The popular Nigerian newspaper, THISDAY, does not like to cover events and report the news as is the wont of regular newspapers all over the world. Rather, the Lagos rag loves to make the news it covers. And such news propositions seem to obey only one rule: ensure that the name and picture of its founder and owner, Nduka Obaigbena, appear constantly in the neighbourhood of the globally mighty and famous. In THISDAY events, usually mega-advertised as the second best thing to happen to Africa after independence, it is routine to see Obaigbena beaming in the company of the likes of Naomi Campbell, Sean Puffy Combs, 50 Cents, Snoop Dog, Beyoncé, Vincente Fox, Henry Kissinger, and Paul Begala. I began to pay more than a passing attention to THISDAY’s dilettantism the day I stumbled on a report that arch neo-conservative pundit, Bill Kristol, had been part of an Obaigbena event in New York.

Now, Kristol is as bad as it gets. He is one of those prurient intellects in the fundamentalist fringe of the American far right. He is bad news for Africa; he is bad news for the rest of the world. He is interested in the rest of us only insofar as we are prepared to recognize and accept the essential goodness and desirability of American imperialism and dominion over the rest of us. We are bad news for him if we insist that no one country, no one people singularly incarnates the ultimate and final expression of the human. We are terrible news for him when we insist he sells his exceptionalist delusions to the marines in Kandahar, or when we insist that there is no such thing as an indispensable nation. We are horrible news for Kristol when we insist that folks are welcome to define their own model of society and their values as the end of history, so long as they do not foist such hallucinations on other peoples’ narratives. Now, what could Obaigbena possibly be doing in the company of such a repugnant reactionary in the cozy confines of the Waldorf Astoria?

Then comes this shocker of an announcement by the newspaper that Steve Forbes and Lawrence Summers are the two heavyweights invited “to headline the 3rd THISDAY Townhall meeting on financial and stock markets holding next week in Abuja”. So far so good, you tell yourself. There is nothing wrong with two influential Americans going to discuss America’s sorry economic condition while enjoying African hospitality and sunshine. Summers and Forbes probably need a break from the depressing situation back home and Obaigbena has been known to be his brother’s keeper – if his brother has a name. Then this: “convened by THISDAY Board of Editors, the six-hour meeting will dig deep into the challenges of Nigeria’s policy and market environment, appraise global market conditions, explore options and proffer solutions to one of the fastest growing markets in the world determined to be one of the leading global economies by Year 2020”. In essence, Obaigbena and his editors, in their infinite wisdom, have concluded that two representatives of American market fundamentalism are in the most auspicious position to perorate on “the challenges of Nigeria’s policy and market environment”. If we are lucky, the two Americans may even “proffer solutions” to our market challenges and rocket-launch us into our desired economic nirvana in 2020, ahead of more serious and focused countries like China, India, Brazil, and the United Arab Emirates. More on this later. For now, let’s dwell on Lawrence Summers and the culture that has, apparently, earned him an invitation to Nigeria.

It is difficult not to wake up everyday feeling sorry for Africa. Sometimes you are sorry for what others have done and keep doing to that battered continent. At other times, you are sorry for the incredible things we are capable of doing to the continent and ourselves. There is this French colonial-era police officer in Guinean writer, Alioum Fantouré’s 1972 novel, Le cercle des tropiques. Taking one disgusted look at a newly independent African country already in the throes of the sanguinary dictatorship of one of Francophone Africa’s famous pères de la nation (Fathers of the Nation), the police man declares that one thing that has baffled him to no end in all the decades he has spent serving in Africa is that Africans are capable of inflicting such injuries on Africa that even the most wicked white colonialist is incapable of imagining. “You, Africans, secrete your own poison from within”, the policeman concludes.

Colomentality (apologies to Fela Anikulapo Kuti) is one of the most lethal poisons we secrete from within. It is a pernicious form of coloniality that Fela defines as the refusal to cure oneself of cultural and intellectual dependency on – and fascination with – everything and anything Western. It is an abdication of initiative, a voluntary surrender of agency to Western actors. Hear Fela: Oyinbo don release you but you never release yourself (the white man has freed you but you are yet to free yourself). In Nigeria, colomentality is, to some extent, coterminous with Yankeephilism. Some of the world’s most uncritical Yankeephiliacs are in Nigeria. In government and elite circles, Yankeephilism is an epidemic. One comical instance: on assuming office, Segun Adeniyi, President Yar’Adua’s public microphone, immediately ran to Washington for a training course and told critics that Americans were in the best position to teach him how to communicate effectively with the Nigerian people. Had his Yankeephilic exuberance not been checked by critics, he was well on his way to declaring that the Americans were the most qualified to teach him the accent and inflections of Warri and Sapele pidgin.

This is the culture that has ensured that any American that is fortunate enough to land in Nigeria becomes a demi-god. Where the American is white, the sky is the limit. Colomentality is what makes us assume that every American, from the uncultured college dropouts at the consular section of the American Embassy in Lagos to the highest placed World Bank or White House official, is either an Africanist proper or an Africanist honoris causa, and therefore deserves a platform to “proffer ideas” on the way forward for Nigeria and Africa. Folks who should be flipping burgers in New York are chauffeured around Lagos and Abuja as American expatriates, sometimes with police guards. Regular Joes and Janes who, back home in the US, wouldn’t have access to the Mayor of Altoona, Pennsylvania, enjoy unfettered access to our Ministers and Federal Government officials who suddenly become obsequious.

When colomentality sets in and surges on all cylinders, we fail to ask crucial questions about the bona fides of the Americans we are granting a platform to tell us about our lives. We fail to ask the sort of questions that would have led Obaigbena and THISDAY to Lawrence Summers’s terrible record on Africa and the global South. Obaigbena was perhaps too smitten by Summers’s profile – former Vice President of the World Bank, former Clinton Administration official, former president of Harvard University, former this, former that – and the prospects of photo-ops to bother with trifle details in the man’s trajectory. Trifle details such as what Summers thinks of the brains of American women. Fortunately, American women did not take his insults lying low. They exposed him as a radioactive male chauvinist and got him thrown out of office as President of Harvard University. Deservedly.

Yet, those angry American women ought to consider themselves lucky that Summers only believes that their brains are biologically inferior to those of their husbands, sons, and boyfriends. Africa and the global South fare much worse than biological inferiority in Summersville. While American women deserve some space in the sun as cerebrally inferior human beings, Summers doesn’t extend the same generosity to Africa and the global South. In the most cynical version of economic Darwinism ever to assault our sense of decency, Summers authored – or merely signed as he later claimed – a World Bank memo that outlined the economic benefits of dumping the toxic and industrial wastes of rich Western countries in the less developed countries of Africa and the global South. Summers’s memo leaked and caused a tsunami in global environmental circuits. It is worth reproducing in full for the benefit of Obaigbena and THISDAY:

DATE: December 12, 1991

TO: Distribution

FR: Lawrence H. Summers

Subject: GEP

'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:

1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.

2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I've always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.

3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is is 200 per thousand. Also, much of the concern over industrial atmosphere discharge is about visibility impairing particulates. These discharges may have very little direct health impact. Clearly trade in goods that embody aesthetic pollution concerns could be welfare enhancing. While production is mobile the consumption of pretty air is a non-tradable.

The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization.

Summers’s bona fides as an Africanist can thus be summarized in two words: psychotic Darwinism. This is the sort of character THISDAY is inviting to Abuja to help Nigeria figure out a way of becoming one of the best economies in the world twelve years from now. Apart from the sense of continental pride and dignity that should make any self-respecting African want to keep a character like Summers as far away from the continent as possible, it is ironic that Obaigbena and THISDAY could find no other saviors for Nigeria’s market and financial system other than two apostles of the philosophy that has ruined the economy of the world’s most powerful state in a little less than eight years. Summers and Forbes are epistemic participants in the process that has produced the world’s biggest mendicant economy, totally dependent on loans and handouts from China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to be able to continue to live above its means. Given the current situation in the US, are these two American prophets of capital really in the position to lecture Africa about finance and economics? Shouldn’t Americans rather be learning one or two lessons from the rest of us at the moment? Given their belief in market fundamentalism, what exactly are Forbes and Summers going to say in Abuja that Obaigbena could not have downloaded for free from the websites of the World Bank and the IMF? The good news about Washington’s arrogant neo-liberal prescriptions for Africa is that they never change. Bretton Woods and her prophets have only one all-purpose aspirin for every African ailment and the prescription is available for free on any good financial website.

If Obaigbena and THISDAY are that desperate for neo-liberal prescriptions, I can save them some money by telling them – for free – what Summers and Forbes will tell them in Abuja. Here we go. If you guys want to join the Ivy League of global economies by the year 2020, more deregulation is the answer! Open up your markets to our products. Market! Market!! I say m-a-r-k-e-t!!! Somebody shout amen!! What is this we hear that your Federal government still subsidizes petroleum products for the Nigerian people? When did government become Father Christmas? What is this we hear that you still have Federal Universities that receive government subvention? Nonsense. Open up your educational sector to market forces. Open up health, environment, natural resources - everything - to market forces. Export more of your raw materials and skilled labour at cheaper prices to the West. And what is this we hear about boosting local production? Nonsense. Import everything from us at market-determined prices. Labour in Nigeria is unionized? You guys are kidding, right? And we hear that Chevron-Texaco, Halliburton and other American multinationals pay taxes when they do business in Nigeria. Bad idea. You must make Nigeria more tax and investment friendly. By the way, you must open up the Niger Delta to AFRICOM so that your problem of terrorism can be solved once and for all. And while we are it, why do China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba have Embassies in Nigeria? You cannot achieve your Vision 2020 if you associate with such vermin.

There is so much resentment, helplessness, and gnashing of teeth in Washington over the intolerable ascendancy of the BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). BRIC is seen as the most formidable threat to America’s global dominance. While it is already too late to contain BRIC, Africa is still containable. Why anyone would imagine that two products of America’s ideology of dominance would go to Abuja and teach Nigerians how to become a viable threat – like BRIC - to America’s economic dominance by the year 2020 beats me. Professor Ngozi Okonjo Iweala would have offered more genuine insights to Obaigbena and his audience. She has a stake in Nigeria’s and Africa’s progress that Summers and Forbes will never have. And if we must bring non-Nigerian experts, we should have assembled some of the best brains and economists from Ghana, Botswana, and post-war Angola, three better-organized and more successful countries that have relevant lessons to teach Nigeria. Perhaps I’m dreaming. It is more likely that the folks at THISDAY would look down on those African countries. The giant of Africa may only learn from the giant of the world!

Robot  Villager

# 1 The popular Nigerian newspaper, THISDAY, does not like to cover events and report the news as is the wont of regular newspapers all over the world. Rather, the Lagos rag loves to make t...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 30.09.2008 08:15

Jagunlabi  Villager

# 2 Oga Pius, Thanks very much for a very brilliant and balanced article, you have hit the nail on the very head, the problem with most of us is that we are educated but not informed,education can be aquired whilst information is gathered. People like the publisher of Thisday, (though in fairness to him he's being around for a while, Business week?), almost sees Thisday as an avenue to curry celebrity and mix with the great and mighty. Yes new gathering ought to be entertaining, however when you become the news rather that report them, then there is bound to be conflict. The main troubles is what you've called colomentality(apology Abami Eda), we tend to equate ever and anything foreign with it better and superior to whatever we have. As you rightly said this guys are not at all interested in whatever happens to Africa,capitalism by it's structure depends on creative destruction, so why would they come and tell Africa,how they can be better than America, when they are competitors.Would you tell your competitor your trade secret? With the recent collapse on Wall street, and these two being very close to the epicentre of the crash, are these the people we want to be taking lessons from. And even retracking our steps a bit, Joseph Stiglitz in his world aclaim book, "Globalization and it's discontent" clearly enumerate why the Bretten Wood institution would never enact any policy that brings development to Africa or any other emerging power, they are created to protect the interest of their creators which is inimic to their interest.And he should know better, he was a former chief Economist with the World bank. So i hope Nduka and his editors would inquire better into the quality of people to bring to tell us as to be a economy giant in the year---------------, well let's leave that. Posted by Jagunlabi| 30.09.2008 11:47

katampe  Villager

# 3 Thanks Pius for your article. I have always maintained that this fellow is a celebrity journalist, a more polished version of Dele Mommodu. He is helping ruin the economy and image of Nigeria. I copied this excerpt to buttress your argument from a website.Let folks see the madness Nduka Obaigbena is infecting this silly folks in Nigeria. WSWS : News & Analysis : North America .In 1991 he left for Washington to become the chief economist at the World Bank, where he oversaw the implementation of “structural adjustment” programs that meant the impoverishment of masses of working people in Latin America, Africa and elsewhere around the globe. It was during this phase of his career that Summers drafted an infamous secret memo proposing a “free market in toxics.” He wrote that the World Bank should be encouraging the “migration of dirty industries to the LDCs .” “Health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages,” he declared. He continued by arguing that the low life expectancy in impoverished countries meant that people would not live long enough to contract diseases from pollution. The memo provoked worldwide outrage and calls for his resignation. Brazil’s secretary of the environment, Jose Lutzenberger, wrote to Summers that his proposal was “perfectly logical but totally insane” and reflected the “social ruthlessness and the arrogant ignorance of many conventional ‘economists’ concerning the nature of the world we live in... If the World Bank keeps you as vice president it will lose all credibility.” That such an individual was tapped by President Bill Clinton for high office was testimony to the right-wing character of the Democratic administration. Clinton first attempted to install Summers as the head of his Council of Economic Advisors, but was forced to withdraw the nomination in the face of protests. Instead Summers was appointed to the Treasury Department, where he was mentored by former Wall Street financier Robert Rubin, whom he succeeded as Treasury Secretary in 1999. see full article here : http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/summ-f24_prn.shtml Posted by katampe| 30.09.2008 12:34

delemajek  Villager

# 4 I've always had a lot to learn from your balanced, well-researched & written articles. Pls keep up the good work Prof. Posted by delemajek| 30.09.2008 14:31

isola  JJC

# 5 This excellent article addresses a fundamental problem in our society; an uncritical, unreflective acceptance and celebration of anything western. Part of the reason is global information domination of the west and of course the lack of will to interrogate ideas. I doubt many of our readers in Nigeria have ever heard of Lawrence Summers and what he represents before ThisDay spread about him which the uncritical reader will simply accept wholesale. The writer alluded to US indebtedness to China, Saudia Arabia. The fact of the matter is that much of the world underwrite the US economy, and the indebtedness to China alone is $500 billion. Producing only 3%, the US consumes 25% of the global energy output. If the media, the educational system and socio-economic and political institutions of a country are set up to uncritically mimic another country, the people will have it difficult to think for themselves as that will be thinking outside the box. This ThisDay spread about Summers is emblematic of a deep-seated dilemma we face in our society Posted by isola| 01.10.2008 12:24

ukor  JJC

# 6 Ghana, Botswana and Post-war Angola all carried out (and are still implementing) the prescriptions of the Breton Woods guys, you can verify this. Is it not better to learn directly from the teachers than from the students? You are directly benefitting from the same free market environment which you are laboring to discredit while many others you left behind at home (yes even in Ghana) in the rowdy atmosphere cannot be near what you have attained, within a relatively short period, in the next fifty years. For instance, do you know that it takes an average of 7 years to complete a doctoral programme in any Nigerian university? Whereas, “free market” would have taken care of the unnecessary (man-made) delays. Summers may be bad news but Africa nay Nigeria needs urgent help. You can gather your own colleagues whom you know are not bad news to proffer some workable solutions for Africa. I think you would have done better than you are currently doing by just discrediting everything free market. Brazil, Russia, India and China are all implementing a form of free market model. The main guys running those economies are free market high priests. Obaigbena, Momodu et al are all showmen. They see nothing wrong in associating with despicable characters; con artists, drug baron, treasury looters and all kind of “sorcerers” of Summer’s mould. They even defend them, so in a way that is where their daily bread comes from. In any serious setting, these guys should not have anything to do with setting the social agenda for our nation, let alone economic agenda. What do you sincerely expect from them? But while serious guys like you are abdicating your responsibilities; you’ve only concern yourselves with criticism; charlatans like them would most likely take over and turn everything into show-business. Posted by ukor| 02.10.2008 07:37

Koboko  JJC

# 7 Ukor When people begin to zero in on little parts of a major article and use it as a convenient basis to forget the message and attack the messenger, you know they have nothing to worthwhile to say. What is your problem? What part of this brilliant article do you not understand? Anyway, you need to do some research. Angola parted ways with Bretton Woods and opted for homegrown economic options. Ghana and Botswana have never been uncritical and undiscriminating followers of those tenets. That is why they have not failed like others who are follow-follow. Anyway, if you are looking for a contract with Obaigbena to provide entertainment for Lawrence Summers in Abuja, print your self-serving comment here and submit it to THISDAY's editors. Ha, ha, ha. I don't know why some commentators grapple with essays way above their league! Posted by Koboko| 02.10.2008 09:28

ukor  JJC

# 8 Bros, where exactly did I attack the messenger? I am at a loss. What on earth is in my comment that suggest am looking for a contract from Obaigbena? I doubt if Obaigbena would even grant me audience not to mention awarding contract to me based on the above comment. Bros, take things easy. I only ask Pius to use his contact to gather good guys in North America to proffer solutions to Africa's problem. This continent needs help, including help from Pius friends. Hey, this article is brilliant no doubt, so is the author. But attacking everything free market while enjoying the benefit of free market sounds selfish in my opinion. Angola's home grown economic solution is not better than Obasanjo/Okonjo-Iweala/Soludo's home grown NEEDS. The same Bretton Woods guys vetted your so much cherished home grown economic programme. It beats me when so-called educated guys like you want us to believe that these Institutions are our problems while praising countries that have successfully implemented their programmes. And then you don’t even offer alternatives. Alternatives to the decay in infrastructure and increasing poverty that pervades our continent. Africa needs help especially from you guys in the Western world that have been successfully built on capitalism and free market models. Other continents are adapting them that is why they are succeeding. Thank God Botswana, Angola and Ghana mentioned are not so hypocritical like us; otherwise, Botswana’s HIV problem would have been blamed on WHO and Bretton Woods Institutions. Let the blame game stop. Let me restate what I said earlier, Pius could well organize his friends and proffer genuine solutions to our myriad of problems. Otherwise, more despicable people like Summer would be invited by Obaigbena and his friends, they don’t know better people. Take things easy and read between the lines. Posted by ukor| 02.10.2008 14:11

Koboko  JJC

# 9 Eh, Bros Ukor!! Chineke! I am not bros O! You wan do sex change for me? Na wah for you. Anyway, now you are talking more clearly. Since you are on first name terms with Professor Adesanmi, I am assuming you are more familiar with his work than mine and should have been a lot more constructive in your earlier comment rather than sounding initiatlly like you are a paid agent of Obaigbena. Unlike you, I've never met Prof Adesanmi. I only know his work and he supervised the doctorate of someone I know when he was a Professor at the Pennsylvania State University before he moved to Canada. That's about all I know. But I still think you have misread this essay and that's the problem I have with some commentators in this forum. I eventually registered in the NVS out of frustration with the quality of the comments I read. Have you bothered to ask yourself how many Nigerians know anything about Lawrence Summers? Someone who says that Africa and Africans are only good as waste dump is going to lecture us in Abuja, what is blame game in pointing that out? This essay is informative and didactic. I'd never heard about Lawrence Summers until I read about him in THISDAY. I thought it was a good idea to get somebody that impressive tho Nigeria. Then I read Prof Adesanmi's essay and decided to check out Lawrence Summers. To my dismay, Prof Adesanmi was spot on about the man's attitude to Africa and the developing world. Information and education is the premise this essay set for itself and it more than brilliantly achieved that. Like I said when one ignorant commentator, Allaccess, attacked another essay by this writer, people shouldn't just jump out critique essays without even knowing the rules guiding the particular prose style an author has employed. I have read a lot of Professor Adesanmi's essays online. He employs a wide variety of prose styles because he is a master prose stylist. Of course, I don't always agree with him but each essay should be critiqued within the terms of its premise. Besides, most essays contain within them the solutions that you programmatic solution hunters are always looking for. Anyway sha, I am enjoying this discussion with you. Posted by Koboko| 02.10.2008 14:43

ukor  JJC

# 10 Nice then! Lawrence Summers is a bad character whom we Africans should not befriend let alone allow to teach us economic theories. That is absolutely taken. I don’t have any problems with the article at all. I don’t know Summers from anywhere until Pius pointed his hateful mind in his article. However, we cannot continue to write prose when we can actually bend down and work. By work I mean pragmatic approach to our legion of problems which Nduka and his ThisDay guys are doing on our behalf. They don’t have much contact with the people who can give us better ideas because their own character, trade and choices in life have compromise anything good in their lives. But we too should start to do something in addition to the prose writing otherwise they would erroneously believe they are doing us any good by bringing Summers characters. If we fail to act, perhaps the next person to be invited would be Osama Bin Laden. Dont think it is not possible, these guys have enough shamelessness to justify evil committed by any human being in the name of show-biz. The company they keep attest to this. By the time they dress Bin Laden with english, you wont believe it's the same Osama Bin Laden the mass murderer. Pius’ resume is just a mouse click away, therefore I don’t need to be acquainted with him at all before I respond to his articles. Anybody who has accomplish as much as he has need not fear criticism. Summers is not the problem, (he probably did know what country is called Nigeria or where Nigeria is located until this invitation) Nduka Obaigbena and his ilk are. But they dont see any challenge to them that is why we are still where we are. That's my own message. Thanks Posted by ukor| 04.10.2008 07:49