Caliphates and other fictions

‘We have nothing to do with Nigeria. We don’t believe in this name... There is nothing like Nigeria.’ With these words, Boko Haram recently declared the new Islamic Caliphate in the north-east. There seems little reason to argue with the sentiment, if not the intention, in this the year of our purported centenary. The country was always a fiction, the creation of foreign adventurers and their native collaborators with no higher purpose than plunder. We have known this all along. Once, early on in our so-called independence, which was when the native collaborators really came into their own, the attempt to rewrite the terms of our forced union that could be the only affirmation of that independence was ruthlessly crushed on the grounds that, ‘to keep Nigeria one, is a task that must be done,’ an accurate enough expression of the mindlessness now consumed in tragedy, a case of the chickens coming home to roost, as the deputy-governor of Enugu State in the once and future Biafra recently discovered.

 

This was not to be avoided. The Niger Delta militants had already demonstrated the impotence of a state mired in levels of corruption that now witnesses soldiers fleeing better armed insurgents who loot and rape at will, much like the government they have vowed to overthrow. Nigeria is fracturing although the government, which is unable to guarantee the country’s territorial integrity, still appears oblivious of the immensity of the crisis unfolding before us. It was only six months ago that it belatedly acknowledged we were at war, and it was just yesterday that the president received yet another report from yet another national conference supposedly convened to move the country forward but in reality to impede its progress by distracting our attention. Alas, the time for talk is over. It was over a long time ago, in 1970 to be precise, which was when Biafra was ‘defeated’ in order that we might Go On With One Nigeria, with what results we now see.

 

So here we are and - that famous question - what is to be done? The same question was recently asked by a well-known political commentator who usually has something sensible to say but not so this time. Alleging that ‘[w]e love our democracy, rule of law and human rights with all their imperfections,’ he recommends that Mr President ‘call on young Nigerians to come out and join the armed forces to save the country.’ He further suggests that we re-equip the military ‘with the urgency it deserves,’ and court-martial those responsible for its present parlous state. Finally, he calls for ‘a serious political and ideological campaign’ to rope artists into creating ‘the new slogans we need to mobilise for the successful prosecution of the war.’

 

I take this to be profound misunderstanding of what is happening in Nigeria. If indeed we had democracy, the rule of law and human rights - however imperfect - we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. Moreover, to imagine that the country is teeming with youths dying (as it were) to offer themselves up as sacrifice for a country which delivers only grief in order to support the status quo that is their biggest problem is as deluded as the idea that anybody will ever be court-martialled for anything. Who is going to court-martial them? The man who told us ‘[t]here is no corruption but mere stealing in Nigeria,’ his wife having been labelled the ‘greediest woman in Bayelsa State’ by the US authorities in the days before she and her husband moved into Aso Rock?

 

The problem isn’t with this particular commentator’s staggering naiveté concerning the nature of the country he imagines he is living in but that his views are echoed in one form or another by many of his fellow commentators, even at this late hour. We see this in their affected surprise in the pages of the same newspapers that the latest expensive talking shop ‘merely’ agreed to disagree on the division of the spoils, which is all that has ever interested them. It’s hardly any wonder that the president’s constituency should threaten that ‘the blood of the dogs and the baboons will be soaked in the streets’ if their man is not returned come February next year, only surprising that they failed to follow Boko Haram’s logical example and secede altogether, thereby keeping all the proceeds of their good fortune to themselves, which was always theirs anyway.

 

To cap it all, we are now daily assailed by considered opinions as to who might or might not run in next year’s elections. INEC will certainly have its work cut out, perhaps, as in 2011, using youth corpers, i.e. ‘young Nigerians,’ as shock troops should they decline to sign up for direct military service. In other words, it isn’t only the ‘authorities’ who are deluding themselves concerning the nature of the challenges we are facing but those privileged to know better. There may be good reasons for this refusal to look the facts in the face given that nobody wants to contemplate the possible ‘Somalia-isation’ of Nigeria – as one current presidential hopeful once put it – but pretending that we live in normal times is equally likely to hasten the fragmentation we are now witnessing all around us.

So we come back to the question: What is to be done? In one way, the answer is simple, which is perhaps the problem with it: Let everybody go their own way. Since this is not going to happen by government fiat, government itself being largely a fiction, we will have to do it all by ourselves, just like the Biafrans attempted, just like the militants threatened, and just like Boko Haram has done. What will come out of it is anybody’s guess but anything has to be better than the slow drift to anarchy that bodes ill for all.

© Adewale Maja-Pearce

Adewale Maja-Pearce is the author of several books, including Loyalties
and Other Stories, In My Father's Country, How many miles to Babylon?, A
Mask Dancing, Who's Afraid of Wole Soyinka?, From Khaki to Agbada,
Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa and Other Essays, A Peculiar Tragedy, and
Counting the Cost, as well as the 1998 and 1999 annual reports on human
rights violations in Nigeria. He also edited The Heinemann Book of African
Poetry in English, Wole Soyinka: An Appraisal, Christopher Okigbo:
Collected Poems, The New Gong Book of New Nigerian Short Stories,
and Dream Chasers. The House My Father Built, a memoir, will be
published later this year.

Click here to see Maja-Pearce's amazon.com page: http://www.amazon.com/Adewale-Maja-Pearce/e/B001HPKIOU

Africa goes to Washington

    Tom: I can’t tell you how many times your father and I have discussed your future.
    Michael: You and my father discussed my future?

Tom: Yes, many times.

 Michael: But I’ve got my own plans for my future.

                                                                                                             The Godfather

Africa went to Washington last week and The Washington Post had a field day with the assembled delegates, or at least their consorts. Leading the pack was Mrs Biya – ‘The first lady of Cameroon and her hair have touched down in D.C.’ – which extolled the achievements of Madam’s ‘bouffant’, which was ‘a beauty school master’s thesis in contradictions,’ somehow managing to be ‘short and long, rebellious yet elegant, unruly but controlled.’ Mauritania’s ‘chic’ Lady Tekber Mint Melainine Ould Ahmed managed to make ‘wearing aviators at night look cool.’ Not to be outdone was the Rwandan president’s daughter, who towered above everyone else and so could afford a more demure look. Sadly, our own Patience wasn’t in attendance, although this might have been just as well.

 

It seems that some serious discussions did occur in the course of the three days, things like encouraging ‘progress in key areas that Africans define as critical for the future of the continent,’ things like ‘expanding trade and investment ties,’ things like ‘engaging young African leaders, promoting inclusive sustainable development, expanding cooperation on peace and security, and gaining a better future for Africa’s next generation,’ in the words of the White House press release.

 

These are all doubtless laudable ambitions but not a few raised sceptical voices. One of them, Mukoma Wa Thiong’o, likened the event to ‘a father calling his children to discuss their futures,’ which some thought a cheap jibe. Another, Mo Ibrahim, the British-Sudanese businessman who offers an annual $5mn reward for African leaders who pass the sobriety test, i.e. leave office without falling or being pushed (but which, significantly, has not been awarded in the last two years). As he bluntly put it:

 

Everywhere in Africa there are Chinese businesspeople, there are Brazilian businesspeople. None of us went to Brazil or to Asia or to China to tell them, look, come and invest in Africa. They found out themselves and they come and invest. That’s how basic business people behave. Why do we need to come and inform these misinformed American businesses? You know, you guys invented Google. Use it please.

China, as everyone pointed out, was the great bugbear behind this sudden rush to do something about Africa, as indeed Obama confirmed in an interview with The Economist of London the previous week: ‘My advice to African leaders is to make sure that if, in fact, China is putting in roads and bridges, number one, that they're hiring African workers; number two, that the roads don't just lead from the mine to the port to Shanghai.’ The US, by contrast, doesn’t ‘simply want to extract minerals from the ground for our growth’ but to ‘build genuine partnerships that create jobs and opportunity for all our peoples and that unleash the next era of African growth.’ Not everyone was convinced. A sulking Zimbabwe, one of the three countries barred from dinner on account of its human rights record, understood the gathering to be ‘America pursuing its interests, afraid that China has made headway,’ according to a statement by that country’s information minister.

 

But there was also something about Obama needing to leave behind an African legacy, which seems to have become de rigueur for American presidents. Both his predecessors had staked their own claims, Clinton by negotiating the African Growth and Opportunity Act, George W. Bush by throwing money at HIV/AIDS (along with his country’s pharmaceutical industry), yet neither had their successor’s continental roots, and which Obama himself was now –belatedly - claiming: ‘I also stand before you as a man from Africa. The blood of Africa runs through our family.'

 

Unfortunately, the blood line didn’t extend beyond the distinguished guests. At the closing press conference, to which he turned up over an hour late, the White House press corps was given front-row seats while the African journalists ‘scrabbled for space behind the cameras’ and never got a chance to ask any questions before Oga was ‘whisked out of the building,’ leaving one of the African journalists to wonder, ‘What did we come all this way for?’

 

In fact, much the same question might have been asked by the assorted heads of state (and their consorts) had they been able to see beyond the fancy dinner. When all the noise had died down, Obama announced a $14bn investment pledge by US companies. To put this into context, the US has blown $104bn in Afghanistan alone, but the real question is: Was it necessary for all those African heads of state – and never mind the journalists - to travel to Washington en masse in order to secure such a risible sum, less even than the former Central Bank governor accused our very own NNPC of purloining under the leadership of a minister known for her financial recklessness?

 

One wonders for how long we here in Africa will continue to look to the foreigner to save us from ourselves. Five centuries and more of slavery, colonialism and exploitation – whether from Europe, the US or China – have still not convinced us that the solutions to Africa’s many problems lie with us, not them. To that end, we have been given all the resources we need, the very resources Europe, the US and China are here for in the first place. That our heads of state – and their consorts – even honoured the invitation to have dinner in the White House is a measure of how far we still have to go. Well, so be it. One day we will wake up to the realisation that we need our own plans for our future. Until that day, we will continue to go a-begging in the vain hope that foreigners really do have our best interests at heart.

 

© Adewale Maja-Pearce

Adewale Maja-Pearce is the author of several books, including Loyalties
and Other Stories, In My Father's Country, How many miles to Babylon?, A
Mask Dancing, Who's Afraid of Wole Soyinka?, From Khaki to Agbada,
Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa and Other Essays, A Peculiar Tragedy, and
Counting the Cost, as well as the 1998 and 1999 annual reports on human
rights violations in Nigeria. He also edited The Heinemann Book of African
Poetry in English, Wole Soyinka: An Appraisal, Christopher Okigbo:
Collected Poems, The New Gong Book of New Nigerian Short Stories,

and Dream Chasers. The House My Father Built, a memoir, will be
published later this year.

Click here to see Maja-Pearce's amazon.com page: http://www.amazon.com/Adewale-Maja-Pearce/e/B001HPKIOU