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.

Media Trial and Thieves of Our Commonwealth By Abimbola Lagunju

A group of people had a bright idea to start a company some years ago. But they did not have enough money. The capital outlay was in millions of dollars. They asked people to buy into this company and thousands of people bought shares of this company believing that the outfit had a future and their investments would yield multiple dividends over time. However, the company declared losses every year and the stakeholders were aghast. They feared for their investments. They elected a new CEO and ordered him to conduct a full audit of the company. The auditors discovered that the company had been making a lot of money, but the money was stolen by the directors and the former CEO’s of the company. The thieves, when arrested and confronted with evidence, did not want the stakeholders to be informed of the theft. They engaged the services of lawyers to help them keep the story from the stakeholders. They insisted that their story should not be shared in the monthly bulletin of the company. They did not want anyone to know of the damage they had caused to the company. They claimed they had their rights to privacy. Now the company is on the brink of a collapse and the stakeholders have no idea what will become of their investments. Many of them have been impoverished. This is the story of Nigeria.

Nigerian officials caught in the web of corruption and their lawyers have invented a new phrase, “Media Justice,” which in other words means that when caught, the sordid operations of the thieves and robbers of our commonwealth are, in their opinion, prejudicially exposed by the media. They claim that public opinion evoked by these exposures impinge on the rights of their clients and may influence outcomes of judgment. Their logic is that if they stole in secrecy, they should be made to account for their actions in secrecy. They do not want the public to know what they did and what punishment they have been able to bargain with the courts.

And many of the Nigerian mainstream media, either for fear, or intimidation or even corruption at their own level seem to have bought into this logic. It is not uncommon to see ambiguous reports of an arrest by the anti-corruption authorities of “a highly placed official (names withheld) of a Federal Agency..bla bla”.  In some cases, pictures of such arrested officials, with their eyes covered by a black bar accompany these worthless reports. The Nigerian mainstream media hardly investigate corruption cases despite being given a free hand by President Buhari to investigate and report anomalies in the Nigerian system. Rather, they prefer to feed on the crumbs of the hard work of uncompromised online outlets. I doubt if the daily sales of all newspapers in Nigeria outmatch the daily number of views of say, Sahara Reporters.

The looters of our commonwealth, their lawyers and the compromised mainstream media who seek secrecy of arrest and trial of commonwealth thieves seem to be intent on redefining democracy. Their intention is the usurpation of the role of the public as the employer of the entire system of governance to whom reports of good and bad should be regularly rendered by the press. They want to use the guise of the rights of thieves to thwart the rights of the public to know what has been happening to our commonwealth. They seek to deconstruct the rights of 180 million of us to benefit the looters.

Unfortunately, the public is divided in its demand for exposure of thieves. It operates on the fault lines of religion, ethnicity and clanship. Corruption and robbery of our commonwealth are seen as an ethnic right and very often, the religious and ethnic bigots throw away their rights as citizens who need to be informed and accounted to, and seek to protect one of theirs caught with his/her hand in the commonwealth till. They claim persecution of the thief either because he/she belongs to an ethnic group or a particular religion. They do not want them exposed. The impact of the robbery of the commonwealth on their rights as citizens as well as on the quality of their lives is lost on them. They prefer handouts from thieves to organized development of Nigeria. To paraphrase Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the engineers of ethnic and religious fault lines have succeeded in dis-membering the nation and re-membering it into ethnic and religious agglomerations sustained by gratuitous gifts of thieves.

What do these thieves and their lawyers call “Media Trial”? Is it the process of informing the stakeholders of the Nigerian commonwealth that these thieves have been denuding our common grass? The Encarta dictionary defines trial as a “formal legal process: a formal examination of the facts and law in a civil or criminal action before a court of law in order to determine an issue.” No press in the world can engage in this process. It is not their vocation. However, it is their vocation to report on the “formal legal process” and it is the right of the stakeholders to be informed about the process.

The so-called media trial cannot and should not also be misrepresented as public trial. A public trial ends in lynching and so far, none of their clients has being lynched because of press exposures. The citizens have the right to be informed and to follow the process in our courts to the logical conclusion of retrieving our monies and seeing off the thieves to jail.

And we the people must jettison the dark glasses of ethnicity and religion in order to collectively ask for our dividends.

Bukola Saraki’s Predicament in Yoruba Worldview By Abimbola Lagunju

It is a common Yoruba belief that any predicament that befalls any individual has a source and cause. There is no predicament that afflicts a man without some source. This belief gave origin to divinations and healing in Yoruba culture. Divination priests (and now their pastor-counterparts and Muslim clerics) seek to understand the source of a problem facing an individual and then proffer what they consider the most appropriate solutions.

Yoruba belief has four major categories of causes of a predicament:  Akoba, Afise, Afomo and Afowofa. Of these four causes, two are externally induced, one is self-provoked and one can be said to be accidental.  Akoba can be roughly translated as being set up by others deliberately or inadvertently to take the blame for an offence not committed. Afise means a deliberate attempt by others to induce predicament in the life of an individual. Afomo implies getting into a predicament for being at the wrong place at the wrong time or walking into a predicament. Afowofa is self-induced predicament.

An important prerequisite for solution out of a predicament is that the afflicted individual gives a true narrative of his life and his ise owo (deeds professionally and socially). It is a process of relieving the conscience of its burdens and trusting the diviner or the healer to help find solution. This practice of demanding a true account of the individual’s past records in order to find a solution for his predicament cuts across all religions. The Catholics call it confession, while other diviners and healers call it other names.

Bukola Saraki has a problem with his narrative. Conceited, arrogant and cunning, he has lost himself in his maze of self-deceit and lies. He tells a warped narrative. He seeks to self-attribute his predicament to Akoba by telling the discerning populace that his “political distractors” are responsible. To checkmate Akoba, he rigged himself to the post of Senate President, believing that by sitting high above his “distractors” as he did in Kwara State for 8 years, his predicament would go away.

Disquieted by the persistence of his predicament, he turns his attention to Afise. He says it is because he is “fighting corruption” and the bigger corruption is fighting back by inflicting him with false declaration of assets and fraud. Saraki wants us to believe that bigger corruption wrote his declaration of assets on his behalf and committed fraud in his name. He opened a warfront against the bigger corruption and their Afise. Bukola adopted a three-pronged strategy for his war. He consulted his marabout in Ilorin to consult his ancestors to fight his war. Not sure of his ancestors’ capacity or willingness, he consulted the Chief Imam of Ilorin to go higher up and get the angels to fight his cause. While still awaiting the reply from heaven, Bukola engaged the services of earthlings - lawyers and his spokesperson to publicly accuse Afise of misdemeanors and plotting to bring him down.

Confused by his gradual demystification and rapid loss of face as well as his apparent failure to attribute the growing storm of his predicament to “Akoba” and “Afise”, Saraki instructed his lawyers to run to the High Court as well as the Appeal Court to convince them that he could not and should not be arrested and brought to Code of Conduct Tribunal to answer for what “Afomo” has put in his way. His confused SANs could not find appropriate laws to stop the storm and resorted to inventing their own puerile and despicable interpretations of the law.

Everyone but Bukola understands that the cause of his predicament is Afowofa through his shameless greed, disregard for the laws of the land, mad ambition and delusion of grandeur. Bukola is either too arrogant or delusional to share this in his narrative. A troubling question to ask is whether he really understands his own actions, history and life. Is Bukie cooked mentally?

Afflictions from Afowofa have no solution. Only charlatans in all religions claim to have solutions to predicaments from Afowofa. True priests of all deities call the affliction and its consequences Kadara (destiny) and in severe cases of Afowofa, like Bukola Saraki’s, the individual is confined to an asylum or solitary confinement so he does not harm his society.

In the case of Bukola, these two solutions combined are the best to save Nigeria from his toxicity.

“Change” is Governance by Results – An open Letter to President Muhammadu Buhari By Abimbola Lagunju

Dear Mr. President,

Governments in Nigeria either at the central or regional level have mastered the habit of deceiving Nigerians through media onslaughts of announcements of an intention or the beginning of a normal governance process. Contrary to the expectations of the Nigerian public that the highly publicized intentions will transform into actions and results that will be duly reported by the press, the declarant soon goes to sleep and moves on to inventing other spurious intentions. In many cases, the public never hears of the outcome of these intentions and the press forgets to ask on our behalf.  The Nigerian media, either through naiveté or gullibility or inducements or for want of interesting reportable events inundate their papers with mundane governance processes and declarations of bogus intentions of political leaders and forget to report concrete results with measurable impacts on the lives of Nigerians.

In order to induce permanent memory failure in the press and the occasionally curious but suffering public, the government hires those that dub themselves attack dogs, who believe that deceit, manipulation of facts and aggressive behavior are tools of interfacing with the mainstream press and by extension the Nigerian people. Even your party while in opposition suffered from this memory loss. The party allowed itself to be befuddled by the maze of endless processes announced by the past government. It contented itself with contending with the so-called attack dogs.

The slogan “Change” by which you convinced Nigerians to vote you into the presidency implies a paradigm shift. A departure from the undesirables of the past and the beginning of a new era. “Change” is a solemn declaration of your intentions to usher in this new paradigm. Your party published its manifesto at the beginning of the election campaign which majority of those who voted for “change” did not read. They did not read not because they are illiterates, but because they have set their own parameters of “change” in their minds.  “Change” means measurable results and not a barrage of news on processes that in the past led to nowhere. “Change” means the recovery of our collective memory.

The purpose of my letter to you is to share Nigerians’ understanding of “change” and the yardsticks of their measurements.

Firstly, it has become the habit of Nigerian leaders to speak of electricity supply in terms of megawatts. This is like a head of a family speaking of food for his household in terms of calories. Megawatt discussions by past Nigerian leaders have simply switched off lights in households. Nigerians live in darkness. Generators, small and big which are supposed to serve as exceptional back-ups have now become the main source of electricity for Nigerians. Noise and smoke pollution, major health hazards are a way of life in Nigeria. Your Excellency, if there are any words that Nigerians abhor, megawatt is one of them. Avoid this word in your discourse. The measurement of electricity supply to Nigerians should be in terms of supply to households: How many households among total number of households in Nigeria have continuous 24/7 electricity supply? This simple measurement can also be adopted by the federating states and the local governments. “Change” is when a large proportion of Nigerian households have constant electricity supply. Your administration can set the percentage figures for the next four years.

Secondly, Nigeria does not seem to know the number of its children in school age attending schools. Unicef annually publishes such figures (no one seems to know the source) and the government that is supposed to provide the figures vehemently contests Unicef figures.  How many children in school-going age do we have annually? How many public and private schools do we have in Nigeria? How many children in school-going age are in school? “Change” is when a large proportion of Nigerian school children in school-going age are in school and studying under universally acceptable conditions. Your administration can set the percentage figures.

Thirdly, the Nigeria health care system is in a terrible state of decay and neglect. You probably read the experience of Mr. Nasir El Rufai during a night visit to one the public hospitals in Kaduna. What he experienced in Kaduna is the way the health system is all over the country. Performance of public health facilities is measured in body counts from avoidable deaths and unfounded referrals. It may shock you to hear that the first thing a Nigerian child gets to see as he is being born is the light from a cellphone or from torchlight or from a lantern if he is unfortunate to be born at night. There are no drugs in public health facilities and it is an understatement to say that the health workforce is very demotivated. “Change” is putting a permanent stop to avoidable deaths. Change is equal access for all Nigerians to quality health care delivered by highly motivated professionals. “Change” is accounting for any life lost.

Fourthly, the future Nigerian middle class is being threatened. Youths have no jobs. The public and private sectors have shut their doors to Nigerian youths. The weird logic of unemployability of Nigerian university graduates has become an excuse for many in the private sector to deny youths employment. For example, Nigeria, a developing country with many health issues is one of the very few countries in the world where young graduates from the medical school may remain unemployed for a long time or paid a pittance for arduous exploitation in the private sector. “Change” is measurable investments in youth employment and empowerment. “Change” is the reduction of youth unemployment (with figures) to the barest minimum. “Change” is gainful employment and not deceitful corporate social responsibility by the organized private sector. “Change” is arresting brain waste.

Fifthly, the Nigerian road network has over the years been used as an object of manipulation and deceit of the Nigerian public by the politicians. Roads are tarred on paper; old roads in decrepit conditions are multiply commissioned; maintenance of many happens only on papers. “Change” on the road network should be measured in kilometers. How many kilometers of tarred roads do we have in the country? How many new ones will be built? How many will be repaired? And within which time-frame?

Sixthly, you spoke severally during your campaign about your determination to rid this country of the evil of corruption. It will not be too farfetched to state that all aspects of the Nigerian life are ridden with corruption. Corruption has become the oxygen for survival in this country. It is an attitude, and championing a change in attitude demands determination and courage. Determination, you do not lack, but you may need to work on the courage as the bad guys are everywhere and are scheming to overwhelm your determination. But for the Nigerian populace, “Change” is how much of our stolen commonwealth is recovered.  “Change” is the number of corruption cases brought to logical end. Change is expunging “perpetual injunction” from the judicial vocabulary. “Change” is jail and shame for the corrupt, big or small. “Change” means no slap on the wrist for big thieves.  “Change” is being among the 20 least corrupt nations in the world on Transparency International scale.

Finally, Mr. President, your people have been taken hostage by fear.  Fear for their lives and their properties. Improvement in security has been reduced to media propaganda of processes without results or in terms of body counts or prisoners taken. “Change” is attitudinal change of the Nigerian security forces. “Change” is justice. “Change” is making Nigerians believe in the Nigerian project. “Change” is invoking patriotic and civic zeals in Nigerians. “Change” is making everybody count. “Change” is peace.

Your Excellency, I was happy to see a media picture of you reading a Nigerian newspaper aboard your plane to South Africa. I was happy to see another media picture of you with an I-pad. To me, these images show that you have your ear to the ground; you want to directly feel the pulse of the nation. Thus, I trust you will read this piece and understand what “Change” means to your people.

Mr. President, please receive my highest and esteemed regards.

Kindly yours,

Abimbola Lagunju

Abimbola Lagunju is a writer and author of several books.

abimbola.lagunju@gmail.com