Of Lies – Ryan Lochte, Rio Olympics and Black Africans By Abimbola Lagunju

Recently during the Rio Olympics, Mr Ryan Lochte, a much decorated US swimmer attempted to smear the credibility of a whole nation. He invented a story that never happened and sought the interface of the misrepresenting violent stereotype of the host nation to pass his fiction for truth. In his warped narrative, he, the aggressor transformed himself into a victim of a crime in which he was the villain and not the victim.  His dummy story was read all over the world. Some, who read the story shrugged their shoulders and with the misguided stereotype in mind, thought, “It’s Brazil anyway, that is a non-story. It is normal. Very high crime rate.” Some others were horrified that an Olympian, particularly a high profile one had been subjected to such a horrendous crime. The Brazilian people and the authorities were disappointed and unhappy.  They did not want the Rio Olympics to be remembered by any crime that happened during the games. They wanted the event to be remembered as a joyful gathering of world’s best athletes and into which painstaking planning and resources had been invested.

They sought to know more about what really happened to Ryan Lochte. Their investigations took the veil away from Mr. Lochte’s story. Ryan had told a barefaced white lie. Rather than being a victim, he was the aggressor. The technology of closed circuit television unraveled his lies. The Brazilians did not waste time to expose the pitiful liar that wanted to sacrifice their national integrity for his own ego.

According to news reports of what really transpired, Ryan had gone out in the company of three other swimmer-colleagues allegedly to the French camp and had partied all night. In his own words he was drunk. On their way back from the party in the early hours of the next day, they stopped at a petrol station so the camaradas could use the loo. The door of the toilet was locked. In a drunken rage or perhaps because of his grandiose delusion, he broke down the toilet door. The petrol station guards challenged his behavior and told him he had to pay for the damages. He raged and it took a gun drawn by one of the guards to calm him down. He was told to sit on the floor like any common criminal. After a while, he paid for the damages and left with his colleagues back to their camp. But Mr. Lochte could not live with his ego battered. He had to change the story. He would rather have the image and honour of the host country damaged than his ego. He invented a story of armed robbery in which he was the victim.  But the hosts would not have that. They undid Ryan Lochte. The Brazilians deserve an extra gold medal for protecting their integrity and self-esteem.

Had this happened in any country in Africa, Mr Lochte would have escaped with his lie. The host country would have been browbeaten into shameful submission and admission of guilt. The world press would have gone into frenzy to further damage the African State. It would have been thought inconceivable that someone of Mr. Lochte’s status could tell a blatant lie. Warped statistics would have been rolled out by western pundits to back Mr. Lochte’s lie. And no one, no one would have believed the African authorities if they attempted to counter Ryan’s lies with contrary evidence.

The Rio story brings to fore the different historical lies that have been told against the African and which have formed the basis of stereotyping of Black people by other races. Here are some of the lies:

Georges Curvier, a French biologist, once wrote in his book, The Animal Kingdom, (1827-35), that “The African manifestly approaches the monkey tribe. The hordes of which this variety is composed have always remained in a complete state of barbarism…”. America’s Thomas Jefferson also shared this position and said, “...I advance it therefore as a suspicion only that the blacks whether originally a distinct race or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments of the mind and body…" Georg Wilhem Hegel in his Philosophy of History, said this of Black Africans: "….their condition is capable of no development of culture, and as we see them at this day, such they have always been..." The Vatican, through Pope Julius II after having declared at the beginning of 16^th century (1512) that Indians in South America could be considered the sons and daughters of Adam and thus could not be enslaved, but that Black Africans could be enslaved as they were not of Adam and Eve, recanted in 18^th century by advancing the doctrine that indeed, Africans could also be considered as children of Adam and Eve, but that they were the accursed sons of Ham (Genesis 9: 18-27). Britain’s Lord Milner also had this to say of early South African politics: “A political equality of white and black is impossible, the white man must rule because he is elevated by many, many steps above the black man.” (Martin Meredith: Nelson Mandela, A Biography. Penguin Books 1997) Frantz Fanon in his book, The Wretched of the Earth made reference to one Dr. Carothers of the WHO, who in the 1950’s opined that, a “black man is equivalent to a lobotomized white man.” As recently as July 2007, Nicholas Sarkozy the former president of France in a speech in Dakar, Senegal practically diagnosed schizophrenia in Black Africans when he accused Africans of remembering what never happened in their history. He said, “The tragedy of Africa is that the African has not fully entered into history. … Africa’s challenge is to enter to a greater extent into history. Africa…is to realise that the golden age that Africa is forever recalling will not return because it has never existed.”  These lies have stereotyped the African and the Black race as an accidental beneficiary and object of history rather than an active contributor to and participant in human history. And these lies continue in different forms – in statistics of dubious origin, in generalization of oddities by the western press and in deliberate omission of historical and contemporary achievements of Black Africans.

The US Olympic Committee quickly apologized for the behaviour of Ryan and his three colleagues and declared that "The behaviour of these athletes is not acceptable, nor does it represent the values of Team USA or the conduct of the vast majority of its members." Some of Lochte’s sponsors, ashamed of their business partner, have withdrawn their sponsorship. Mr. Ryan Lochte is in disgrace.

Had the Brazilians not put their brain and resources to prove that the story of Ryan was a mere fabrication, the whole world would have, in their minds equated the beautiful and well planned Rio Olympics to armed robbery.

Black Africans have the obligation, like the Brazilians did, to provide evidence that the historical lies told against the black race are simply white lies. Like in the case of Ryan Lochte, these lies are fabrications of the vilest minds. These lies do not in any way represent us. Our indifference will not make these lies to go away. We need to shame the liars in a concerted way.

Aso Rock is Jinxed! By Abimbola Lagunju

Nigerians are perplexed by their political and economic misfortunes. This is an understatement of our condition.  It is the reality of our existence that despite the bright minds and enviable natural resources that this country is endowed with, nothing seems to be working for the people. All tested political and economic theories that have worked elsewhere and have produced results do not work in our country. Somehow, they just do not work and no one seems to understand why. Some blame the leadership while others have put the responsibility on the followership.

Our leaders travel to all parts of the world to learn how other countries operate their legislative, judiciary, economic, scientific and existential systems, but they either forget what they have seen and learnt immediately they return back home or they put all their efforts to figure out the unworkability of their new knowledge in Nigeria. We do not see any signs of their acquired knowledge either in their conduct or in their political or economic decisions. They simply travel for travelling sake.

Sometimes, these same leaders bereft of any ideas despite their extensive travels and seeking to silence the challenging vocal diaspora employ some bright and high-flying experts from among the diaspora to bring new ideas and try them out in Nigeria. They make them team leads and rely on them for guidance. But as soon as these experts arrive, they metamorphose into worse versions of their employers. They bring nothing; they take everything and leave the people worse than they found them. When challenged by the people, they flaunt their CV’s in their faces, and when the heat becomes too much, the experts from the diaspora pack their bags, now loaded with our money and travel back to what they call their “bases” in foreign lands.

The battered followership is fed up with the disconnect between the highs of electoral campaigns and the subsequent lows of post-election governance and leadership. They have realized that their investments in goodwill and hope every four years do not bring any yields. The leaders waste the capital and impoverish the mind and intellect of their followers.  Largely inarticulate and when not, incoherent due to the enormity of their predicament in their demands for a better life, the followership resorts to religion for solace or to arms for redress. Neither works for them. God will not do what he has given intellect to man to do. Neither will a small cache of arms in the hands of some overpower the arsenal of a state.

It appears that the Nigerian state has reached a dead end. We know the problems, we know the “why” (leadership and disoriented followership), but we do not know from where the problems arise. What changes a good and God-fearing man during the campaign into a monster after winning the election? What transformed Abacha? What changed Obasanjo of a socialist orientation in his first coming into a disciple of Graham Sumner of the infamous “it is not the function of the State to make men happy” in his second coming?  What blinded and deafened a honourable man like Yar’Adua? What changed a shy, decent and God-fearing Jonathan into a political fiend and corrupt wastrel? What do these men of diverse backgrounds share in common that could be at the origin of their misrule? It is Aso Rock !

A person can be jinxed. A process can be jinxed. A house can be jinxed. A town can be jinxed. A people, either in small groups or as a whole can be jinxed. Jinxing transcends science. It is a reality of life. It cuts across all cultures.  The chances may be one in a million, but it happens. And it just happens and no one knows why it happens. It is an unexplainable phenomenon where two and two can make five or make zero; a mathematical conundrum where all equations end in the negative sense. Nothing simply works even in the best combinations known to the human mind. Logic becomes illogic. Forward is backward; backward is backward at double pace.  Ratio transforms into confoundment.

The jinxed may not know that he is jinxed. An observant person that moves into a jinxed house or into a process may notice a reversal in his fortunes and realize that something has gone wrong. If the house is status-linked or the process is a potentially profitable one, then the person looks for help either from his pastor or his imam in order to keep himself in his position even when the odds are stacked against him.

In the case of a jinxed state institution, no good decisions that affect millions of people can be made in such a building as the occupant with his family and his team are confounded. Their intended good becomes evil and causes pains. Good intentions that enter the building become bad or become twisted. Their utterances become weird and incoherent. Promises made are not kept. The occupants can neither see nor hear the cries of the people that they have sworn to protect.

In Aso Rock, Olusegun Obasanjo who was the first beneficiary of the current democratic dispensation sought to undermine the constitution with an alleged third term agenda; Umaru Yar’adua allegedly handed over power to Turai and her cabal;  and Goodluck Jonathan, a decent man turned the Central Bank of Nigeria into a private property. That something happened to these people while they were resident in Aso Rock is attested to by the fact that soon after vacating the building, the scales appear to fall from their eyes. Olusegun Obasanjo sees and writes on deficits in governance; he challenges corruption and advocates for a sensible and sensitive government. Jonathan, who sought to buy votes while resident in Aso Rock, now sees virtue in transparent electoral process. Yar’Adua and Jonathan probably suspected something was amiss during their tenancy in Aso Rock.  Yar’adua had a retinue of marabouts; Jonathan surrounded himself with pastors of all shades and colours, but these prayer warriors were all saying the wrong prayers. The smart ones among the marabouts and the pastors allowed themselves to be jinxed too. They saw wealth and influence in the jinx.

Dear Mr. Mohammadu Buhari, it appears that “Change” of election campaign period has undergone “transformation” since you took up tenancy in Aso Rock. It is not your fault, Aso Rock is simply jinxed. Many Nigerians want you to succeed. They want to see, feel and live the change that you promised them.

Mr. President, you are a decent man living at a wrong address. You can’t overcome Aso Rock jinx. Find yourself a new address and lead the people with your decency and integrity.

When Sleep Is Bad: The African in A Thousand Years of Slumber By Abimbola Lagunju

In the mind of many, even some on the geographical entity called Africa, the term African means Black African. Taking this cue, and also convinced that the historical experiences of Black Africans are different from those of non-black Africans, I have used the term Africa in this essay to refer only to black Sub-Sahara Africa. And the term African refers to Black Africans.

The history and the present state of contemporary Africa and the apparent quagmire it has found itself in, in terms of political and social orientation, development and a rightful dignified place among the comity of nations confound the observer and present a challenge to those who honestly believe in the potentials of its un-harnessed unified capacity to improve the conditions of lives of its people and to contribute to world development.

Despite its historical claims to being the birthplace of the human race, Sub-Sahara Africa in the twenty-first century is still confined to and kept at basic survival levels more than five million years after the first African added reason and logic to instinct. Why is Africa still grappling with survival, when others on the same planet, having taken this level for given are focusing and working untiringly on improving the quality of their existence? Where does the problem lie? Who is to blame? 

It is no secret that the apparently simple task of ensuring basic survival is a daunting task, a near impossibility; natural and mostly man-induced disasters appear to have conspired to limit the survival chances of the African to pre-historic times levels. Any talk of improvement of quality of life in contemporary Africa seems superfluous when mere survival continues to remain at stake.

The primary duty of the collective, under any pretext connoting an organized entity lies in enhancing the chances of its own survival by drawing on the collective effort and resources to provide conducive environment for individual survival. Survival thus becomes a crucial social responsibility of the collective towards individual members. In this situation, the individual, unhampered by inconsequential trivialities of life, feels free to harness his creative resources towards improving the quality of his existence and by extension, the quality of existence of the collective.

In Africa, it appears that the reverse is the case. The struggle for survival appears to have been left on the shoulders of the common man in an environment that does not only limit possibilities, but is also inherently hostile to potentials. The role of the state becomes an ethereal mystery only decipherable by god-politicians while the existence of government in its present form actively counteracts and subjugates the aspirations of the common man. This noxious cloud that hangs over the most basic needs of the African reduces any discussion (by African politicians and their foreign masters) of improvement of quality of life to a puerile daydream in a self-deluding trance of nebulous political discourse.

The question of an African contribution to world development on equal platform with other nations, not as individuals in the service of different institutions of the world or as unconnected independent individuals, becomes distant particles of a dream unintelligible to the visionary eyes of the most politically progressive of telescopes. Africa has to move unaided from basic survival stages in order to give any relevance to its intention of contribution to world development.

It does not suffice to romanticize the role of individual Africans who have excelled in different aspects of human endeavor or the forced, despicable contribution of slavery to the industrial revolution in Europe and North America as African contribution to world development. It is the unified contribution of Africa as a continent of diverse peoples and resources, making a mark predicated on its experience, its context and in its own manner, as per universally acceptable parameters that would liberate Black Africa from prejudices. That Africa has what it takes in terms of its abundant human and natural resources, the bedrocks of any cultural, industrial and technological revolution, is not in doubt even in the mind of the most cynical critic. Africa is not however known in the world to have harnessed any of these resources to the betterment of the conditions of its citizens and the world at large, rather it is known as a compliant profligate source of its human and natural resources. 

Africa as a continent has lived by the principle of a “good native” who turns out his household and puts all his family possessions at the disposal of the foreigner in the name of hospitality, expecting to get his reward either in heaven or be recompensed with the same generosity by the beneficiary of his profligacy.  The African soon faces immense odds and conditions for the smallest of concessions when his beneficiary plays host and is humbled into gratefully accepting a fraction of what he had parted with.

The ease with which Africa parts willfully with its resources or is manipulated into doing so informs the view and the behavior of others towards African resources. African resources have taken the hue of god-given gifts, which should either not be paid for or underpaid for. From cotton prices to African footballers’ fees in Europe, the underlying concept has been the same since the first contact of the African with the foreigner. These gifts, either offered willingly by the African, or spiraled away under manipulation or in some cases by bullying have informed the nature of the relationship of foreigners with Africans. Unlike the African, foreigners recognize the importance of the enormous human and natural resources available in Africa as crucial in their march away from survival level to quality level. Winston Churchill, former prime minister of the United Kingdom in his Address to Textile Workers on Tarrif reform in Lancashire in 1909, lent credence to this view when he said “the safety of the North and its industries is contingent on how it is able to control or manipulate the raw material base which is in …Africa particularly”.

The continent, still unsure of the potentials of these resources and not having any social, technical or even political infrastructure in place to put them to use, took the easy route of asking the beneficiaries of its profligacy for all forms of assistance. Assistance in finished products and fractions of GDP, not means of putting their resources to use. As a chosen or imposed policy Africa seems to have sentenced itself to a beggar status, an inveterate recipient of aid, with all attending contempt. Aid to Africa is then conditioned by Africa’s beneficiaries who have now metamorphosed into donors and development experts on a whole bundle of conditions, which benefit them on the long run and undercut Africa’s chances of emerging from its vicious quagmire. The direct consequence of this is a near irreversible damage to the psyche and dignity of the African. Yoweri Museveni, Ugandan president, at the African Union Conference titled “Africa in the 21^st Century: Integration and Renaissance”, held in Dakar in October 2004 confessed that “aid has failed to transform Africa. Whatever aid Africa received since independence has been wiped out several times over by the losses we have suffered in trade. The greatest subversion to Africa’s development has been …the protectionism in EU, Canada, USA and Japan”. One is inclined to ask from the point of view of a common man and at the risk of unleashing the fury of pundits, both local and international that if the words of Mr. Museveni were true, why then do African leaders continue to accept solicited and unsolicited aid being conscious of its nefarious effects on Africa? Why have they actively participated in making aid a major industry in Africa? Why have they consciously allowed aid to transform into potent instruments of manipulation as was the case with mirrors, guns, trinkets and alcoholic drinks during the slavery period? African history appears to be going round in circles. The age-old vulnerability of the trusting African is still the same, only the price with which he sells changes with times.

The acceptance of aid and unsolicited concessions in the “forgiveness of debts” has only introduced a new dimension into the perception of Africa’s resources. The donors of aid now impose their legitimate rights to these resources and even dictate the terms and conditions under which these gifts should reach them. There is no doubt that the historical largesse or profligacy of Africans has not brought any advantage to Africa.

The failure of African socio-economic experiment of profligacy in the name of hospitality, whether willingly or under duress demands that Africa should make a calculated and conscious effort to reduce the squandering of its human and natural resources and harness them to improve not only the conditions of its people but also make unquestionable technological contribution to humanity at large. Alpha Oumar Konare, the Chairman of the Commission of the Africa Union  in a speech in 2003 said “the requisite conditions necessary for Africa to become a force to be reckoned with, a force we can rely upon include.… the optimal use of all our assets, namely the immense human and natural resources…”. This is a re-echo of the preambles of the Organization of African Unity Charter that states “Conscious of our responsibility to harness the natural and human resources of our continent for the total advancement of our peoples in all spheres of human endeavor”.  These are the echoes of the mind of any black African, but then the question of how far the African leaders are prepared to go in order to begin this process promised in 1963 and revisited in 2003 by Mr. Konare immediately comes to mind. It is not difficult to see that the answer is “not too far”, given their “historical ties”, and of course the fear of losing their jobs in case they step on the wrong toe of the international community of beneficiaries of Africa’s largesse.

Some Western scholars and indeed many Africans would argue that Africa is making some progress according to its own calendar, making its own mark in its own way. This view is not only condescending but smacks of a deliberate conspiracy to delude the African that despite being stuck at survival levels of humanity’s pedestal he is making some imaginary progress. The quality of life cannot be relative; therefore human endeavor to improve the quality of life cannot be condemned to “African calendar” or to some other bogus calendar. That Africa has to quickly move up from survival level is a historical obligation that cannot be spread over some spurious calendar. Africa has to know when to call its losses (not that it has much to lose now anyway), accept past mistakes and re-organize itself as articulated by Mr. Konare so as to occupy its rightful and dignified place among nations. Black Africa could only take this place among nations when it consciously makes efforts to put its human and natural resources to useful service in order to continuously generate home-inspired inputs not only to enhance its survival, but to improve the quality of its existence. As a continental goal, these inputs have to be proportional to the inputs of other nations, which have had a head-start that qualifies them as “developed”. The parameters of measurements of these inputs cannot be different from one race to the other; the parameters are universal and are the yardsticks with which groups of peoples are measured and classified as developed or primitive. The lower the inputs of a people as per universally acceptable parameters, the lower they are put on the scale of “development” and the more prejudice is meted out to them.

It is an unfortunate reality of our existence that Nigeria with the largest population of black people in the world and with its immense human and natural resources neither has the vision nor the capacity to move the black race forward.