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The short answer to the title question is, The Slave Trade mentality. That’s why we do it! I admit, I am opening up a can of worms about which everyone has a different capacity for digestion. The real and somewhat more complex question I am attempting to navigate is, why is our country the way it is after forty-six years of independent rule and autonomy? Given the abundance of our beleaguered nations natural resources; not the least of which is our oil reserves, given the brilliance of our citizens; brilliance often accomplished amidst some of the harshest and most harrowing learning environments, given the stupendous wealth that has passed through our public (and private!) coffers since our independence, shouldn’t we be much further along than we are? Shouldn’t a nation that can produce a Nobel Prize winner amongst so many other accomplishments, be able to provide safe roads/ public transportation, running water and electricity to it’s embattled citizens?
Now let me offer some disclaimers here so that many of the historians and academicians that are a lot smarter than me don’t attempt to hang me for a penny. I am not interested in debating the finer points of dates and specific details. I am examining a broader element here which has to do with ideas and ideologies. If this sparks off a debate or discussion that motivates a greater self-examination among Nigerians, and especially among those of us in the diaspora, then my purpose has been accomplished. Feel free to disagree with my perspective, and in fact “set me straight” if I appear to have taken a winding path that leads nowhere, but please do so graciously so that your point is not lost in the volume of your passion.
I grew up in a
Nigeria
that I thought showed tremendous potential for a future filled with great promise. I lived under the grandiose notion that my generation would be the one that would assure Nigerians of a constant source of electricity, good roads, an enviable public transportation system and so many other basic aspects of life, that had become lofty aspirations in a country largely led by people who were more interested in a contract for supplying generators than they were in revamping the nations electricity corporation. Not so my father. He was a realist. He told me while I was still a teenager, that all he could see in our future was a country wracked with poverty, sickness and a non existent middle class. This was years before the brain drain that took much of our middle class (including me) to the Western world. I am now in my mid-forties.
The same people that were involved in politics and government when I was growing up, in many ways still call the shots today. I have read with detached interest how some of the political leaders of my generation have been “anointed as successors” to current leaders. The implication being that if you did not get the nod of the power brokers and the ruling ‘caliphate,’ you didn’t stand a snowballs chance in hell of making any political headway. Additionally, our Press has been so muzzled and pressured by ‘big-men’ and ‘big-money’ that many of them, rather than expose and condemn these ills, are merely tools that represent various personal and political interests. Our leaders have come to expect this of the press.
As an example, I remember taking the editor for a popular Christian magazine in the
USA
, to
Nigeria
. It was a trip that was originally planned for early in the year following the year that we actually went. The trip was moved up earlier because a large denomination paid for our tickets so that we could attend one of their larger services and get a greater sense of what God was doing in
Nigeria
. They were impeccable hosts! We were feted and treated like royalty. They assured us that tons of that particular edition of the magazine would be sold in
Nigeria
. Until the magazine was published. The story, at least to my mind, was a brilliant piece on how the move of God in
Nigeria
was one of the biggest and best things to happen in Christian circles anywhere in the world in any generation. It was an article that highlighted a cross section of ministers and ministries that were having a measurable impact on the Nigerian landscape. The denomination that paid for our tickets was livid! In their estimation, the story should have been exclusively about them. In purchasing our tickets, they believed they had bought the editorial rights to dictate what went into the magazine. How can a country thrive on such a lack of objectivity?
In a nation where dissenters from popular opinion are marginalized and ostracized, we quickly become insular. When we compare ourselves with ourselves, there is no real yardstick for measuring how well we are doing. It wasn’t that long ago that Nigerians were herding Ghanaian’s en-masse out of Nigeria (when the popular bags named ‘Ghana must go’ became their preferred means of packing up their personal goods) because we felt like they were taking our low paying jobs (as if we aspired to those jobs) and consequently taking food from our tables. Today
Ghana
has a more stable economy and is years ahead of
Nigeria
developmentally. We still aspire to have a decent educational system that is not arcane, running pipe-borne water, a steady supply of electricity, an efficient public transportation system and good roads upon which it can operate.
“Get to the point,” I hear you say. Stop salivating, here’s my point. I am convinced that one of the open sores of
Nigeria
is that our harbors served as the launching point for the American slave trade. In that period many of our people learned that there was an easy way to enrich themselves, line their pockets with unearned wealth, and resolve some of their tribal rivalries, by selling each other into slavery. They didn’t consider the long term reprisals for their actions. I am persuaded that, as a result of this, there are territorial spirits that jealously guard their strongholds over various aspects of our land and people, not the least of which is the spirit of greed. I recognize that this is a mouthful for some of you to swallow, especially those of you who approach this from an irreligious or secular mindset, but consider the evidence. We are still selling each other into slavery by mortgaging ours as well as our children’s future, when all that we do serves only to make life better for just ourselves, just for today. Remember the 2.8billion Naira debacle of a few years ago? When money that belonged to the nation was placed in a personal account so as to accrue interest for the account holder. Remember the Udoji Awards? Shall I continue?
I am not simplistic enough to suggest that this is all there is to our problems. I am saying though, that you don’t destroy a tree by cutting down its many branches. In fact, when you do that you are pruning the tree and it grows stronger and bigger. To destroy a tree, you take it out at the roots. This is the root of our misshapen nation’s problems. It is, for want of better terminology, a Slave Trade mentality. It is a mindset that has more far reaching consequences than we can imagine. It is a mindset steeped in avarice and greed that doesn’t consider what the future will be if we continue doing in the present what we are doing. Our elections are pending and already the debacle of our political system is the laughing stock of independent observers, desperately hoping that for once Nigeria will get it right and utilize the wealth of resources she has available to her. Judging from the passionate discourse going on in this forum about the aspiring presidential candidates and INEC, that is not likely.
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Posted by Robot| 19.03.2007 09:27