By Anote Ajeluorou
For several centuries, Africa has been the butt of all manners
of indignities from the rest of the world. The Arabs came and enslaved whole
generations. So, too, did the Europeans, whose impact on the continent
continues till date. Indeed, it’s European or Western impact on the continent
that is darkest, most devastating and insidious.
Following the long
history of slave trade and the transmutation to colonialism, European powers
saw and continues to see Africa as an extension of Europe in so far as it
serves as ‘bread basket’ for its advancement, especially on the economic sphere.
But then came the historic period of demands for independence and self-rule.
Reluctantly, Europe relinquished its active political possession of its prized
colonies, but not so its economic stranglehold on a continent seen as raw
material ‘factory’ that feeds factories in Europe.
Although the United
States of America did not own a colony (Liberia and Sierra Leone being
countries freed slaves were settled), it saw its chance to play its deft,
diabolic hand as soon as colonialism effectively ended. With the cold war
ragging between the U.S. and Russia from World War II up to the 1990s, Africa
became an ideological battleground and a place for the most atrocious racist
campaign that was to exact grave economic and political cost on the continent.
Although Europe and
America’s ideological stand against stunting Africa’s economic and political growth
is a vaguely acknowledged fact by some, many are largely unaware of the harm
America and Europe commit against the continent. But an economics and civil
servant, late Dr. Osamaro Ibie, who was an active player in most of Nigeria’s
economic negotiations with foreign powers, has written an insightful book, Economic Imperialism: The Secret war Against
Africa.
In it Ibie gives an
insider account of the various machinations from outside the continent that
continues to undermine its ability to develop fully both economically and
politically. Like many Nigerians, Ibie initially wondered why it is so
difficult for African leaders to lead successful democratic and economic
prosperity across board.
According to him,
“Wherever one turns, the picture is the same: economic mismanagement, inability
to ride the tiger of democracy down the slippery slope of multiparty system,
horrendous human rights record, inability of political leaders to recognize
their terminus and throw in the towel gradually when the ovation is at
crescendo, high walls of bureaucratic resistance to objective and healthy
criticism and the absence of any discernable afrocentric thrust in foreign
policy”.
With that tone of
enquiry, Ibie proceeds to unravel what many Africans don’t; the barefaced
interference from America, with its dreaded and ubiquitous Criminal
Investigative Agency (CIA) and how America uses it to force African leaders to
tow devious and criminal paths that leave millions yearning for development
that never comes in spite of the enormous resources in their hands. Ibie’s
submission is a startling one. America has never hidden its disdain for the
black race; its leadership in the 1960s to the 1990s would do everything to
stop Africa from developing. And their weapon is visiting death through
assassinations on progressive forces and leaders from emerging or holding sway
both in America and in Africa.
Every notable black
leader in 1960s and beyond both in America and Africa fell to the bullet of
assassins, of the CIA. As Ibie puts it, “Ever since the late fifties and early
sixties, when the whiz-kids and eggheads of international espionage drew a
positive correlation between emerging independent African countries and the
explosion of civil rights and black-power in the United States of America… The
history of how the star of the black-power movement was extinguished in America
and how Africa was made to cease to be inspiration to black Americans, who were
ensnared to become engulfed in the capitalist syndrome.
“Suffice it to indicate
that the casualties of the clandestine warfare against the black race were
Patrice Lumumba of Congo Zaire (now DR Congo), Joseph Kasavubu, Cyril Adoula
and Moishe Tsombe, Tafawa Balewa, Murtala Mohammed, and Buhari (who was lucky
to have his life spared) all of Nigeria; Hamani Diori of Niger, Leon Mba of
gabon, Eduardo Mondlane pf Congo, Augustinho Neto of Angola, Fulbert Youlou of
Congo Brazaville, Ben Barka of Morocco, Felix Moume of Cameroun, Kwame Nkrumah
of Ghana, to mention a few”.
Ibie further
reveals, and convincingly proves with facts that half of the fratricidal and
internecine wars fought in Africa were inspired by “is part of the strategy to
keep the continent poor, by making it to be spending its meager resources for
procuring military hardware to keep the munitions factories of the developed
economies prolifically busy while Africa uses their arms to kill its people and
forget about real economic and political development”.
Further Ibie states
that another factor the West uses to impoverish Africa is what he calls “the
debt conspiracy”, which has “unleashed the most ruthless haemorrhage of funds
from the poor countries of the third world to the richer industrialised
countries that the industrialised world has ever seen”.
America’s use of the
CIA to influence policies of poor foreign countries was best put succinctly by
President Ronald Regan, when he said, “When vital American interests are
concerned, no strategy can be considered too mean, no promise too sacred, no
tactics too devious, and no instrument too immoral (to be employed to redress
the situation). This is the fulcrum on which America and Europe deal with
Africa.
The author states
that while America shouts from the rooftops about the need for third world
countries to democratise, it subtly works hard to thwart democracy from
happening in Africa. With its CIA’s ‘covert operations’, America forces nations
of less endowment to two its path or perish. Structural Adjustment Programme
(SAP) was one of such tools it used to create economic instability in most
countries including Nigeria. It was the reason, according to Ibe, why Buhari
was overthrown for refusing to accept World Bank and IMF-induced SAP the naira
by 400 per cent in the 1990s. It ushered in a period of massive economic hardship
to ordinary Nigerians.
Only last year,
following the visit of IMF’s Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, to Nigeria,
subsidy was removed from petroleum products. It sparked off widespread protests
across the country. This was clear vindication of Ibie’s position that third
world countries are firmly under the control of the two financial institutions
established to serve the interests of America and European powers.
Through these two
financial institutions, America and Europe force down the throat of poor
countries market economics that do not take into account their peculiar
socio-cultural environments. Countries that succeeded are those that refused to
accept market economics, like Japan and China. Ibie urges African leaders to
formulate their own economic policies based on their own situations and not
foolishly ape Western-type policies that are sharply at variance with Africa’s
socio-economic realities.
Ibie’s book Economic Imperialism
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