By Anote Ajeluorou
ONE of Africa’s foremost thinkers of the 21st century, the Nobel laureate
Prof. Wole Soyinka, even at age 77, has continued to play the role of an elder
in the house who would not allow the goat suffer birth pangs in tethers. And so
the eminent African patriot and global intellectual has continued to point out
the way for his wayward continent men and women, who appear perpetually lost in
the woods of world civilization.
His latest critical book
of essays, Harmattan Haze on an African Spring, gives insight into the man’s
pains when he looks at his beloved continent that has been a subject of all
sorts of appellations from outsiders simply because those running the continent
have consistently failed to do the needful to change its colour from dark to
light.
Essentially, the book
offers a new reading and rendering of the continent, the choices made or not
made, the road taken or not taken and new visions for the future. And at the
presentation on Tuesday at Terra Kulture, Victoria Island, Lagos, Soyinka in
company of some leading intellectuals from divergent fields of business,
political economy, education, the arts, public service and journalism, sat down
to examine a contentious continent lying prostrate and stagnant in the sun,
seemingly refusing to yield to every entreaty to stand up and stride along like
the others.
The interrogarors of
contents of the book and state of Africa were former Minister of Education and
World Bank senior official, Dr. Obi Ezekwesili, Dr. Kanyiolu Ajayi, who
moderated the session, Director, Lagos Business School, Prof. Pat Utomi and,
former Group MD of UBA Africa, and now president of HEIRS Foundation, Mr. Tony Elumelu.
Their role was to examine
the book in the light of Africa’s poor development index and respond to some of
the issues Soyinka raised concerning the continent’s retarded growth in spite
of its huge material and human resources.
Indeed, the book also
speaks to the outsider looking at Africa from certain jaundiced, racist views;
questioning why such perception still persists after many years of independence
from colonial rule.
SOYINKA's latest work also examines Africa’s spirituality; holding it up
as a fresh ground yet to be explored and exploited to solve Africa’s many
intractable problems, especially religious conflicts that are foreign imports
to the continent.
Soyinka categorically
argues that in African religions lies the alternative balm needed to heal a
continent with many festering wounds.
While using scientific
interplay of the ideas of gravity and motion and their impact on human
societies and where Africa fits in relation to its many complexities, Soyinka pointed
out two observable obstacles to the contradictions that characterise the continent
and its lack of development namely, the twin evils of slavery and colonialism,
which he said constitute obstacles to overcome for the continent to move
forward. “Africa needs to contend with those two in terms of resistance with
the poor leadership, corruption, irredentism,” he said. “These are two
monumental obstacles to which African leaders have failed to respond; two
obstacles to organic development. African leaders have failed to overcome these
two evils.”
He cited the failed attempts
at Nigeria’s elections and census enumeration since independence as colonial
legacies the country was yet overcome, saying, “This country is the most
notorious in falsifying elections and census results, because it’s a surrogate country
of the British, with the residual effects and control of the two obstacles”.
He, however, argued that overtime the country ought to have overcome these twin
evils if there had been visionary leaders. He asked rhetorically, “Is it not
about time we transcended these two by visionary leadership?”
For the iconic literary
artist, “Africa’s unexplored geographical resources are capable of propelling
society forward, but a total, atavistic, retrogression has overtaken us, with
the path not taken has continued to plague us to this day”. He said the
Japanese and Chinese, “By hanging onto their traditional beliefs, clinging to
their traditional core, and refusing to be alienated from their philosophies
and ways of life, have managed to bring about development. Cling to what was indigenous
to their societies is what has transformed their societies”.
Prof. Soyinka wondered how
people from the miserable, frozen wasteland called Britain managed to hold vast
kingdoms all over the world and render them ungovernable several years after
they left and planted surrogate nation-states, like Nigeria, India, with her
vast architectural grandeur as seen in the Tajmahal!
He expressed his abiding
faith in the ability of Nigerians to accomplish great things that are capable
of causing phenomenal transformation, as evidences of the people's immense
abilities, which abound all over the world, but that such need to be harnessed
-- and that's the only missing ingredient.
“Nigerians can create a
Silicon Valley in Nigeria,” he enthused ruefully, “but it’s about the
leadership. Nigeria has got the brainpower. The possibilities have always been
there. Perhaps, we should take the example of China and draw the bamboo curtain
and shut ourselves up from the rest of the world and also go by Mbonu Ojike’s
‘boycott all the bycottables’ and then see what we can do by ourselves!”
In the event where drawing
the curtain is not possible, he called for regionalism as solution to Nigeria’s
problems of development, noting, “I have been pushing for a recognition of a
rapid, competitive development of regional governments in Nigeria” to solve our
developmental problems.
On his invocation of the abiku, Soyinka said it
should only be taken metaphorically, saying pouring libation as stated in the
book meant regeneration, continuity, as there is a need to recollect where a
people were coming from, just as Africa’s recognition of the existence of the
dead, the living and the unborn in a continuum.
The abiku, he said represents
everything about existence, from living to death and as a possible way of coping
and that what comes out of the future should be about advancement.
Soyinka also called for a
revisit of local religions as balm to the distrust and disruptions foreign
religions have brought to Africa. He labelled the twin foreign religions Christianity
and Islam as having been turned into weapons of mass destruction. He noted that
all religions are man’s creation and asked “Christians and Muslims to go to the
Orishas and be wise!”
WHILE congratulating Soyinka for writing the book, Ezekwesili said Harmattan
Haze on an African Spring offers insight into the choices, especially economic
individuals that have been made and how those choices have impacted on the
collective on the continent. She said while the book looks at why Africa still
remained undeveloped, the question that had to be asked is, “What is the
essence of the human being? Is there a process of development for Africa that
we missed as originally conceived? Who determines the success or
successionisaton of their views of development to be so difficult? And who is
that person that defines the context for that development?”
Ezekwesili also stated
that in parts of the West, there is the pervasive view that Africa is lacking
all the essential ingredients for development, with the likelihood that the
future would continue to be bleak, as development would never happen. She also
noted there are yet others who were paternalistic about Africa’s problems and couch
their expressions the faintest optimism that Africa would somehow crawl from
its prostrate position and somehow arrive at its own Eldorado some day in terms
of the developmental attainments that all the other continents have attained
but which seem a mirage for Africa at the moment.
The former Education Minister
stated that Soyinka’s book is such that will force readers to re-examine the
continent’s developmental issues again, whether the lack of development is as a
result of alienation of the individual from his African roots.
Ezekwesili also argued that development essentially takes the
individualistic curve and the choices the individual makes. She cited the
Singapore example as a people who had a certain mindset at independence to
prove to the 'whiteman' that there was no reason for the whiteman to have
governed them in the first place since they were capable of doing it
themselves. And so they worked at it and today, Singapore is a model country
for development.
She reasoned that what
happened after Nigeria’s independence was that while places like Singapore had
a developmental model in mind, Nigeria had a replacement strategy. All the
leaders were concerned with was to replace the departing British with all the
exploitativeness of colonisers without a vision for future.
She also argued that what
Africa was exploiting and exploring in terms of its vast natural resources was
a tiny bit of what lie beneath the landmass of the continent. She said the
peoples have failed to really dig deep to unearth the resources their lands
harb our.
According to her, only 16
African countries have attained full school enrolment while many others have
not been able to transcend the barest level, adding, “Development in Africa is
a great opportunity. There are so many possibilities that lie within. Inability
to fully exploit these opportunities carries the seeds of implosion. A steady
state of failures causes people to find alternative ways of survival otherwise,
the spiral down the slope.
Also, Ezekwesili debunked
the abiku myth as worth looking at, and said Africa accounted for 500 infant
deaths out of 1000 births. She noted that such grim statistics made mockery of
any inspiration derivable from the abiku metaphor because Africa’s
growth lies in its virile population, which such monumental deaths imperil.
Ezekwesili then concluded,
“A single description of Africa is intellectual slothfulness” the West has perpetuated
against the continent, a proposition Soyinka disproves in his book.
ON Africa’s spirituality as encapsulated in Soyinka’s famous poem ‘Abiku’ (the spirit child
that is born and dies to be reborn again and again to torment the parents) as
fitting metaphor for examining the recurring retrogression plaguing most part
of Africa, Prof. Utomi, founder of the Lagos Business School and the Pan
African University, said although Africa’s spirituality is dynamic, it is easy
to link the colonial experience and how things were done in Nigeria. He said
Nigeria’s woes stemmed from inability to deal with the consequences of
individual actions, saying, “The problem of living in Nigeria is that of living
with bad consequences”.
He argued that while
Africa’s young population has deep technology penetration, the problem is how
to harness that penetration to give momentum for real development. He noted
that 2012 has been a bit of a paradox, and added that his “fears had been how
to pluck failure from the jaws of progress. We are still managing ourselves
poorly and we may not be able to derive much from the Africa Rising momentum
that is gathering. He cited the instance of Rwanda that has managed to raise
itself from the dust of a tragic war as a place Nigeria should emulate. He said
after the tragic war, there was a consciousness of ‘never again’ attitude and
Rwanda was the better for it today, as the country is steadily making giant
strides in development, managing its resources prudently for the benefit of its
people.
For Utomi, while Nigeria’s
problems are traceable to leadership, there are other indicators to watch out
for as impediments to growth namely, value problem, collapse of culture and
institutions. He said there is nothing Singapore did that Nigeria hasn’t done,
yet the gap between the two is still wide because the discipline to ensure
values, culture and institutions work has been lacking.
For astute banker Elumelu,
Nigeria is full of critics, who ceaselessly bash the country senseless without
lifting a hand to help. He urged Nigerians to begin cultivating the healing
habit of saying good things about their country. “We criticise ourselves too
much,” he said. “How do we say good things about ourselves to the rest of the
world? If all we see and say about ourselves is the bad, how do we want others
to say about us? We must begin to use our human capital to propel development.”
WHILE contributing from the floor, poet and social critic Odia Ofeimun
brought an ominous dimension to the debate, when he said Africa is exactly
where it was when the slavers from Arab and Europe came calling from the north
and south centuries ago, with several acrimonies and internal wrangling going
on all over the continent. He said the implication is that Africa will not be
able to defend itself again a second time and fall prey to the superior powers
of others who are more organised and developed. He said the continent is still
plagued with distrust.
Ofeimun lamented, “Today,
we are not building factories and farms for the people to work on. Our problem
is about not building factories. We should begin to demand from those asking
for our votes, which imported goods they will stop when they get to office so
that our factories can begin to work again for the people to be engaged and
idle hands put to proper use and not otherwise”.
Art collector Yemisi
Shyllon argued that until African societies go back to their traditional
cultures to rediscover themselves and what is innate to them as proposed by
Soyinka, the continent would not experience growth.
Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi wondered
why Soyinka has suddenly turned essayist as against the fine satirist he was
known for in his many plays and poems, wondering also whether fiction didn’t
quite solve the problems his society posed and whether it was a submission that
fiction -- the arts -- has failed him as a tool to confront society.
To this Soyinka responded
that art has not failed the society, rather it has helped to contnualy propel
the society towars self-examination and the quest for renewal and revalidation.
Other contributors
included Prof. Bimpe Aboyade, eminent librarian and, wife of the late famous
economist and economic theorist, Prof. Ojetunde Aboyade, who is reputed to have
written one of the economic blueprints that the Malaysians adopted to change
the fortune of the country. Prof. Aboyade advised that Africans, even as they embraced
forewign religions, must indeed go back and recover some of the positive values
of their culture and deploy such to help in their march to greatness, especially
in the context of globalisation.
THE night was also suffused with musical entertainment by the young
poet, dancer and singer, Aduke and her friends; and generous wining and snacking.
The literary feasting continued well into the night with an informal reception
in the restaurant of the Terra Kulture.
