Extracts from “On the Africa Bus” by Abimbola Lagunju – The Drivers of the African Bus

The Drivers of the African Bus

The First Driver

Do you remember the first driver of the bus? The one that drove us out of our shrines, right into the desert sun, away from any shade. Yes, the one from Ah-Rabe-yah! He damaged our sight beyond repairs, burned out our retina…….

 

The driver hacked off some stubborn heads

And did we learn anything from this experience? No! We thanked him for his service, and gave him a parting gift, an eternal gift in a little bottle. A piece of our mind to play with when he is bored or feels threatened by draughts of westerly winds. Touched by our largesse, he gave us orders at the pain of death to adopt his creed, his sun, his language as ours, to keep the names he gave us, to keep our own gods under lock and key, imprison ourselves in dome - tories, think in his letters and mumble broken syllables.

He moved into shadows of the sun when the second driver arrived from the snow. He could not melt the snowman.

The Second Driver

And the second driver! The slave driver! The senior gardener of Eden. The man of God who knew by sight, by phenotype, and later by genotype, the legitimate sons and daughters of Adam. And he knew his bastards too. Made when his God was looking away. Ham came from nowhere, and entered the loins of Adam through Noah! An abomination! Ham the harm. Error of creation; the worm and his descendants, deserved nothing but enslavement for contaminating history, for darkening the blond sun.

Holy Driver

  

He taught us many things! He taught us to call him master! He forced us to call him massa. We cowered, that was the first C ! He taught us cowardice and fear; then mounted on our backs. And while we cowered and wondered, his “….civilization kicked us in the face,…and his holy water slapped our cringing brows[i]” He fragmented our shrines with the “… monotonous rhythm of paternoster…,”[ii] undid our minds, and then he taught and taught! He taught the natives! He lifted the dark curtain from the eyes of the savages!

Four hundred years later the second driver got tired of us. God and conveyor belt overtook his mind, and he gave the keys to the third driver.

The Third Driver

The third driver!

He cockroached himself into our midst. He colonized us body and soul.

The third driver and his thieves

 We fought him with our loud silence. We fought with our submission. We gave him everything we had but our hope.  Fed up with us, he fled the bus. He handed the keys of the Bus to Jonscariot, our own man at “independence” and jumped out or so we thought. Before he jumped, he unleashed the market forces in our midst to decimate us.

 

Market Forces

  

The Fourth Driver

AN Jonscariot, our fourth driver is one of us. In his previous life, A.N. Jonscariot was a cart driver. A village cart driver. He then had another name, a name with a meaning: “the son of thunder who brings good tidings.” A good man he was. He loved his family and his neighbors. He took good care of his horse. He was normal, our “normal” until he changed his name and jumped into this contraption.

Now, we don’t know him anymore. Sometimes he drives the contrivance, our bus like a cart. Sometimes he apes the driver from Arabia, other times, the European drivers and many times, he is a combination of the four. A hybrid, neither here nor there. Neither carrot nor cucumber.

The Fourth Driver - Our own A.N. Jonscariot

Is ANJ really one of us? ANJ has always been a good apprentice, a good student of his previous masters. He diligently learnt from the previous drivers, his masters. He learnt everything by heart. If ANJ is really one of ours, it is by color only. ANJ has bleached his genes, his DNA and his mind. ANJ likes to ape his masters. He loves their way of life. He lives by their standards. He now wears blue contact lenses.

ANJ is real bad news! Bad News our ANJ is. Just like his masters. Since ANJ took over the bus from his masters at independence, he has diligently continued his inherited tradition of wreckage. See how bald the tires are! And he says he just bought them only last week ….brand new. Lately he has been saying democracy will repair the bus! Democracy! He just painted the word on our bus. In red and blue. He even calls himself Democracy sometimes. And sometimes he says he is the father of democracy of our bus.

Democracy!  From where did he get the name? He likes big colonial words, our ANJ does!  He borrows words from everywhere, and from his colonial master in particular. Important words and phrases. Toxic words. Industrial phrases. Terrorist sentences. Letters of mass murder.

 

Toxic Words

ANJ is adept at borrowing. He borrows words for himself, in his name. He then maims us with the words, and while we hold our heads in confused agony, he speeds off to borrow money and other valuable things in our name for himself.

Jonscariot is toxic. A virus. More dangerous that the former three drivers combined. No mind. No head. No plans. We are in historical trouble!

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[i] David Diop – The Vultures. A poem.

[ii] David Diop – The Vultures. A poem.

Extracts from “On the African Bus” by Abimbola Lagunju

The State of the African Bus

The bus is in an appalling state, inside and outside. The outer paint has peeled off in many places, and attempts to retouch the painting give it a leprous appearance. Water-emulsion paints have been used to “gloss” over the different patches where the original painting has failed. The headlights have broken and the cable from the guts of the right one is hanging out with its dislodged bulb. The front bumper is twisted; the chrome has peeled off, exposing the rust going on beneath. The side mirrors have fallen off, the front screen has cracked in many places. It is a wonder how the driver manages to see the road. The roof of the bus is dented, and a green pool with some floating garbage has formed in the depression. The water stinks, and hordes of flies and mosquitoes hover around the pool, from where they make their way in and out of the bus. But for one stubborn one, all the side glass windows of the bus are all broken. Here and there, the passengers nearest to the windows have contrived plastic sheets of different colours and painted cardboards to cover the windows. The cardboards all bear inscriptions more or less reflecting the state of mind of their inventors. There is one with “The Lord is my shepherd: I no dey fear” the other says “Time and Tide no get time; dem no dey wait,” another reads reads “Consultance de l’Oracle Adjonifere gratuite. Devinez votre destine! ” and yet another says “Deus è grande!” And there is another that says “Immediate answers to your prayers. No questions asked. Hebrew, Arabic and Latin services available.” Some inscriptions call people to worship, some confess the faiths of their inventors and others are just commercial adverts. It is dark inside the bus, because of the different window covers. The air is heavy and still. There is a garbage heap in the middle of the bus. The bus is overcrowded.

The left side of the bus is dented and there are what appear to be bullet holes in the body of the vehicle. Smoke from the exhaust pipe is leaking out of these sides holes. The vehicle appears to have many exhaust exits.

The rear end of the bus is in the same state. The rear lights are broken and the reverse lights are permanently on irrespective of the direction of the motion of the bus. The number plate is faded, but one can still see traces of half letters of Africa. The rear baggage compartment is half-open, held together by a blue rope; the belongings of the passengers in different plastic bags are bulging from all sides, and threatening to fall off.

The noise of the engine of the bus is deafening. Added to this is the clanking noise of the broken front wheel of the vehicle. The Bus grinds its way slowly round and round in the same place. Jonscariot has been told that under no circumstances must the Bus remain stationary. The broken wheel makes its impossible for the Bus to move forward. It can only turn around like the hands of a clock in the same place. It can also move backwards to some extent. Jonscariot alternates between moving the Bus backwards and turning it round in the same place in order to keep the Bus in motion. 

At the far right end of the bus is a group of wild-eyed worshippers in billowing white gowns, singing and praying for rapture. Right opposite them on the left is another group arguing about the direction of the east in order to take up their prayer positions. They finally agree that the east is in the opposite direction of the movement of the bus. The bus hits a huge pothole as they take up their prayer position and they fall on their backs. They decide to face the direction of the movement of the bus to say their prayers. One of them holds up a piece of tattered green cloth to screen off the white-robe worshippers on the other side of the bus. Their prayers must not clash.

The passengers shout to communicate with each other. Words lost in the enveloping noise make sentences either meaningless or offensive. There are pockets of quarrels and fights from misunderstood sentences. One man punches his neighbour for proffering what he considers insulting words to his tribe. The man had said, “The Thakas are great smiths, they can forge any implement; and are as hard working as the industrious Tivs.” The noise swallowed some words and contorted the sentence. The other man, apparently from the Thaka ethnic group heard, “Thakas can forge any document...and are hard thieves.” The attacked man falls on his back in the garbage heap in the middle of the bus, his nose and mouth bleeding. Other Thakas in the bus begin to attack members of the felled man’s tribe. Missiles fly about in one section of the bus. A missile hits the last glass window of the bus and shatters it. The splinters cut the face of a baby on his mother’s laps. The baby yells, the mother screams, and pandemonium engulfs another part of the bus.

The driver’s cabin is completely sealed off from the interior of the bus. There is no communicating door or window with the rear part of the bus where the passengers are seated. The partitioning is made of very thick (bulletproof) opaque glass. The passengers cannot see the driver; neither can the driver see them. The direction and the route of the bus are entirely at the discretion of the driver; the passengers have no say. Once every four years, the driver comes down through the front side door, climbs into the section with passengers, talks with them, gives them some gifts and then returns to the driver’s compartment. Sometime the driver does not come down for as long as fifteen years. He just drives.

But for the strange items in the cabin, the driver’s compartment is sparkling clean, air-conditioned, and very modern. The seat and the armrests are of pure leather. The floor of the cabin is covered with a beautiful and expensive Persian rug. The dashboard of the vehicle is however in a bad state. The dashboard has cracked in many places and here and there, the crevices disgorge long and short lines of mites carrying white bits and pieces of the gut of the dashboard. The speedometer is broken, the fuel gauge is non-functional, and the engine temperature gauge is hanging limply down. It is rusty. The only functioning instrument on the dashboard is a bright new radio with a disc player. The driver has turned it up loud. Its stereo effect has shut out the noise of the engine of the bus. On the passenger seat beside the driver is a small refrigerator with all kinds of drinks. The driver drinks deeply from a chilled can of beer and belches loudly.  The driver hardly looks at the road; he is either counting the money in his pocket and in the little safe in the seat-side glove compartment, or he is eating and drinking, or he is changing discs in his bus hi-fi. Occasionally, from under his seat, he takes out a big book with a brand new cover, but with yellow-from-age pages and consults it. He seems to be looking for direction for the bus in the book. After rummaging through the book without much concentration, he returns the book to its storage, and then turns his attention to his radio or to the refrigerator.

The driver hums to the music of the hi-fi continuously. He does not stop even when he is eating or drinking. Occasionally, he takes out one piece of paper or the other from any of the different crevices under his seat. He looks briefly at whatever is written on the paper and memorizes them loudly. Now he is memorizing “EPA; Economic Partnership Agreement.  PPP is a win-win strategy. Public Private Partnership is a win-win strategy.” He repeats this over and over again. Occasionally, he confuses the order of words; he pauses for a minute, takes out the paper again and refreshes his memory.

Unlike all the passengers in the bus, the driver is very smartly dressed. Very neatly cut business suit, silk tie, silk socks and leather shoes. He sports a silk handkerchief in the breast pocket of his suit. But for the ludicrous cap on his head, he would have easily passed for a successful businessman anywhere. The cap is a strange combination of a bowler hat, a turban from Arabia and traditional African cap. It has patches of dried blood all over.

In the right corner of the dashboard, between the dashboard and the windscreen of the bus is a Bible, opened at the psalms pages; in the left corner is the Koran. Different charms are hanging in all the nooks and corners of the cabin. On the floor, in front of the passenger seat is a clay bowl with a slaughtered bird, some sand, a red candle, and salt. A burning incense stick with pungent odor, hung on the ceiling of the cabin makes the air quite difficult to breathe. However, this does not appear to bother Jonscariot.

A pregnant woman falls into labour in one section of the bus. Some old women hover around her. A woman carrying a sickly looking baby with yellow hair on her back explains the situation to another woman. She says, “Poor woman! That is her ninth child. I hope this baby survives. All the other eight died. The last child had a bout of fever, vomiting and diarrhea, and despite all the sacrifices to appease the gods, the child died the next day. Some people suspect that the old woman mumbling to herself over there, the one in the brown boubou[i] is responsible for the deaths. They say she is a witch. See! I always tie a little stone in my children’s clothes to ward off her evil looks.”

The woman in labour groans. The old women shout, “Push! Push! Push!”

“I am tired,” the woman says.

“But you have to do it. You must have courage. Now, take this drink. Take it! It will give you strength.” One of the old women puts a dirty cup with a brown concoction to her lips. The pregnant woman sips some of the drink. The woman groans again.

“Push! Push! Push!” the old women chorus again.

A distraught barefooted man in green shorts and a dirty white T-shirt, apparently the husband of the woman in labor, asks one of the old women, “Mother, can I go and get the doctor? This is taking too long. She has been in labor since yesterday morning. The herbs seem not to be

working.”

“Okay! Go quickly. Get the praying group too. They are at the back of the bus.” The husband runs down the aisle of the bus.

The man returns to the scene a few moments later with a group of six women. The leader of the group sports a dirty white cap with “Prayer Warrior” written in blue in front of it. The women have red sashes tied around their waists in a true warrior-like fashion. One of them is carrying a crooked staff; the other has a club with the inscription “With this, we overcome the devil.” The prayer warriors squeeze themselves among the group surrounding the woman and begin to pray in loud voices. The leader of the group produces a little jar from among the folds of her clothes. She sprinkles some of the contents on the face of the woman in labor, and then asks her to drink the rest.

The pregnant woman groans again.

“Push! Push! Push!” the old women chorus.

“Push! Push! Push!” the prayer warriors echo.

“Where is the doctor or the nurse?” the mother of the husband asks her son.

“The doctor says he is busy. He is playing cards with his friends. The nurse says I must give her some money before she comes. What I shall I do mother?”

“Let us leave things in the hands of the gods and God! Do not worry my son.”

“Push! Push! Push!” the old women chorus again.

“Push! Push! Push!” the prayer warriors echo.

The woman gives it one last effort; and suddenly, the cry of a baby boy rises from among the group. The old women hug each other; the prayer warriors throw their arms up in the air and begin to sing. In their joy, they do not see the mother of the baby quietly give up the ghost.

Meanwhile, in the midsection of the bus, near the garbage heap a man wearing a dirty yellow armband with “Black African Activist” written in red on it is on his feet, talking or rather shouting to a group of passengers. He gesticulates in all directions. He appears angry. A member of the audience, a barefooted white African with a red T-shirt with the inscription “Son of the Soil” raises his hand either to speak or to ask a question. The Activist ignores him. The white African shrugs  and waits for the Activist to rest his case.

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[i] A large flowing robe.

The Bamako Initiative - Wrong Medicine for Wrong Ailment By Abimbola Lagunju

Sometime in 1987, at a gathering in Bamako, Mali under the auspices of Unicef and the World Health Organization, African Ministers of Health, browbeaten by IMF and other lending institutions into cutting government expenditure on social services, agreed to reduce the budgetary “burden” costs of provision of healthcare for their population by introducing user-fee payment for healthcare at all levels of service delivery. Known as the Bamako Initiative, the scheme was structured to make money for the government to finance health budgets through profits made from sale of healthcare services and drugs to the population. The intention of the promoters was not stated this way; it came in the guise of decentralization, community empowerment, health worker motivation and a host of other breezy phrases, but with a single goal of making people pay for services.

There were two major things wrong with this Initiative right from onset. Firstly, the scheme assumed that the modern healthcare system had the complete trust of the population and thus, the population would conform themselves to the new change whatever the costs. Everyone involved in this initiative either forgot or was oblivious of the fact that many of the signatory-countries to this initiative were either passing through or had just passed through socio-political upheavals including wars, coups and general instability which had left many infrastructures and services either destroyed or ineffective. In other words, the health system had never been at its best and had never really had the time to build a relationship of trust with the people.

Secondly, the scheme assumed that people had money and would pay if the services were good. And this was during a period when the Structural Adjustment Program of the IMF had not only decimated the middle class, but had also impoverished the poor rural population beyond the limits of any memorable time in history. It caught the people by surprise and alienated them from the public health service. Thus, the introduction of user-fee payment for health services wedged a barrier between the health system and the population it was meant to serve. It divided the population into dependables, i.e. those who could pay for services and the expendables, i.e. those who paid with their lives.

The impoverishment of the middle class through the devaluation of national currencies directly affected the health service providers as well. Their salaries could not meet their needs. The health professionals left the shores of Africa in droves to sell their skills in Europe, America and the Middle East. As a young doctor in a public hospital, one of the authors of this article saw many of the senior doctors leave for what later came to be known as “green pastures” in an exodus later dubbed “brain drain”. This meant that clients could not get services during an episode of illness or an emergency even if they managed to scrape some money together.

Consequently, as would be expected of any other population under such circumstances, the African people, particularly the expendables, fancifully called the “poorest quintiles” found alternatives which included the reinforcement of their beliefs in time-tested traditional medicine, self medication and in some cases, recourse to divine intervention during an episode of illness.

The consequences came in high disease burden, high infant and under-five mortalities as well as pregnancy related deaths. In other words, infanthood and young childhood became a very dangerous road for African newborns to navigate and pregnancy transformed into the dangerous Russian roulette for women. The statistics that rolled out of Africa became very alarming. It was evident that something had to be done.

The responses, when they came addressed other things but not the main problems. Firstly, big investments were made in building health facilities – health posts, health centers and hospitals in supposedly underserved communities. In some instances, these facilities were not equipped, and in many other instances where they were fully equipped, there were no staff to work in them. As health consultants, we saw many equipped health facilities in a state of abandon scattered across West Africa.

Secondly, the blame was shifted to the population. They did not know enough to protect themselves and their children and were ignorant of life threatening complications of diseases and pregnancies. Another round of big investments was made in informing and educating African people on individual self-care and protection of their children.

Thirdly, it was assumed that the lackluster performance of the largely demotivated available workforce was linked to lack of skills and knowledge. Large amounts of money were again spent on skill-upgrading trainings for health personnel. Considered a fashionable project output, many agencies fell over one another to train these personnel. It is not uncommon to see a nurse or a doctor who has been trained for five or more times on the same subject by different agencies using the same curriculum. The additional income from daily allowances (perdiems) paid by these agencies for the health staff made these unending trainings attractive.

If these strategies worked at all, the statistics did not show it. The achievement of any of the maternal and child health related targets of the Millennium Development Goals looked farther as 2015 approached.

It took the courage of an international agency sometime in 2005 to denounce the payment of user-fees as a major obstacle to any meaningful change in the preventable deaths of children and pregnant women. Many agencies have since conducted different studies on the impact of user-fees on health service uptake and have come to the same conclusion. It took close to twenty years to understand that many children and pregnant women from poor households were dying simply because the families could not afford to pay for health services.

The exemption of pregnant women and under-fives from payment of user fees soon became an important subject of advocacy and government lobby for different international agencies working in Africa. The “race” to meet the MDG maternal and child health targets at least halfway for most African countries has increased the tempo of pressure on African governments.

The response of African governments to this pressure has been dual. Firstly, it is a studied silence – a quiet wish that something else would soon catch the fancy of the agencies. African governments have come to learn that international agencies have a short attention span on any issue and will quickly shift their focus to wherever there are funds. And secondly, some, just because this new cliché won’t go away as soon as wished, have turned this into a political advantage. They simply declare free medical treatment for all children aged less than five years and payment-free consultation and delivery for all pregnant women. They want peace, so they jump the fence to placate and quieten overzealous lobbyists as well as score a political point at the home front. The financial and operational implications of their declaration elude these politicians.

Now that user-fee payment has been proved to be a public health hazard for children and pregnant women, and those that saw it as a “necessary evil” have been largely silenced, the challenge does not lie any longer in overbeating the drums of the benefits of the removal of user-fee payment but in proposing sustainable ways of its implementation in order to convince African governments that are sitting on the fence now and those who are intent on only making a political profit out of the issue that it is not only possible but also achievable.

Review of Gaddafi's Gaffes by Nigerian tribune

Nigerian Tribune Review Tuesday, 22 November 2011

TheE slain former Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, was a man of many parts. He was also somebody who contradicted himself on a number of sensitive international issues. Anuoluwapo Akande reviews Abla Ungalski’s new book,

To a young mind, Muammar  Gaddafi’s statements could form an everlasting impression on an issue, but the author of Gaddafi’s Gaffes, Abla Ungalski, was lucky to have probed further when Gaddafi actually said that the great writer, Williams Shakespeare, was from Benghazi in Libya, and that his real name was Sheikh Speare.

Ungalski was confused by this, because since the age of 13, he had been an avid follower of Shakespeare’s works, and for someone to say his literary hero was not from Stratford Upon Avon, but Benghazi, was just too much for him to swallow.

The author was, however, happy when his father dismissed Gaddafi’s statement, saying, ‘Don’t let other people’s dream become your nightmare. Gaddafi is a dreamer. He imagined it.”
The statement by Gaddafi about Shakespeare had actually made the author to take special interest in who Gaddafi was, and as a result, he searched everywhere on materials about the former Libyan leader, and the result of the study into the life of his man reveals his many contradictions on different issues.

Another interesting aspect of this man’s life is about his obsessive desire for universal recognition as a brilliant statesman, a political philosopher, a religious expert, social analyst and reformist, as well as the world’s best president.

Gaddafi sought for recognition, which the world vowed not give him, and when persuasions failed, he sought to buy this recognition from Sub-Saharan Africa, which he considered the easiest target, by funding various projects in poor African countries.

The Africans understood him and paid him lip service to attain funds to develop their countries. As years went by, he saw his ambition for global recognition go up in smoke and frustration kept in.
The quotations in the book are from Gaddafi’s speeches, thoughts or his Green Book, which he published in 1975, and the author was able to highlight contradictions, inconsistencies, absurdity and the comic nature of some of his thoughts and declarations.

For example, in  his address to the students of Oxford University on Africa in the 21st century, on May 16, 2007, he says, “I am neither a politician nor a diplomat....,” but two years later, during an Arab League Summit, he declares, “I am an international leader, the dean of the Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and the union of Muslims....”

He also once contradicted himself on his tribe. Speaking on a Libyan Television in 2007, Gaddafi says, “Libya is an African country. May Allah help the Arabs and keep them away from us. We don’t want anything to do with them,” and two years later, he says, “Arabs have no hostility or animosity towards Israel. We are cousins and of the same race....”

On the United Nations Security Council membership, Gaddafi says, “This door must be closed; the door to security council membership should be...... No one can force us to join the security council”, but surprisingly, at the same event, which was during the UN General Assembly meeting, he says, “No one can say that the African Union does not deserve a permanent seat.......”

The late maximum ruler also spoke about migration, with Libya being a transit route to Europe. On  this, he says, “At the Libyan border, I recently stopped 1,000 African migrants headed for Europe........ They have the right to do so,” but less than a year later, during an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Gaddafi declares, “There are millions of Africans who want to come in....... We don’t know what will be the reaction of the White and Christian Europeans with the influx of starving and ignorant Africans......... Tomorrow, Europe might no longer be European, and may even be black, we don’t know if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions....”

These are just few of Colonel Gadaffi’s contradictions. Those who wish to know more about such contradictions can get the book, Gaddafi’s Gaffes, which reveals the mind of a man who could be described as someone who spoke for the moment, not minding what he had said on certain issues earlier, or what he would say in the future.

Development aid: Donor and Beneficiary Fatigue By Abimbola Lagunju

Development aid has become part and parcel of the political and economic geography in many developing countries and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Broadly interpreted, development aid means, a package (mostly financial) that is directed towards development of a nation or a group of people. The premise of international development aid from the point of view of a donor country is that the beneficiaries are either incapable of developing themselves or they do not have the resources to do so or they are unwilling to develop. 

The donor then offers to provide financial, technical, material and human resource assistance to the beneficiaries to develop them according to a template chosen by the donor. This template is not always understood at the beginning by the beneficiaries or those who represent them. When finally understood and this is often too late, the beneficiaries accept their fate, hoping that their gods would come to their aid to save them from whatever agreement they have signed or in the normal case scenario, they will let the developers do whatever they want, while they either watch from a safe distance or just tag along, hoping that it will all end soon and then they can go back to their normal lives.

In the course of the dynamics of the relationship between the donors and their beneficiaries, the initial enthusiasm that greeted the agreement between the developers and their beneficiaries soon fizzles out and frustration sets in on both sides. The term “donor fatigue” was invented by donors and development aid agencies to convey their frustration at the slow pace of change or no change at all in their beneficiary countries and communities, despite their “huge” investments. They do not see the changes they have planned for, and many times, their development plans based on a template from icy climates or air-conditioned conference rooms either gets blown away in the dusty winds of the Sahel or melts without trace in the humid heat of the West African coast.

The beneficiary side also harbors its own disenchantment of development aid. This disenchantment may be rooted in the culture of the peoples of West Africa. When someone decides of his own volition to give to the poor, he does not hang around the poor to tell him what to do with the money. He hopes that his donation will make an impact on the life of the person and does not expect his reward here on earth. If however, the person decides to monitor how his money is spent, he does not relocate himself to the house of his beneficiary and occupy his house and mind with his own vision of life. This is unimaginable in the African way of life. There is a Yoruba saying which says, “When you give a ram with a rope around its neck to someone, you should let go the rope too”. If however, it happens that the benefactor relocates to his beneficiary’s house to monitor the use of his money, the beneficiary will most likely comply zombie-like with the exigencies of his benefactor or will become refractory to assistance. The benefactor is then accused of having a hidden agenda – maybe there is something in his beneficiary’s house that he wants to appropriate. Worse still, if after relocating and occupying the beneficiary’s house, all the promises turn out to be hot air. Altruism of assistance then becomes questionable and a culture of benefactor distrust begins to emerge.

As far as international development aid is concerned in sub-Sahara Africa today, there is a growing distrustful middle class, a cynical political class and a disillusioned rural and urban-ghetto populace. Development aid donors and practitioners are seen as having a hidden agenda and are accused of self-satisfying and self- aggrandizing pseudo-samaritanism. They are seen as the primary beneficiaries of their development aid.

Sometimes, in order to forcefully change the dynamics of the deteriorating relationship, the donors threaten to wield the big stick – the withdrawal of their aid.  The placid, indifferent and bored attitude of their beneficiaries to this threat and in some cases, an outright encouragement of the benefactors by the beneficiaries to wield the big stick and go away with their aid confounds the developers. The benefactors quietly withdraw their threat and stay put. Donors have again coined a phrase and an acronym for this situation – Africa Wins Again or AWA.  In order to alleviate their fatigue burden and justify their continued “reluctant” support of “recalcitrant” beneficiaries, long term or any term impacts are nudged aside and replaced with in-depth “inputs and outputs analysis”, “process emphasis” and “lessons learnt” digressionism.

Rural beneficiary communities in particular, have become disillusioned with little or no impact on the quality of their lives, despite the lofty declarations of donors and aid agencies over the years. These communities equate aid practitioners’ samaritanic declarations to mere intentions for which they have learnt to understand and accept their inability to hold the practitioners accountable. They now tend to compare the “developers” with their irresponsible politicians. They suffer chronic fatigue from unfulfilled promises. They know they are called the “field” in which they are surrogate players. They have learnt to develop thick skin to “participatory approach” and to all other fanciful phrases entreaties. And when they give their reluctant consent to “participate” in an aid project, they have learnt to also have their own hidden agenda.

Better access to information on the politics and economics of development aid has also changed the views of educated people and opinion leaders in beneficiary countries on the short, medium or long term benefits of aid. When entreated or coerced into “collaboration” with a new aid project, the middle class, which is often represented by a fatigued public service functionary in this dynamics sees a déjà-vu experience with no results. He suffers chronic fatigue from multiple seminars, workshops and conferences.  To alleviate the fatigue, he seeks to get a share of the “aid cake” in financial remunerations for services that are his normal primary duties.

The political class sees development aid as a useful thorn in the flesh. They prefer to have the money but not the development template. They imagine unknown hidden agenda in development aid. But they have their own hidden agenda too, and very often this agenda is linked to how to repatriate the aid money back to the country of origin, but into a bank account bearing their own names. They abhor reminders by the developers of the letter of their agreement. They also become fatigued and refractory.

Both donors/agencies and their beneficiaries have reasons for fatigue. No group has the right to claim more fatigue than the other.  If Development Aid as it is practiced today has not delivered the desired results on both sides, then something new has to be put in its place. Maybe it is time to give transparent and equitable trade a chance. But the big question will always remain: will both sides ever be able to overcome their historical mutual distrust?

Multiple Organ Failure – Outsourcing organs to keep a giant alive By Abimbola Lagunju

A patient with a very small head and a disproportionately large body was brought in a convoy to the International Nation-State hospital. He was unconscious. Doctors and nurses rushed to the emergency unit to attend to the new patient. Soon, word went around the hospital that a monster with a tiny head (what the doctors would later name extreme microcephaly) and a very large body had been brought into the hospital. Other nation-state patients in the hospital left their beds to see the monster. Ghana, who was about to be discharged from the hospital after being given a clean bill of health claimed to know the giant. They were once friends.

Ghana said the giant was born in 1914. The head stopped growing a few months after birth, while the body continued its normal growth. As the anomalous proportions became evident over the years, the monster became a laughing stock of everyone, including children, who at any opportunity, anywhere in the world gleefully threw stones at him. Interestingly, despite having several mirrors, the giant never looked at his own face. He did not know the size of his head. His mirrors were placed in such a way to reflect the enormous body only and the sheer size pleased him immensely. In times gone by, he used to call himself the giant of Africa. The giant only saw in sizes. The bigger, the better: Big political parties, big delegations, big agbadas, big cars, large convoys, big wives. Big life. Quality or substance was alien to the giant. He was only obsessed with extra-large sizes of everything.

The patient was rushed to the intensive unit and put on life support system. The doctors soon began a close examination of the patient and ordered for different laboratory investigations. They were all fascinated by the pint-sized head and the Goliath-sized body. The head was x-rayed. The radiologist looked at the x-ray film, cursed in his native language and beckoned to the other doctors to come over to look at the film. They were all shocked. “Not possible!” One senior doctor said. “Must be a mistake. Repeat the process,” another advised. The radiologist took a new x-ray of the head. The result was the same. There was nothing in the head. The head was empty. No blood vessels, no brain tissue. Nothing! The doctors had never seen anything like this before. They ordered for more sophisticated tests on the head – ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging, etc. The result was the same. There was nothing in the tiny head! It was empty! How could this man have lived at all?

The heart was also subjected to tests. The doctors were again baffled. The heart was different from any heart they had ever seen – either in clinical practice or as students practicing on mammals. There is no such heart in the animal kingdom. The heart was a piece of rough hollow rock with some liquid that later tested to be crude oil inside it. It had no links with any of the vital organs in the body. No blood vessels. No sign of life. They checked the entire body organs one after the other. The organs had all failed. To the surprise of these doctors, all the laboratory tests to ascertain the causes of failure of the organs came back with the same results irrespective of the organ – corruption, outright theft, nepotism, self-destruction, abuse of office, cannibalism and violence.

Doctors all over the world are known for their indecipherable scribbling and their love for complicated terms and acronyms. The case is not different in the Nation-State Hospital where the monster was on life-support system. The doctors gave new names to the failed organs and tissues in his body and described their causes of failure. As a rule, the hospital assigns names of state agencies and organs of governance to body organs. In the case of this patient, the stomach became the National Assembly; the lungs became the NNPC; PHCN for the eyes; the liver was christened the executive council; the gall bladder became the Police, the large intestine was christened the judiciary, the pancreas became the parastatals and the kidneys christened the water corporation.

The doctors had to decide whether to let the giant die or to try their best to get him back on his large feet. They chose the latter. They had no right to switch off the life support system without the consent of the relatives of the patient.

A United Nations international conference of experts was convened to discuss the unusual case and to decide on the procedures to manage the patient and bring him back to life. All the doctors agreed that the patient would need multiple organ transplants. And not only that, he would also need state of the art immuno-suppressants in order not to reject the transplants.

There was a long debate on which organ to transplant first – brain tissue, heart or other organs. The doctors were fully aware of the virulence of the body organs against each other and the danger they could collectively pose to the survival of the giant.  Finally they all agreed to do a brain transplant. But they were confronted with the problem of the size of the head. How would they fit a normal brain into the small head? Should they relieve the monster of its tiny head and put another one with normal brain in its place. This would be an easier procedure than trying to fit a normal brain into the tiny head. But they considered the problem of recognition and identity. The monster’s relatives and friends would not recognize him if they gave him a new head. They decided to trim a normal brain and fit it into the tiny head. Their reasoning was that half a brain is better than no brain at all.

The doctors began a diligent search for the relatives of the giant to donate some organs in order to keep him alive. When the relatives learnt of this, they all disappeared. No one wanted to donate his brain or any of his organs. But it was all a procedural ruse. The doctors were not really interested in the organs of the relatives. They knew that such organs would be immediately attacked by the other organs and would again end up failing. And there was the problem of hereditary keyed-in failure in the organs of the relatives too. The failed organs have to be outsourced.

Failed local organs have to be removed and replaced very urgently in order for this giant to survive. The police, the judiciary, the parastatals, NNPC, PHCN, the National Assembly and other organs have to be out-sourced in the international market.

But who will donate the brain?

Removal of Fuel Subsidy: A Crisis of Trust By Abimbola Lagunju

It has not yet dawned on the Nigerian government that, trust between the governed and the government is a prerequisite for acceptance of any government policy. It will be an understatement to say that there has never been any mutual trust between any government in power, military or “democratic” and the Nigerian people. Not that Nigerians are a skeptical lot, but over and over again, all the governments that have been in power in this country have betrayed in big and small ways whatever trust people had vested in them. The Nigerian political class has not shown or done anything to gain the trust and inspire confidence in the people. And Nigerians have been forced by these circumstances to choose between being perceived and treated as naïve and being outrightly skeptical. Many have chosen the latter.

Unfortunately, this fact is lost on the Nigerian political class that prefers to see Nigerians as naïve and treat them as such. Nigerian politicians tend to think that winning at a ballot confers a blanket trust. – a license to invent and sell lies as truths. They employ those that they refer to as “spin doctors” to say everything but the truth. Spin doctors! And these individuals revel not only in being called “spin doctors” but also in selling anything but the truth. Truth has become a rare commodity in this democratic dispensation.

There are many versions of truth to any event in Nigeria, and in most cases all of these versions are outright lies. Truth sometime is found in the streets in the rumor web, and very often, every Nigerian borrows or develops his own truth of the same event. And indeed, our political class has invented truth-twisting vocabulary to perfect their deception. “Arrested” by an anti-corruption agency has now become “invited” by the same agency in the Nigerian political vocabulary. “See them” means “corrupt them”.  “Situation under control” means nothing is being done. Haba! We do not know what to believe anymore. And the Nigerian press does not help in elucidating the truth – they report all the versions of fictitious “truths” using the twisted political vocabulary without any criticism or analysis.

Good governance, security, anti-corruption war, generation and constant supply of electricity, creation of employment opportunities for the youths, improvement of infrastructure and the economy have all become declarations of good intentions on the pages of newspapers. It is not unusual to read a sentence like “How to generate employment in Nigeria – by a Minister” or another like “Nigeria can reach great heights if….by a Party Chieftain”.  Just a fleeting inspiration and after their speech, they do nothing. And that is, if they wrote the speech in the first instance. Nigerian politicians in the position of power have learnt not to do what they say, and indeed to do the contrary of their declarations. Road are tarred on the pages of the newspaper. Electricity has been so much generated on the pages of newspapers that we should be exporting the excess by now. Our politicians have poisoned the polity and have made lies and half-truths a way of life in almost all the spheres of Nigerian life.

With a long history of betrayal of trust, how does the government think it can sell any of its policies and particularly the most recent one on the removal of oil subsidy to a skeptical nation? The chances are slim. There are many doubts about the over-flogged so-called benefits of this policy. Dr. Leonard Karshima Shilgba in a recent article posted on Saharareporters asked “what has the Nigerian government been using the annual savings from sovereign debts to do in the past 5 years? If the federal government has nothing to show for the debt cancellation or “forgiveness” five years after, why should Nigerians trust that same government to use whatever savings from fuel subsidy?” There is a serious crisis of trust.

But there must be a way forward – the government must work for the people and somehow a bridge must be made between the governed and the government. The people have already given out the contract and must find a way to for these employees to work for them.

A possible way out was inadvertently advanced by a group of northern senators as was reported by the Nation Newspaper on 8th October this year. The senators conditioned their support to the Bill on removal of subsidy! As reported by the Nation, “The conditions are: the government should account for past fuel subsidy and publish the names of those who have been benefiting from it in the past; and the government should come up with concrete plans or agenda on what it will use the funds gained from the withdrawal of fuel subsidy for.” Conditioned support!

There are four things to glean from the conditions demanded by the senators. Firstly, they are demanding that the government tells the truth, nothing but the whole truth on the “what”, the “who” and the “how” of current oil subsidy. This simply means that simple truth is elusive within and among the Nigerian political class. Secondly, the senators are claiming that contrary to what the “spin doctors” of the government are claiming as the potential benefits of the removal of the subsidy, the government has not really done any homework on how they will go about the use of the funds they intend to liberate by the removal. According to the Nation newspaper, one senator, “who spoke in confidence, said: “Some of us are against the withdrawal of subsidy because the government has no concrete plan in place to cushion the effects of the policy.” Thirdly, whenever truth escapes from its confinements, it comes in an anonymous form from the Nigerian political class. None of the senators who bared their minds on the Bill wanted their names to be associated with the newspaper story. They preferred to be anonymous. They made telling the truth to look like a crime. Fourthly and finally, Nigerians can indeed begin to condition their support and trust in any government policy. This will be a new development in the relationship between those entrusted with governance and their employers, the people.

In addition to the two conditions posited by the senators on the removal of oil subsidy, I will like to add some more and I invite the readers to add theirs too. Like many other things shrouded in mystery in our country, we have no idea how many vehicles the Nigerian state at all levels of government, legislature, judiciary and parastatal institutions has. We will like to know. This is condition Number 1. We will like to know how much of tax payers money is used to fuel these vehicles. This is condition number 2. We will like to know how much the tax payer will have to pay to fuel these vehicles when the subsidy is removed and what percentage of the gains of the removal of the subsidy does this represent? This is condition 3. The same for generators – Condition 4. We will like to know by how much the increase in the travel expenses of our ever-travelling government officials and legislators will eat into the purported gains of the removal of the subsidy – condition 5. We will like to know how much will be left for “the development of the economy and opportunity for the greater number of people.” This is simple mathematics and we will like to know. And we will like to know whose idea this is anyway? World Bank or home grown? And finally, what if the white elephant idea fails and dies a couple of years into implementation? Which zoo-keeper is going to answer?

Democracy is defined as a government of the people, by the people and for the people. It says “for the people” and not against the people as Governor Rotimi Amaechi will like us to believe when, of the removal of the fuel subsidy, he said, “We must learn to take very difficult decisions…” For the avoidance of doubt, we do not, at least here in this country, elect people to make life difficult for the citizenry. Our democracy is a young one, and if it will survive, it is not the people that must make the sacrifice; it is those whom we have elected into power.

And what sacrifice are we asking of them? Simple truth, transparency and good governance.

Is this too much to ask?

The Politics of Shoes in Nigeria By Abimbola Lagunju

Recently, at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual awards dinner in Washington, D.C, President Obama charged the Black leaders to remove their bathroom slippers and put on their marching shoes. Marching shoes? The Obama shoe-speech represents a conundrum for the Nigerian political space. Ah! Did the black leaders come in bathroom slippers to the dinner? Or have they been seen in their tailor-made suits slopping their way in their bathroom slippers along the corridors to the chambers of the Congress? Marching shoes ke? Did he mean matching shoes and bag? Or mashing shoes?

We have no marching shoes in Nigeria. Where on earth do we want to march to? Here, we talk of matching shoes and bags. This is a Nigerian specialty – ask any young Nigerian girl. She will gleefully reel off to the pleasure of her parents, which shop in Ibadan, Abuja, Kano or Port Harcourt has the best Italian and Spanish matching shoes and bags for women. And the men, in order not to be left behind wear matching shoes and wallet; and recently matching shoes, suits, wallet, wrist-watch strap and fedora hats.

In our environment, the political rulership (civilian and military) does not like marching shoes. Indeed they abhor it.  Why on earth will a well-paid politician want to wear marching shoes? He will be the laughing stock of his colleagues. And any Nigerian senator worth his salt does not want to be out-dressed in the haut couture parade of the National Assembly and Abuja nightlife. After all, he is the plenipotentiary ambassador of his constituency in the Federal Capital Territory and must exhibit the impeccable matching dress sense of his community. He does not need to march to anywhere. He has already marched from his village to Abuja. He has arrived! Political vision on our shores is not about marching! It is about outdoing your colleague in wardrobe wealth, where delicate matching accessories and lots of spare change are fundamental.

And our security service men do not have the couture finesse of our politicians. They cannot afford matching shoes, wallets and bags. They wear mashing shoes. These are not necessarily iron-studded punk shoes; neither do they have the brilho of Gestapo boots. Indeed, in many cases, they wear what Obama advises against – bathroom slippers in all shades and colors. These made in China, or made by Shina the corner cobbler, which have in most cases seen better days, contrast sharply with whatever uniform they are supposed to complement. The more the contrast, the more ominous their dark power. Mashing does not require any vision; neither does it require any finesse. Mash is smash, and any shoes will suffice. And crush they do. Police mash citizens, soldiers crush civilians, navy smash women, Airforce harass villagers, police pound soldiers, and soldiers squash the police. Very often, our politicians temporarily put aside their matching designer outfits and wear mashing shoes to deal with their opponents, real and imaginary. And our judges wear mashing shoes when sentencing small time criminals, and don matching attires with big time political thieves and corporate economic saboteurs.

Nigerians happily alternate between matching paraphernalia and mashing shoes. When in a small or big dispute, a Nigerian says, “I will deal wit you”, he means he will change his matching shoes and suit for mashing shoes to pound his opponent into submission physically or spiritually. And this does not have anything to do with the level of education or qualification. When it is time to display their mashing shoes, it may be difficult to differentiate a motor park tout from a doctor, a pastor, an engineer or a university professor. And the Nigerian womenfolk are not to be underestimated in the display of raw mashing power. Their mashing shoes have sharp stiletto heels.

Known as a nation of mashing and matching shoes and suits, foreigners living in our midst have learnt the trick of deft switching of mashing and matching shoes. They keep their marching shoes, which brought them to our country in the recesses of their wardrobes and join in the mashing fray. The staff of big and small embassies in Nigeria smash and crush visa applicants and information seekers physically and electronically. Telephones are either not functional or unanswered. Their e-mail addresses which are largely 419 addresses do not function – mail enquiries are not answered. And if ever the telephone is answered or the mail replied to, it comes in the form of crushing and smashing rudeness. Those, who have had to stand in long queues in front of some of these embassies or in their unwelcoming reception halls to be interviewed or to obtain information know first hand what it is like to be pulped under the mashing shoes of these foreigners.

And in the evenings, when the embassy officials and our rulers are done with mashing and smashing, they don their matching shoes and suits and invite each other to dinner. While the embassy officials are discreet about the victims of their mashing, our rulers spill the beans on each other - Who is mashing whom? Who has the best crushing boots? Who is funding the pulping boots? They have no limits. They talk to show their appreciation for the invitation. They feel privileged to be wearing the same matching shoes and suits with their hosts, even if just for a few hours.

Nigerians working in factories and companies owned by foreigners in Nigeria have a long experience of being crushed under the shoes of these “investors”. The Nigerian Labour Inspection Units at different levels go barefoot when on inspection visits to these factories and companies and leave with matching shoes, bags and suits or their equivalent in Naira or foreign currency. And these inspection units do not leave the factory of company premises without polishing the mashing shoes of these foreigners. The Nigerian worker does not have any hope for respite. They learn with time to resign themselves to their fate of forever being something under others’ shoes.

Nigerians living abroad or just visiting barefoot or in designer wears are not spared from their hosts’ mashing boots. The crushing boots hound them as they seek to make enough money to buy matching shoes, suits and bags to outdress everyone at home on their “glorious” return. They are pulped for the smallest of unintentional misdemeanors for which other nationals may get a slap on the wrist. And not surprisingly, many of them will happily give up their Nigerian nationality to obtain acquire the nationality of their host countries. They think (and they may be right) that this new nationality is a passport and visa to escape the vicious mashing boots set to crush and smash Nigerians in many countries of the world.

Nigerians are victims of shoes in their country and abroad, because the leadership is yet to learn that marching shoes are better than mashing and matching shoes and suits.

We can only hope that President Obama will, sometime soon, accept to visit Nigeria to speak about shoes. He must however remember to bring along some marching shoes for our politicians and compel them to wear them. We have had enough of matching shoes, bags, belts, babariga and suits.