|
Nigeria:
The "Greatest Nation"?
The "Hope of Africa"? The
"Hope of
the Black Race"?
A Thursday Postcard by Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
Nigerians like seeing themselves as the
“greatest nation,” “hope of Africa,” and “hope of the
Black race.” It is more a declaration of intent or deification
of potential, than a statement of fact. It is a triumph of hope
that defies unpalatable reality. Somehow the country never quite
manages to live up to its own self-proclamations but however
tired and tested “the sleeping giant” and her inexhaustibly
hopeful peoples they continue to dream that one day, one day,
the country will, a la Martin Luther King Jr.'s exasperated
dream about America “live up to the true meaning of its
creed!” For now in all intent and purposes, the country and
the peoples' dreams remain an enduring “great notion!”
Over the years it has been a compelling
wonder to many pundits, sympathetic and unsympathetic observers,
why the country continues to stand and weather all kinds of
foretold collapse and imminent catastrophe. It is neither at war
nor is it at peace. And at the moment it is not a military
regime and it cannot be described as a democracy without huge
qualifications either.
It should not be difficult to understand what
makes the country tick. The political economy is built around
“the Black Gold” (OIL). For as long as it continues to flow
the country will be kept together by hook or crook. The rancour,
bitterness and acute value placed on political power is to
enable the various competing cliques and sub-cliques within the
political and military elite to get more and more of the
proceeds from oil for their own class and
self-aggrandizement.
Both by nature's selection and deliberate
political engineering Oil remains essentially a resource that is
predominantly found in areas occupied by National minorities.
The logic of Nigeria's center-centric
Federalism is simple: What cannot be claimed as the exclusive
monopoly of the Big Three (i.e. Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo
political elites) belongs to everybody. But what belongs to them
individually is theirs. That is why the country operated a more
balanced federalism in the immediate post independence period
with powerful regions controlled by the three dominant groups,
which were dependent on agricultural commodities. As Oil gained
in importance and became the main source of national revenues
the near confederal consensus gave way to a virtual unitary
state.
This process was aided and abetted by
prolonged military rule.
No military can function without a clearly
defined command structure and commandism. Thus you have the
current situation where the center continues to divide and rule
unchallenged by breaking the country into more states. And at
state level every village will, with time and oil still flowing,
become a local government. The theory is that government will be
closer to people at the local level the smaller the unit of
administration. But in practice this has not been the
case.
And there are many reasons. The main one has
to be the fact that none of these mushrooming layers of
administration can sustain itself through taxation or production
from the people they serve. They are distributive units for Oil
money.
Before Oil the citizens had a sense that they
were the producers of the wealth of the country and therefore
believed that government must be accountable to them. As a tax
based economy it was vulnerable to protests and popular
pressures. That is why the colonial period and Nigeria's first
republic were full of tax riots and popular actions by dominated
classes. With Oil not even those from whose land and shores the
black gold is pouring out have major contribution to its
production.
In a situation where majority of the people
are not directly involved in the production of the wealth of the
country how can they expect accountability? In a country where
the notion of “tax payers money” has been rendered
meaningless outside of the comparatively small population of
civil servants, declining workers in industry and manufacture
and others in formal employment whose taxes are deducted at
source (against their wishes), the democratic demand that
proclaims “no taxation without representation” is rendered,
as lawyers will say, “superfluous.”
Who are these taxpayers who want
representation? Consequently simple democratic demands have
become privileges dispensed by the governing elite as and when
they please. Democracy becomes a hollow shell to legitimize
oligarchic politics of greed and naked opportunism. No wonder
the leadership have contempt for its people and acts so in the
most brazen way. Otherwise how can one explain why an allegedly
democratically elected President could sit idly by pleading
“deregulation,” “market forces” and “liberalization”
and increase the price of fuel on the eve of Nigeria's (In)dependence
anniversary as the government did last October ?
For a government that came about as a result
of Nigerians' undiminished desire for a government of their
choosing the Obasanjo regime has frittered away all the good
will and it is today compared poorly with the sadistic regime of
Abacha. It is a false comparison but that this is a popular view
tells us more about the depth of despair that the country has
sunk to than Nigerians' love for autocratic rule. Is the
President listening and does his government care? Do the people
expect them to? On the evidence of a recent trip to the country
it was not difficult to gauge the dangerous indifference from
both the government and the people.
It is a paradox that while Nigerians desire
serious and focused government the administration of General
Obasanjo seem to wallow in the market illusion that it is
deregulatiing. The claptrap about deregulation is becoming a
recipe for chaos. Lawlessness and derogation of government's
minimal responsibility to guarantee human security for its
peoples.
"Forward Ever Backward never" Kwame Nkrumah
Source: THURSDAY POST CARD NOVEMBER 6 2003
Tajudeen28@yahoo.com / posted
8/22/03
|
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
Tajudeen has been General Secretary of the global Pan African
Movement since 1994 and is resident in Uganda and London.
Tajudeen is Nigerian by origin. He was a Rhodes Scholar at
Oxford where he gained his D.Phil in political science. He was a
founder member of the Africa Resource and Information Bureau,
London, and has been at the centre of numerous initiatives to
promote peace and democracy in Africa. Tajudeen writes and
lectures on Africa for several journals and universities. He is
Chairperson of the Centre for Democratic Development and the Pan
African Development Education and Advocacy Programme.
|
 |
* * *
* *
Contemporary African Immigrants to The United States /
African immigration to the United States
African Aid breeds African dependency
*
* * * *
|
Speaking Truth to Power: Selected Pan-African Postcards
By Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem (Author)
Salim Ahmed
Salim (Preface), Horace Campbell (Foreword)
Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem's
untimely death on African Liberation Day 2009 stunned the
Pan-African world. This selection of his Pan-African
postcards, written between 2003 and 2009, demonstrates the
brilliant wordsmith he was, his steadfast commitment to Pan-Africanism,
and his determination to speak truth to power. He was a
discerning analyst of developments in the global and
Pan-African world and a vociferous believer in the potential
of Africa and African people; he wrote his weekly postcards
for over a decade. This book demonstrates Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem's
ability to express complex ideas in an engaging manner. The
Pan-African philosophy on diverse but intersecting themes
presented in this book offers a legacy of his political,
social, and cultural thought. |
 |
Represented here are his fundamental respect for the
capabilities, potential and contribution of women in
transforming Africa; penetrating truths directed at
African politicians and their conduct; and
deliberations on the institutional progress towards
African union. He reflects on culture and emphasises
the commonalities of African people.
Also represented are his denunciations of
international financial institutions, the G8 and
NGOs in Africa, with incisive analysis of
imperialism's manifestations and impact on the lives
of African people, and his passion for eliminating
poverty in Africa. His personality bounces off the
page—one can almost hear the passion of his voice,
'Don't Agonise! Organise!'
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
(1961-2009) was a Rhodes scholar and obtained his D. Phil in Politics
from Oxford University. In 1990 he became Coordinator of the Africa
Research and Information Bureau and the founding editor of
Africa World Review. He co-founded and led Justice Africa's
work, becoming its Executive Director in 2004, and combined this with
his role as General Secretary of the Pan-African Movement. He was chair
of the Centre for Democracy and Development and of the Pan-African
Development Education and Advocacy Programme in Uganda and became the UN
Millennium Development Campaign's Deputy Director in 2006.
* * *
* *
African Renaissance
/
Kwame
Nkrumah, Kenyatta, and the Old Order /
God Save His Majesty
For Kwame Nkrumah
Night of the Giants /
The Legend of the Saifs /
Interview with Yambo Ouologuem
Yambo
Bio & Review
African
Renaissance (Journal)
The Slave Ship
By Marcus Rediker
The State of African Education
/
Attack On Africans Writing Their Own
History Part 1 of 7
Dr Asa Hilliard III speaks on the assault of academia on
Africans writing and accounting for their own history.
Dr Hilliard is A
teacher, psychologist, and historian.
|
Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
 |
* * * * *
 |
Debt: The First 5,000 Years
By David Graeber
Before there was money, there was debt. Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it. Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy. Economist Glenn Loury /Criminalizing a Race
|
* * * * *
The White Masters
of the World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* * *
* *
Ancient African Nations
*
* * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * *
* *
Negro Digest / Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * *
* *
The
Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* * * *
*
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding
of Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update
13 April 2012
|
