spent three years in Nigeria in the 1980s,” he continued. “I wined and dined with Buhari, Babangida, Soyinka, and many other highly intelligent Nigerians.” He lowered his voice. “I was part of the IMF group that came to rip you guys off.” He smirked. “Your government put me in a million dollar mansion overlooking a shanty called Obalende. From my patio I saw it all—the rich and the poor, the ailing, the dead, and the healthy.”
“Are you still with the IMF?” I asked.
“I have since moved to yet another group with similar intentions. In the next few months my colleagues and I will be in Abuja to hypnotize the Fisherman. I work for the broker that has acquired a chunk of your debt. Your government owes not the World Bank, but us millions of dollars. We’ll be in Abuja to offer your president a couple of millions and fly back with a check twenty times greater.”
“No, you won’t,” I said. “The Otueke Fisherman is incorruptible. He is …”
He was laughing. “Says who? Give me an African president, just one, who has not fallen for the carrot and stick.”
Quett Masire’s name popped up.
“Oh, him, well, we never got to him because he turned down the IMF and the World Bank. It was perhaps the smartest thing for him to do.”
At midnight we were airborne. The captain wished us a happy 2012 and urged us to watch the fireworks across Los Angeles.
“Isn’t that beautiful,” Walter said looking down.
From my middle seat, I took a glance and nodded admirably.
“That’s white man’s country,” he said. “We came here on Mayflower and turned Indian land into a paradise and now the most powerful nation on earth. We discovered the bulb, and built this aircraft to fly us to pleasure resorts like Lake Naija.”
I grinned. “There is no Lake Naija.”
He curled his lips into a smug smile. “That’s what we call your country. You guys are as stagnant as the water in the lake. We come in with our large boats and fish your minerals and your wildlife and leave morsels—crumbs. That’s your staple food, crumbs. That cassava-meal ( EBA) you eat, that’s crumbs, the small Tilapia fish is crumbs. We the Oyibo (whites) take the cat fish. I am the Oyibo and you are the Mugu. I get what I want and you get what you deserve, crumbs. That’s what lazy people get—Nigerians, Africans, the entire Third World.”
The smile vanished from my face.
“I see you are getting pissed off,” Walter said and lowered his voice. “You are thinking this Oyibo is a racist. That’s how most Nigerians respond when I tell them the truth. They go ballistic. Okay. Let’s for a moment put our skin pigmentations, this black and white crap, aside. Tell me, my friend, what is the difference between you and me?”
“There’s no difference.”
“Absolutely none,” he exclaimed. “Scientists in the Human Genome Project have proved that. It took them thirteen years to determine the complete sequence of the three billion DNA subunits. After they were all done it was clear that 99.9% nucleotide bases were exactly the same in you and me. We are the same people. All white, Asian, Latino, and black people on this aircraft are the same.”
I gladly nodded.
“And yet I feel superior,” he smiled fatalistically. “Every white person on this plane feels superior to a black person. The white guy who picks up garbage, the homeless white trash on drugs, feels superior to you no matter his status or education. I can pick up a nincompoop from the New York streets, clean him up, and take him to Lagos and you all be crowding around him chanting Oyibo, Oyibo, Oyibo and yet he’s a riffraff. Tell me why my angry friend.”
For a moment I was wordless.
“Please don’t blame it on slavery like the African Americans do, or colonialism, or some psychological impact or some kind of stigmatization. And don’t give me the brainwash poppycock. Give me a better answer.”
I was thinking.
He continued. “Excuse what I am about to say. Please do not take offense.”
I felt a slap of blood rush to my head and prepared for the worst.
“You my friend flying with me and all your kind are lazy,” he said. “When you rest your head on the pillow you don’t dream big. You and other so-called African intellectuals are damn lazy, each one of you. It is you, and not those poor starving people, who is the reason Africa is in such a deplorable state.”
“That’s not a nice thing to say,” I protested.
He was implacable. “Oh yes it is and I will say it again, you are lazy. Poor and uneducated Africans are the most hardworking people on earth. I saw them in the Lagos markets and on the street selling merchandise. I saw them in villages toiling away. I saw women on Farms , gathering crops for sale and I wept. I said to myself where are the Nigerian intellectuals? Are the Nigerian engineers so imperceptive they cannot invent a simple stone crusher, or a simple water filter to purify well water for those poor villagers? Are you telling me that after 52 years of independence your university school of engineering has not produced a scientist or an engineer who can make simple small machines for mass use? What is the school there for?”
I held my breath.
“Do you know where I found your intellectuals? They were in bars quaffing. They were at the Ikeja Golf Club, Abuja Central Club, Oceanblue, and Hilton. I saw with my own eyes a bunch of alcoholic graduates. Nigerian intellectuals work from eight to five and spend the evening drinking. We don’t. We reserve the evening for brainstorming.”
He looked me in the eye.
“And you flying to Boston and all of you Nigerians in the Diaspora are just as lazy and apathetic to your country. You don’t care about your country and yet your very own parents, brothers and sisters are in Zaria, Enugu, and in villages, all of them living in squalor. Many have died or are dying of neglect by you. They are dying of hunger and scarcity because you cannot come up with your own cure. You are here calling yourselves graduates, researchers and scientists and are fast at articulating your credentials once asked—oh, I have a PhD in this and that—PhD my foot!”
I was deflated.
“Wake up you all!” he exclaimed, attracting the attention of nearby passengers. “You should be busy lifting ideas, formulae, recipes, and diagrams from American manufacturing factories and sending them to your own factories. All those research findings and dissertation papers you compile should be your country’s treasure. Why do you think the Asians are a force to reckon with? They stole our ideas and turned them into their own. Look at Japan, China, India, just look at them.”
He paused. “The Oyibo has spoken,” he said and grinned. “As long as you are dependent on my aeroplane, I shall feel superior and you my friend shall remain inferior, how about that? The Chinese, Japanese, Indians, even Latinos are a notch better. You Africans are at the bottom of the totem pole.”
He tempered his voice. “Get over this white skin syndrome and begin to feel confident. Become innovative and make your own stuff for god’s sake.”
At 8 a.m. the plane touched down at Boston’s Logan International Airport. Walter reached for my hand.
“I know I was too strong, but I don’t give it a damn. I have been to Nigeria and have seen too much poverty.” He pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled something. “Here, read this. It was written by a friend.”
He had written only the title: “Lords of Poverty.”
Thunderstruck, I had a sinking feeling. I watched Walter walk through the airport doors to a waiting car. He had left a huge dust devil twirling in my mind, stirring up sad memories of home. I could see Nigeria’s literati—the cognoscente, intelligentsia, academics, highbrows, and scholars in the places he had mentioned guzzling and talking irrelevancies. I remembered some who have since passed—how they got the highest grades in mathematics and the sciences and attained the highest education on the planet. They had been to Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), only to leave us with not a single invention or discovery. I knew some by name and drunk with them at the Abuja Playhouse and Central Sports.
Walter is right. It is true that since independence we have failed to nurture creativity and collective orientations. We as a nation lack a workhorse mentality and behave like 13 million civil servants dependent on a government pay cheque. We believe that development is generated 8-to-5 behind a desk wearing a tie with our degrees hanging on the wall. Such a working environment does not offer the opportunity for fellowship, the excitement of competition, and the spectacle of innovative rituals.
But the intelligentsia is not solely, or even mainly, to blame. The larger failure is due to political circumstances over which they have had little control. The past governments failed to create an environment of possibility that fosters camaraderie, rewards innovative ideas and encourages resilience. Shagari,OBJ, IBB, and Abubakar embraced orthodox ideas and therefore failed to offer many opportunities for drawing outside the line.
I believe the Otueke Fisherman’s reset has been cast in the same faculties as those of his predecessors. If today I told him that we can build our own car, he would throw me out.
“Abi O ti ya were? Commot for here jo.” (Are you mad? Get out of here)
Knowing well that Fisherman will not embody innovation at Walter’s level let’s begin to look for a technologically active-positive leader who can succeed him after a term or two. That way we can make our own stone crushers, water filters, water pumps, razor blades, and harvesters. Let’s dream big and make tractors, cars, and planes, or, like Walter said, forever remain inferior.
A fundamental transformation of our country from what is essentially non-innovative to a strategic superior African country requires a bold risk-taking educated leader with a triumphalist attitude and we have one in YOU. Don’t be highly strung and feel insulted by Walter. Take a moment and think about our country. Our journey from 1960 has been marked by tears. It has been an emotionally overwhelming experience. Each one of us has lost a loved one to poverty, hunger, and disease. The number of graves is catching up with the population. It’s time to change our political culture. It’s time for Nigerian intellectuals to cultivate an active-positive progressive movement that will change our lives forever. Don’t be afraid or dispirited, rise to the challenge and salvage the remaining few of your beloved ones.
Culled and Adapted from Field Ruwe's Article.
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They call the Third World the lazy man’s purview; the sluggishly slothful and languorous prefecture. In this realm people are sleepy, dreamy, torpid, lethargic, and therefore indigent—totally penniless, needy, destitute, poverty-stricken, disfavored, and impoverished. In this demesne, as they call it, there are hardly any discoveries, inventions, and innovations. Africa is the trailblazer. Some still call it “the dark continent” for the light that flickers under the tunnel is not that of hope, but an approaching train. And because countless keep waiting in the way of the train, millions die and many more remain decapitated by the day.
“It’s amazing how you all sit there and watch yourselves die,” the man next to me said. “Get up and do something about it.”
Brawny, fully bald-headed, with intense, steely eyes, he was as cold as they come. When I first discovered I was going to spend my New Year’s Eve next to him on a non-stop JetBlue flight from Los Angeles to Boston I was angst-ridden. I associate marble-shaven Caucasians with iconoclastic skin-heads, most of who are racist.
“My name is Walter,” he extended his hand as soon as I settled in my seat.
I told him mine with a precautious smile.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Nigeria.”
“Nigeria!” he exclaimed, “Yaradua’s country.”
“Yes,” I said, “Now GEJ’s.”
“But of course,” he responded. “You just elected the Otueke fisherman as your president.”
My face lit up at the mention of GEJ’s moniker. Walter smiled, and in those cold eyes I saw an amenable fellow, one of those American highbrows who shuttle between Africa and the U.S.
“I spent three years in Nigeria in the 1980s,” he continued. “I wined and dined with Buhari, Babangida, Soyinka, and many other highly intelligent Nigerians.” He lowered his voice. “I was part of the IMF group that came to rip you guys off.” He smirked. “Your government put me in a million dollar mansion overlooking a shanty called Obalende. From my patio I saw it all—the rich and the poor, the ailing, the dead, and the healthy.”
“Are you still with the IMF?” I asked.
“I have since moved to yet another group with similar intentions. In the next few months my colleagues and I will be in Abuja to hypnotize the Fisherman. I work for the broker that has acquired a chunk of your debt. Your government owes not the World Bank, but us millions of dollars. We’ll be in Abuja to offer your president a couple of millions and fly back with a check twenty times greater.”
“No, you won’t,” I said. “The Otueke Fisherman is incorruptible. He is …”
He was laughing. “Says who? Give me an African president, just one, who has not fallen for the carrot and stick.”
Quett Masire’s name popped up.
“Oh, him, well, we never got to him because he turned down the IMF and the World Bank. It was perhaps the smartest thing for him to do.”
At midnight we were airborne. The captain wished us a happy 2012 and urged us to watch the fireworks across Los Angeles.
“Isn’t that beautiful,” Walter said looking down.
From my middle seat, I took a glance and nodded admirably.
“That’s white man’s country,” he said. “We came here on Mayflower and turned Indian land into a paradise and now the most powerful nation on earth. We discovered the bulb, and built this aircraft to fly us to pleasure resorts like Lake Naija.”
I grinned. “There is no Lake Naija.”
He curled his lips into a smug smile. “That’s what we call your country. You guys are as stagnant as the water in the lake. We come in with our large boats and fish your minerals and your wildlife and leave morsels—crumbs. That’s your staple food, crumbs. That cassava-meal ( EBA) you eat, that’s crumbs, the small Tilapia fish is crumbs. We the Oyibo (whites) take the cat fish. I am the Oyibo and you are the Mugu. I get what I want and you get what you deserve, crumbs. That’s what lazy people get—Nigerians, Africans, the entire Third World.”
The smile vanished from my face.
“I see you are getting pissed off,” Walter said and lowered his voice. “You are thinking this Oyibo is a racist. That’s how most Nigerians respond when I tell them the truth. They go ballistic. Okay. Let’s for a moment put our skin pigmentations, this black and white crap, aside. Tell me, my friend, what is the difference between you and me?”
“There’s no difference.”
“Absolutely none,” he exclaimed. “Scientists in the Human Genome Project have proved that. It took them thirteen years to determine the complete sequence of the three billion DNA subunits. After they were all done it was clear that 99.9% nucleotide bases were exactly the same in you and me. We are the same people. All white, Asian, Latino, and black people on this aircraft are the same.”
I gladly nodded.
“And yet I feel superior,” he smiled fatalistically. “Every white person on this plane feels superior to a black person. The white guy who picks up garbage, the homeless white trash on drugs, feels superior to you no matter his status or education. I can pick up a nincompoop from the New York streets, clean him up, and take him to Lagos and you all be crowding around him chanting Oyibo, Oyibo, Oyibo and yet he’s a riffraff. Tell me why my angry friend.”
For a moment I was wordless.
“Please don’t blame it on slavery like the African Americans do, or colonialism, or some psychological impact or some kind of stigmatization. And don’t give me the brainwash poppycock. Give me a better answer.”
I was thinking.
He continued. “Excuse what I am about to say. Please do not take offense.”
I felt a slap of blood rush to my head and prepared for the worst.
“You my friend flying with me and all your kind are lazy,” he said. “When you rest your head on the pillow you don’t dream big. You and other so-called African intellectuals are damn lazy, each one of you. It is you, and not those poor starving people, who is the reason Africa is in such a deplorable state.”
“That’s not a nice thing to say,” I protested.
He was implacable. “Oh yes it is and I will say it again, you are lazy. Poor and uneducated Africans are the most hardworking people on earth. I saw them in the Lagos markets and on the street selling merchandise. I saw them in villages toiling away. I saw women on Farms , gathering crops for sale and I wept. I said to myself where are the Nigerian intellectuals? Are the Nigerian engineers so imperceptive they cannot invent a simple stone crusher, or a simple water filter to purify well water for those poor villagers? Are you telling me that after 52 years of independence your university school of engineering has not produced a scientist or an engineer who can make simple small machines for mass use? What is the school there for?”
I held my breath.
“Do you know where I found your intellectuals? They were in bars quaffing. They were at the Ikeja Golf Club, Abuja Central Club, Oceanblue, and Hilton. I saw with my own eyes a bunch of alcoholic graduates. Nigerian intellectuals work from eight to five and spend the evening drinking. We don’t. We reserve the evening for brainstorming.”
He looked me in the eye.
“And you flying to Boston and all of you Nigerians in the Diaspora are just as lazy and apathetic to your country. You don’t care about your country and yet your very own parents, brothers and sisters are in Zaria, Enugu, and in villages, all of them living in squalor. Many have died or are dying of neglect by you. They are dying of hunger and scarcity because you cannot come up with your own cure. You are here calling yourselves graduates, researchers and scientists and are fast at articulating your credentials once asked—oh, I have a PhD in this and that—PhD my foot!”
I was deflated.
“Wake up you all!” he exclaimed, attracting the attention of nearby passengers. “You should be busy lifting ideas, formulae, recipes, and diagrams from American manufacturing factories and sending them to your own factories. All those research findings and dissertation papers you compile should be your country’s treasure. Why do you think the Asians are a force to reckon with? They stole our ideas and turned them into their own. Look at Japan, China, India, just look at them.”
He paused. “The Oyibo has spoken,” he said and grinned. “As long as you are dependent on my aeroplane, I shall feel superior and you my friend shall remain inferior, how about that? The Chinese, Japanese, Indians, even Latinos are a notch better. You Africans are at the bottom of the totem pole.”
He tempered his voice. “Get over this white skin syndrome and begin to feel confident. Become innovative and make your own stuff for god’s sake.”
At 8 a.m. the plane touched down at Boston’s Logan International Airport. Walter reached for my hand.
“I know I was too strong, but I don’t give it a damn. I have been to Nigeria and have seen too much poverty.” He pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled something. “Here, read this. It was written by a friend.”
He had written only the title: “Lords of Poverty.”
Thunderstruck, I had a sinking feeling. I watched Walter walk through the airport doors to a waiting car. He had left a huge dust devil twirling in my mind, stirring up sad memories of home. I could see Nigeria’s literati—the cognoscente, intelligentsia, academics, highbrows, and scholars in the places he had mentioned guzzling and talking irrelevancies. I remembered some who have since passed—how they got the highest grades in mathematics and the sciences and attained the highest education on the planet. They had been to Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), only to leave us with not a single invention or discovery. I knew some by name and drunk with them at the Abuja Playhouse and Central Sports.
Walter is right. It is true that since independence we have failed to nurture creativity and collective orientations. We as a nation lack a workhorse mentality and behave like 13 million civil servants dependent on a government pay cheque. We believe that development is generated 8-to-5 behind a desk wearing a tie with our degrees hanging on the wall. Such a working environment does not offer the opportunity for fellowship, the excitement of competition, and the spectacle of innovative rituals.
But the intelligentsia is not solely, or even mainly, to blame. The larger failure is due to political circumstances over which they have had little control. The past governments failed to create an environment of possibility that fosters camaraderie, rewards innovative ideas and encourages resilience. Shagari,OBJ, IBB, and Abubakar embraced orthodox ideas and therefore failed to offer many opportunities for drawing outside the line.
I believe the Otueke Fisherman’s reset has been cast in the same faculties as those of his predecessors. If today I told him that we can build our own car, he would throw me out.
“Abi O ti ya were? Commot for here jo.” (Are you mad? Get out of here)
Knowing well that Fisherman will not embody innovation at Walter’s level let’s begin to look for a technologically active-positive leader who can succeed him after a term or two. That way we can make our own stone crushers, water filters, water pumps, razor blades, and harvesters. Let’s dream big and make tractors, cars, and planes, or, like Walter said, forever remain inferior.
A fundamental transformation of our country from what is essentially non-innovative to a strategic superior African country requires a bold risk-taking educated leader with a triumphalist attitude and we have one in YOU. Don’t be highly strung and feel insulted by Walter. Take a moment and think about our country. Our journey from 1960 has been marked by tears. It has been an emotionally overwhelming experience. Each one of us has lost a loved one to poverty, hunger, and disease. The number of graves is catching up with the population. It’s time to change our political culture. It’s time for Nigerian intellectuals to cultivate an active-positive progressive movement that will change our lives forever. Don’t be afraid or dispirited, rise to the challenge and salvage the remaining few of your beloved ones.
Culled and Adapted from Field Ruwe's Article.
The Full breed antichrist
Truth is, my friends, “Come shop no supposed be by force naa”. To choose to say "Yes" or "No" is a fundamental human right. Even God wouldn't contend that. Allegiance becomes a must when there are no alternatives. Allegiance to God will no longer exist as an option when the antichrist is fully revealed. Then it becomes a must to pledge allegiance to the devil. His heir i
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Truth is, my friends, “Come shop no supposed be by force naa”. To choose to say "Yes" or "No" is a fundamental human right. Even God wouldn't contend that. Allegiance becomes a must when there are no alternatives. Allegiance to God will no longer exist as an option when the antichrist is fully revealed. Then it becomes a must to pledge allegiance to the devil. His heir i
s called the antichrist. If I can't say no to a government policy where I am not in any way violating the rights of any of my neighbors, something must be terribly wrong. It means my will is being crushed and I am being “ill-dignified” as an human being. Now, the irony is that democrats believe you can choose to take the life (murder) a fetus if you want to but you can't choose to be vulnerable to sickness or even accept to die if you want to (You must be insured). That's the meaning I have been able to make so far from this health care…(you know) and by the way, that reminds me of the antichrist. You must carry a symbol that depicts your allegiance.
The difference Christ makes is: nothing is a must, everything is your choice, actions and consequences well defined. The apostles confirmed the spirit of the antichrist is already in the world. I think the sign of the antichrist too is already hanging in prominent places across the world, in government and in religion. Lookout for those that make excuses for the rights of the macho and the stout dominators while taking away the excuses for rights of the feminine, the unvirile, the unborn, the weak and the vulnerable. The question to ask, whenever there was an act of adultery, is: why was it the woman that gets caught in the “act” and not the man or the woman together with the man? Dear friends, It is not difficult to see the obvious i.e. The antichrist. i.e. The one that manipulatively (Religion) or forcefully (Government) subjects.
However, presently the above are factual expressions of the spirit of the antichrist. The full breed antichrist will be a birthed when world government consummates a union with world religions. When you see government and religion beginning to embrace alas, there comes the blasphemer… the full breed antichrist.
The difference Christ makes is: nothing is a must, everything is your choice, actions and consequences well defined. The apostles confirmed the spirit of the antichrist is already in the world. I think the sign of the antichrist too is already hanging in prominent places across the world, in government and in religion. Lookout for those that make excuses for the rights of the macho and the stout dominators while taking away the excuses for rights of the feminine, the unvirile, the unborn, the weak and the vulnerable. The question to ask, whenever there was an act of adultery, is: why was it the woman that gets caught in the “act” and not the man or the woman together with the man? Dear friends, It is not difficult to see the obvious i.e. The antichrist. i.e. The one that manipulatively (Religion) or forcefully (Government) subjects.
However, presently the above are factual expressions of the spirit of the antichrist. The full breed antichrist will be a birthed when world government consummates a union with world religions. When you see government and religion beginning to embrace alas, there comes the blasphemer… the full breed antichrist.
Thursday 16 August 2012
Good Morning. I’d like to share with you
my meditations from Jude 11-21. My emphasis are in brackets. I hope it blesses
you with true meaning as you read. Regards.
Woe to them! They have taken the way of
Cain (Envied another man’s grace to the point of sinning); they have rushed for
profit into Balaam's error(carried on the works of ministry solely for gain);
they have been destroyed in Korah's rebellion (destroy by the feelings and philosophies
of me too).
12 These men are blemishes at your love
feasts , eating with you without the
slightest qualm — shepherds who feed only themselves (Names on the Popular Scandals
that embarrass us all yet we can’t do anything about them). They are clouds
without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted
— twice dead. 13 They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame;
wandering stars, (These men have the clouts, the pomp and pageantry but never
really touch or impact us with any tangible positive difference. They act like
they can help us but we never really get helped) for whom blackest darkness has
been reserved forever.
14 Enoch, the seventh from Adam,
prophesied about these men: "See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon
thousands of his holy ones 15 to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly
of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way (wrong things cannot
be done in a right way), and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken
against him." 16 These men are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow
their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for
their own advantage (speak of what they have done and how we can help them do
more for themselves, not how they can help us do something for ourselves).
17 But, dear friends, remember what the
apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. 18 They said to you, "In the
last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly
desires." 19 These are the men who divide you (who bring you into different
denominations), who follow mere natural instincts (who follow psychological and
philosophical motivations) and do not have the Spirit.
20 But you, dear friends, build
yourselves up in your most holy faith (read your bibles more than anything else)
and pray in the Holy Spirit (Speak in tongues). 21 Keep yourselves in God's
love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal
life.
NIV
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