Shine Your Eyes, Mama Africa!: Memoir of an Enlightened African

By Gavin Bond

THIS IS A BOOK LIKE MANY OTHERS WE SEE, REPRESENTS A FLOWERING OF AFRICAN TALENT, WHICH HAS BEEN A RECENT AND WELCOME PHENOMENON.THIS BOOK IS PASSIONATE AND LITERATE AND MAKES A STRONG CASE. ATHENA PRESS.

THIS IS A WONDERFUL FIRST BOOK BY THE AUTHOR. IT IS FUNNY AND YET INFORMATIVE! IT CHALLENGES RELIGIOUS LEADERS, WESTERN LRADERS, AND AFRICAN LEADERS TO COME CLEAN. IT ALSO CHALLENGES THE YOUTHS AND THE OPPRESSED IN THE DEVELOPING THIRD WORLD TO RISE UP AND FIGHT FOR THEIR RIGHTS! THE DAILY SKETCH

IF YOU WANT TO HAVE A GOOD LAUGH WHILE BEING ENLIGHTENED, IT DEFINITELY IS THE BOOK TO READ. I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE, ALTHOUGH I DO NOT CLAIM TO BE A PROPHET AND THE FUTURE IS FOR AFRICA TO LOCK UP, IGNORE THE UN, IMF, AND THE WORLD BANK; AND TO IMPLEMENT WHAT IS AFRICAN AND NOT WESTERN HYPOCRITICAL ADVICE.

HAVE THEY REDUCED THE PRODUCTION OF THE COMBUSTION ENGINES WHILE CROAKING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE? THAT IS THE POINT, SIMPLE!

MAN HAS CREATED THE TWO MOST EVIL CONCEPTS IN THE WORLD; RELIGIONS AND POLITICS! HOW MANY HUMAN AND ANIMAL LIVES HAVE BEEN LOST DUE TO POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS CONFLICTS? ISMAIL DANESI

THIS IS A MUST READ. IT IS HISTORY, POLITICS, AND A STORY BOOK!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Nov 9, 2010
• ISBN: 9781456815325

Gavin Bond

He was born in Lagos Nigeria, the son of one of the top colonial chefs at the time. With that influence, he attended the elite government primary school in Lafiaji Lagos Island and later the Yaba College of Technology Secondary—Technical College, based at Yaba. He was part of the Independence intake, the future technologists for the independent nation. He left Nigeria during the civil war to further his education in the west, sponsored by USAID in 1966 at the onset; and hoped to return to a well governed nation after his studies abroad. Unfortunately, it did not happen as he had visualised and found himself marooned unwillingly in exile in the west! He first studied as an electronics engineer and later obtained graduate and postgraduate qualifications in politics, history, sociology and general business and manpower management studies. He was an elected politician and was a member of the Labour Party in the UK for thirty-three years! He has six children and four grand-children; in Denmark and in the UK. He is a very enlightened man judging by his travels and education! He was a sportsperson and played semi-professional football in the UK for many years. He was in the British Army, The Queens’s Regiment, that guarded Gibraltar in the seventies when General Franco of Spain threatened to take back the Rock. He has lived in the western hemisphere for over forty-two years and also lived and travelled the USA, Europe, West Indies and Africa. He has met people like Angela Davis, Fela Kuti, Bob Marley and The Wailers, Eric Clapton, Marc Bolan, Gloria Jones, etc. when he did part-time work as artist stage security staff. There was no mobile phone at the time hence there would have been documentary photo evidence to confirm these claims. Reading the book will convince doubters he actually met these people. His time in politics was the most enlightening after been elected as local Councillor for eight years until he was engineered out of the party; and they say there is democracy in the western world—Mendacity. A story that will be told in Part II of his memoir; so look out for it! Therefore, there is more to come from this author about what politics is all about; it is definitely not about representing the peoples; he has walked the walk and talked the talk; been to the Caucasian Promised Land and found it all to be just for the privileged!

Book preview

Shine Your Eyes, Mama Africa!

Memoir of an Enlightened African

Gavin Bond

Copyright © 2010 by Gavin Bond.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2010916814

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4568-1531-8

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4568-1530-1

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4568-1532-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Preface

Introduction

Shine Your Eyes, Mama Africa!

Colonisation

The British Rule in Nigeria

Nationalism

Growing Up in Colonial Nigeria

My Years as a Boarder

Young Adult in Independent Nigeria

The Journey towards Enlightenment

In California USA

Back Home Again

My Second Coming

Back Home Again

Back to London Again

Religions: Used to Control Humans

(and the Africans)

The Origin of the Bible

Politics and Religion

The West, Africa, and the Developing World

Is There a Hidden Agenda?

What is Western-style democracy?

Traditional Political Systems before the Europeans

The Way Forward to a New Nigeria and Africa

The Nigerian and African Empires

Rebuilding the Nations

My Blueprint for Africa’s Development

Make We Shine Our Eyes

Governance

Why Africa Will Never Be Allowed to Be Fully Developed

Epilogue

Preface

We Africans have suffered! Foreigners came to our lands, and we welcomed them with open arms, unaware of their evil intensions. Before long, some of our people were captured and sent to faraway lands in the Western world as slaves. Many died during captive wars and many died in the journeys to their final destinations. They were traded like cattle in their new environment and dehumanised without dignity any more. Men and women from proud heritages were reduced to slaves, flogged, raped, and even murdered at any signs of disobedience. Some slave masters took the women as their concubines whenever the urges took them, and hence, we have dilutions in our genes today.

A friend’s daughter, a pure white girl who was the product of Caucasian parentage, was diagnosed with sickle-cell anaemia. The medical staffs were flabbergasted since the condition is associated only with black people. My friend provided them with the answer when she told them her background. Even though she herself looked every inch a Caucasian, her father was a mulatto, and her mother was a white woman. The genes in her father were transferred to her, and she in turn transferred it to her daughter. This was the reason why she carried the sickle-cell genes! I wonder if these so-called supposedly superior Caucasians, not the ordinary white guys, but the faceless illuminatis, Catholic religious fanatics, bankers, and those who think they are of Aryan race, as advocated by Adolf Hitler, truly know who they are, due to the interaction of the races during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

As in colonisation and empire buildings, the people of Africa were subjugated and regarded as inferior and uncivilised. This was despite the fact that artefacts discovered in places like Benin and Kano in Nigeria were far older than their civilisations! They rubbished our cultures and imposed theirs. They were very clever because everything imposed on the new territories had some financial aspects. They banned our worship of idols and replaced them with the images of Jesus on the cross. Now, praying to Jesus’s image on the cross, to me, is the same as what our forefathers were doing when they prayed to their idol gods and were accused of paganism! It was the work of the Secret Society. They came, built their churches, and told our people that God is a blue-eyed, blond white man, and that it is only Jesus, his supposedly son, who can take them to heaven! Nobody has ever been to heaven, but by the way they talked about it, and preached it, they made the people believe it. They built schools in order to brainwash the children right from a young age. The people who dared to question their intent were cursed with the ‘blood of Jesus’. Hence some defected to the rival religion from the East, also led by foreigners, not our own black-skinned cousins, Mohammedanism!

The great visionary and supreme entertainer Fela Ransome Kuti once wrote and sang about this development. He said the bishops and the Imams lived in the best houses in the neighbourhood and drove the nicest cars. He sang that the Pope enjoys an opulent lifestyle while the people of Africa are dying of starvation, and the church still collects its tithes! The conquerors and colonial masters collected taxes while the churches collected tithes; they worked hand in hand because they were both members of the Secret Society!

Since we were conquered and subdued by force and with the Bible, we have believed everything we were told, and still being told, is gospel! This is not true and should be challenged since they want to keep Africa as a supplier to the Western world, supplier of cheap labour and cheap resources to drive their economies and improve their lifestyles and quality of lives! Going back to Fela again, he sang in one of his many songs about the exploitation and sufferings of Africans, about how the white people came and told the Africans they must carry shit. This is in reference to the men who were employed to dispose of human wastes deposited in containers. The Africans used to dig holes in the ground, where the wastes were ejected before the white men came along. The white men needed new markets for their manufactured goods, which the container was part of. In demanding that the Africans should stop the practice of using the pit (hole in the ground) and use the metal containers instead, in an effort to sell their products, the natives were forced to employ someone to get rid of the human wastes contained within when they were full. These people were called agbepo (shit carriers) and were referred to in Fela’s song. He used it as an analogy to what was happening and what is still happening today in Africa!

‘The white man taught us to carry shit, a custom that was foreign to us. Today, we are still carrying the shit because we listen to their lies!’ Fela was definitely a visionary and probably the leader Africa could have had if he were a real politician! So we Africans must unite and forget the advice given by the white men from foreign lands. They, the World Bank and IMF, are only interested in our money in exchange for their goods. They give us advice that will financially enslave our people called ‘Structural Adjustment Programmes’. Our countries are forced to lay people off and keep our graduates unemployed. The graduates are supposed to keep Africa developed, but instead, they are forced, voluntarily, to flee their homelands for the white man’s countries, in search of work and money! This is what I call voluntary slavery! We Africans must shine our eyes and get it into our brainwashed skulls that the global world is not for us. We are not ready for it yet. We are being used for the dumping of foreign, heavily subsidised goods, which our governments have been forbidden to subsidise! The white man truly speaks with forked tongue, as Saddam observed after the first Iraq invasion by the Secret Society’s emissaries! You saw the truth when the financial crisis hit the Western world. They all rushed around to reflate and nationalise the banks and their economy by pumping money into the economy to prevent mass unemployment. They were all doing what they have stopped our governments from doing for many years! They have encouraged us to privatise our profitable businesses as part of the structural adjustment programme so that the agents of the Secret Society can take control of state assets and control the masses. They forbade us to pump stimulus monies into our economy while our graduates remained unemployed, thereby forcing them to seek jobs in the West, a drain of our intellectual properties just like it was during the slave trade, and they are the people who needed to build the countries of Africa. They do not want Africa to succeed because they will lose the access to cheap labour and mineral resources and deposits!

So my brothers and sisters, this is my story. This is what I have learnt and discovered after many years of living in the white man’s countries. I have also been part of the establishment in the United Kingdom, having studied in various institutions of higher learning. Please research the facts in libraries and the Internet. It is amazing what one can find on the Internet today if one really wants to find out the type of world we have lived in and still live in today. It is a world controlled by the Secret Societies composed of some of the world bankers, religious men, and some faceless individuals! This was why it was imperative for the Western governments to come to their aid during the financial crisis. Their mortgaged schemes were established to further enslave the masses; unfortunately, it backfired on them. Hence the governments had to come to their rescue! So please join me if you doubt the facts contained in this book by doing your own research on the Internet and wonder to yourself and ask why Africa has been in poverty despite the riches contained in the continent. The Spiritual One has blessed it with enormous natural resources, yet the peoples are still dependent on the Western world for advices and enlightenment. Why?

Blessings from the Spiritual One and please shine your eyes, Mama Africa. We shall remain enslaved forever if we do not free our minds and brains, like Bob Marley and Fela Kuti sang in their various lyrics!

The Africans are there to be exploited forever! Our natural resources are exploited since we have no control over the prices. It is cheaper to travel from London to New York than from London to Ghana, despite the fact that the air miles to New York are longer than to Ghana! The ignorant rulers in Africa have sold their mobile telecommunication networks to foreign companies, controlled by those who want to rule the world. Hence, these companies through their mobile networks, are exploiting the citizens of Africa; they have not gone in to develop the land-based network but the lucrative mobile network, where they can exploit everybody, including children. Most of these companies now earn most of their revenues from their African operations due to the ethical control in their countries of origin! They all see Africa as the place to exploit since most of the lawmakers are corrupt and can be easily bribed! An example of why the Invincibles want to control the world by controlling money is that of Ghana Telecom. From the time they took over Ghana Telecom, Vodafone has made over 2,000 employees redundant! Here is an extract from Ghana Web page about the sale and activities of Vodafone now that it has taken over GT, stupidly privatised by the government because the World Bank instructed it to do so! While the West was busy trying to save jobs by injecting money into their economies and privatising their banks and motor industries, the World Bank was busy instructing the government of Ghana to retrench staff and put more people on the poverty statistics; these are prospective volunteer slaves to the West as part of the brain drain!

‘Vodafone, one of the world’s leaders in telecommunication took over ownership of the then Ghana Telecom (GT) about eleven months ago, and is already making remarkable strides in the telecommunication industry in Ghana. At the time Vodafone took over, GT had 1.7 million subscribers, but in five months the number shot up to 2.5 million and currently Vodafone has almost three million subscribers. The company finished its first year with a debt of almost GHC 270 million. It therefore laid off almost 2,000 workers as part of plans to make it profitable and productive in two years, insisting that the only way to meet targets was to do things The Vodafone Way.’

This is one of the examples of how our so-called leaders in Africa are selling our people down the drain on the advice received from the white slave masters, the World Bank and the IMF. When are we going to shine our eyes and wake up to the fact that the white folks in power—who control the world, since they said, ‘Who controls money controls the world’—have no plans for Africa but to exploit it? They never had images of the black man in paintings of the Creation and of God. Why should the white folks in power bother whether we are alive or not? Think about it, my brothers and sisters in power!

The time has come for the masses to wake up from their slumbers and sack their corrupt politicians. Like Abraham Lincoln said, ‘We must have a government by the people, of the people, for the people,’ instead of one for the elites!

Introduction

This book is dedicated to my parents, whom I have not seen since 1981 before they crossed over to the other side. I have tried to write this book in the simplest of English in order to have as many people read and understand what is within. Communication is about reaching the masses, and if the masses cannot read what you are trying to communicate to them, one has not made any progress. In view of that fact, I have made sure that this book can be read without the aid of a dictionary!

Dad was very active in the early political organisation in Obalende, Lagos, Nigeria. I remember very well when I visited home in 1981, and we were all gathered in the compound, having a discussion about our government at the time, under the stewardship of Shehu Shagari. A point came up, and when I expressed my view, Dad suddenly explained that he always knew I was going to be a politician or somebody involved in politics. I explained to Dad that I was not interested, but all I did was vote at election times for the Labour Party, a party that represented majority of the British working class and supported by most of the unions. Before I knew it, Dad signed me up with the NPN (National Party of Nigeria), and I still have my membership card, but I do not believe the party still exists today.

As I got actively involved in unionism, when I joined the Post Office Telecommunications department in 1973, I got into party politics proper by canvassing for the local parliamentary candidates at general elections. In 1993, I got more involved at the local level when I moved into one of the London Boroughs. I got elected as a local councillor in May of 1998, and it dawned on me then what Dad had said way back in 1981, that I was going to be a politician! That is why I am dedicating this book especially to him, but it would not be justified if Mum was not appreciated too! She did everything in her powers to make sure all the siblings received good education and a solid family grounding; may you both rest in peace. Actually, I have had interactions with both my parents when I have attended spiritualist gatherings, and they were quite pleased with what I was doing and encouraged me to continue to help people because I possessed some sort of healing powers. Maybe writing this memoir will bring some healings to my suffering brothers and sisters in Africa if our supposedly leaders can listen to one of theirs, an African for a change, instead of the blue-eyed brigades!

I am not going to deny the fact that this book is a kind of political ‘shine your eyes’ or pontification, unable to find a better word for it, but it is factual. It is a kind of a biography without it being one; hence, I took the temerity to call it a memoir—The Memoir of an Enlightened African! My journey to the Western world, with my travels within the Western world, has given me the insight to how things are done in the developed West! It also gave me the opportunity to compare what goes on here and what goes on in the developing world. Due to my education, knowledge, and experience, I have been able to assess the relationship between the West, East, Asia, and Africa; this is why I say it is a journey of enlightenment!

When I first travelled abroad in 1966, I was politically ignorant, and all I learnt at the time was that communism/socialism was evil. But at the same time, I wondered why there was so much inequality because of the colour of a person, why it was deemed the colour of a person made that person better than the other! I was unable to comprehend such things coming from Africa, where we treated the white people with so much respect and affections. Unfortunately, that is still the case to this day; having been brainwashed that the white man is better than the black man and the reason Jesus was portrayed as a white man! This is the reason why African rulers, I will not refer to them as leaders, still listen to and live by every word coming from the white folks in the western hemisphere, believing they are superior, to be our saviour like they made us think Jesus was!

Then there came another period, a period when the Western powers, the United States especially, were trying to secure the rights to all the natural resources anywhere in the world. Where there is an abundance of resources, it claimed a strategic interest in the area, by claiming it is of immense importance to their national security! If it is unable to do it on its own, it used the auspices of the United Nations, World Bank, and the IMF; the United States is the largest contributor to these three bodies, and since these bodies give employment to people from different nations, they have more or less secured a permanent ‘yes’ vote for any resolution tabled at the UN and other committees of it!

I have written this book to highlight these facts, the fact that the USA, controlled by faceless right-wing Christians and bankers with its allies in Europe, wanted to subjugate the Africans since slavery had been abolished. What better way to do it than by starving the people and forcing them to seek salvation in the white man’s countries! African and Asian migrant workers are lost at sea every year in trying to escape the abject poverty they have been forced to live under because their rulers listen to the white man’s theory of monetarism, which is as dated as the Bible! Some of my peoples have and still doing the same, hanging on to every passages in the Bible, notwithstanding the fact they are all myths, so have our rulers, who have hung on to the economic theories in the white man’s textbooks, for their own economies, not African economies! Did the West follow the economic theories championed by Adam Smith in their textbooks during the depressions? Did Hitler follow the theories when he took over the bankrupt German economy when he became the Chancellor? Did the British government bother about public sector borrowings and balanced budgets in trying to rebuild the British economy after the Second World War? Now, in 2008, are these countries bothered about all these economic theories when they are all in the process of reflating their economies. Of course, they are not but they are all busy doing what they have told African leaders never to do and funny enough, they are still telling them not to do it while they are all doing it! This is the height of disregard and disrespect, but I am not surprised since the Governor of the Bank of Ghana has actually appealed to the World Bank to set up a stimulus package for Africa; what a disgrace, what ignorance! Why should the white folks set up stimulus packages for us? Why can we not do it ourselves? We have been brainwashed to look up to Jesus, Mohammed, and other foreign gods, but not the African gods. These so-called foreign gods are not Africans. It was a gentle brainwash exercise to implant in our memory that everything foreign is better; that is how it is today!

Did the World Bank set up the stimulus packages for Britain, United States, France, Japan, and Germany? My brothers in Africa, you are all very educated and learned, but sometimes educated people can be ignorant; that is the problem in Africa. Our educated people are ignorant! Why can you not have your own stimulus packages? Inflation; how can you have inflation when you have foodstuff perishing on the store shelf because the people do not have the money to purchase the goods! You have surplus labour, which is wasted manpower, and you have no decent public projects, yet you are unable to balance the fact about production and payments to nullify any inflationary worries? You have many public infrastructures to be completed, but you wait for the World Bank to finance them at their will and impose SRPs. The future of your nations are at risks; your children are dying of malaria, while you could print your own money to get the unemployed working, get them to pay taxes, and improve the quality of life of your people—it is called stimulus package, your own package, not the one arranged by the WB or IMF because that is what we have our central banks for! Since you do not need any foreign currency to do that, get going, otherwise God will ask you, if you believe the time is going to come, on judgement day, why you allowed your people to starve when it was in your power to do something about it!

This is the reason why I have dedicated this book to my father because if he had been alive today, he would have done exactly what I am doing here. I actually believe he has given me the strength to write this book and point out the failings of the black rulers of Africa. The leaders that had this vision were murdered or toppled from power because they were becoming too clever for the white men. If they were not deposed, they were weakened by sanctions and the threat of it. Seriously, if we came together in Africa and put a sanction on the West, how long would they last? This is the reason why they will never allow Africa to be united—Pan-Africanism.

So my brothers and sisters, shine your eyes because the white folks do not want anything good for us. If they did, where would they get their cheap resources from, cheap labour, prospective rain forest cures for their illnesses? Hence, they do not want us to cultivate land to feed our people. Instead, they cry about climate change when they are the ones polluting the atmosphere with their carbon emissions! The cry about climate change is one of their plans to keep us from developing since they have already developed. If they so much care about less oxygen in the atmosphere, they can produce it and pump it into the atmosphere to nullify the carbon emitted by their motorcars!

There is a model community in North Carolina right now, in the United States, where they have actually printed their own money! They have done this because they do not trust the politicians any more. If this community, a part of the Western system, existing in the United States, does not trust their rulers any longer, why should Africans hang on to the advices of these so-called experts. African leaders should use their God-given brains, take a leaf from this community in North Carolina, and ignore those advices in the names of your faiths—Jesus, Mohammed, and Jah, The Almighty One! God bless and remain blessed.

‘There was no holocaust perpetrated on American soil. But millions of native Indians were exterminated. There was also slavery on American soil. America was also heavily involved with transatlantic slave trade when millions of black men, women, and children perished. Yet there is no Museum in America to commemorate these facts, but have one to commemorate the holocaust that happened far away in Poland and Germany!

What does this tell us about how low the people of colour are regarded in this world, especially by the United States; in view of the fact we supply them with all the resources needed that still keep them on top? Shine your eyes, Mama Africa and wake up to the reality here!

Have the Germans paid reparation for the atrocities they committed in Cameroon in the nineteenth century? Of course not, but they have paid Israel billions of dollars for what Hitler did to the Jews during World War II. Does this not tell the Africans anything? Shine your eyes, brothers and sisters. The white ruling classes do not care about black lives! We are still breeding grounds for malaria because the white folks tell us we cannot print our money and spend it on essential public services due to the fact that the eradication of malaria will cost the Western drug manufacturers their market; shine your eyes, Comrade Africa and do not let them blind you with their democratic ideologies!’

—Black Consciousness

Shine Your Eyes, Mama Africa!

‘None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.’

(Goethe)

Make una shine una eyes O, because them say ‘monkey see monkey do.’ But una see, una no do, black man go finish O! I beg, make una shine una eyes O!

It is best to explain what ‘monkey see monkey no do’ means. This is a saying from Africa, and it may be correct to say that the colonial masters imported it when they invaded Africa.

In European translation, it means that a monkey imitates what it observes, which is why they have in the dictionary the word ‘ape’, meaning copying. But our leaders have not copied what they saw in the West in their travels (una see, una no do)!

The plight Africa is in today cannot be blamed solely on the foundation of the colonial masters, but blame should also be apportioned to the lack of foresight and circumstances of the natives to meet the new challenges, as did happen to the ex-colonies! A modern day event was also the change that happened in the USSR after years of empire rule. It was still an empire until it was broken up into independent nations and states.

In capitalism, it is dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest, which-ever-way, by crook or whatever! Capital, or the quest for capital, is the all and be all! It is this ideology of greed that was left in the ex-colonies, for the new dictators, despots, and military commanders to exploit, so too, the newly independent eastern bloc countries. Africans are also easily manipulated, and the present world financial crisis should bring this home to Africans. It is time for the masses to throw out the establishment and bourgeoisies in other to rid the continent from all deceases by cleaning up all the mess in the gutters and building proper drainage system, which would help eradicate malaria and typhoid. Bob Marley sang ‘Get up, Stand Up, Stand Up for Your Rights’; the time has come to do just that, demand for jobs, better health facilities, better infrastructures, and housing. This can be done by the federal government by doing a ‘monkey see, monkey do’ of President Obama and others, which was injection of money as stimulus packages to get the graduates into employment, manufacturers manufacturing, people earning and buying, and the market women selling!

The most galling aspect of the situation in Africa is the fact that the leaders of these countries travel abroad to these civilised Western world and see how they are organised and how the people live. When they are in these countries, they enjoy the facilities available in these Western states, such as the transport systems, the roads, the hospitals, the shops, the markets, the banks, and much more. With the flick of the switch, there is light for twenty-four hours. Whereas, where they have come from, that is extreme luxury! You would have thought that these people would have gone back to their people to tell them what they had seen abroad, eight wonders of the world, during their travels. The wonders of the Western world and paradise that lay beyond, which they, those who have seen it abroad, should strive to implement in their countries! Some would always argue the concept or believe that the West would not and never allow Africa to develop because they need the ‘slave labour’ from the continent! You see, this is why it is always said that there are illiterates who are ignorant, and there are also illiterates who are very clever. The same can be said for literate people too since there are well-read and well-educated people who are very ignorant and some that are very clever, visionary, and born natural leaders. When you read this book, look at your achievements and then I want you to decide which of these two groups you belong to, the educated ignorant or the clever one.

Looking at our supposedly clever leaders, during these periods of junket around the cities of the Western world, they had met some Westerners who have told them how it was so unstable in our beloved African countries! To protect and continue their dynasty, our leaders were told the best way was, and still is, to plunder the wealth of their countries and bring it to the Western world for safekeeping! Our poor African leaders bought into this nonsense because they still have the awe for the white man! Pity the poor African leaders’ ignorance, despite their vast academic qualifications, but have not learnt about the white man’s fork tongue or do not want to believe it exists as Saddam Hussein referred to after the Desert Storm! I am sure some of them understand the situation, speaking in the past and the present, but were unwilling to think about the rest of the population, just the self and the immediate families! They have only been concerned about the well being of their immediate and extended families and not the nation, as a true leader should. A true leader must regard the nation as his/her extended family and treat the inhabitants, the people of the country, as part of the family. They have been brainwashed by the capitalists of the Western world, who are only interested in securing the capital to develop their own countries! They do not care where the capital is coming from. All they are interested in is how much money they can make from the stupid dictators, despots, and corrupt government civil servants!

During the Gulf War, I was listening on the TV to commentators airing their views on the rights and wrongs of the war. I was particularly taken to one of the guest, who was a down-to-earth and unpretentious person. He was a businessman and all he cared about was his profit. He said, ‘Americans will sell their own mothers in search of profit.’ This was in reply to a question about the Iraqis getting sophisticated weapon to nullify the American superiority in the air!

The leaders of Africa, in their travels, have seen how life is in the Western world and how, if they have the interest of their subjects in mind, these experiences could be replicated in their countries. In our culture, before I left my homeland in 1966, we had the saying about ‘monkey see, monkey do’. That is, you try to copy what you see! Our leaders have gone out, have seen, but unfortunately, they were unable to do! The conclusion is that some of our leaders in Africa have been worse than the monkey. There is then no wonder or no remorse when some white people still refer to black people as monkeys, especially in southern Africa. Also it is still the basis of what goes on, on football terraces, when black players represent their clubs in European competitions! Personally, the monkey has been better than some of the politicians in Africa, who have ruled their countries. The despots, dictators, and authoritarians have not aped (copied) the examples of developments witnessed in some of the countries they have visited! This is harsh but I can understand where they are coming from. They, the white folks, have not seen any African nation that one could refer to as a sort of power in the eye of the Western world! Nigeria could have been, but respective leaders have been corrupt and have siphoned all the looted money into the Western monetary system instead of using the looted wealth in building the economic foundation of their homelands. South Africa also could have been the leader, but when the blacks took power, all their nuclear capabilities had to be nullified so that the blacks would not step out of line with the Secret Society! ‘Nuclear power in the hands of a black man is worse than having a banana in the hands of the monkey!’ as one European leader commented. The black man is in the United Nations and is given American dollars when America wants its way (example is the present Iraqi invasion). They went around the African continent with brown envelopes so that they could have a majority at the UN Assembly when the vote to invade Iraq was taken. These are how stupid these leaders are because one day, it would be their turn to be invaded!

The United States thinks it can impose its will on any nation in the world that does not dance to its tune. They have the almighty dollar, so they believed; I wonder if we can still refer to the dollar as ‘almighty’. Imagine what would happen if Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria, Libya, and Angola decide not to sell oil to the Western world for a year? I think I can imagine it; they will try to take it by force. That is why it is important for all these countries to build a solid defence system. There is none more solid than having nuclear capabilities. Because they divide in order to rule. There will never be a consensus amongst the alluded to oil-producing nations. Iran is the only one bold enough to speak back to the West on its own terms; Venezuela has joined that club now because of Hugo Chavez; also oil has been found in Cuba recently, hence the United States may come closer to Cuba now! If these oil-producing nations put an embargo on trade with the West instead of the other way round, the West economies will not survive a whole year without oil from these nations.

Finally, there are horses for courses. Apart from Canada and Belgium, is there a multilingual nation in the whole wide world that has a successful liberal democracy system? For the system to succeed in Africa there must be autonomous. Unfortunately, they all have embraced or forced to embrace the western European system of democracy. This system is not suitable for Africa because of the existence of tribalism and many religious factions. Religions and politics are the two worse inventions by man because they have divided mankind and have caused untold deaths and miseries in the world. Everywhere there is conflict; the reasons are usually due to religious or political differences. It has been written and stated by writers and commentators that ‘War is an extension of political policies and ideology’.

I am writing this book as a narrative memoir, with a bit of intellectual passages, in an effort to make it an interesting read-some history with some academic texts. I am hoping that leaders, especially in Africa and the developing world, will take this book with them wherever they went, as a storybook and as well as a text book, in trying to understand there is another way, another system, outside of the West’s liberal democracy. I have also tried as much as possible to write it in simple English so that the ordinary person can read without the disruptions of having to refer to the dictionary all the time. It is also a book that could be used as a textbook in the classrooms of Africa because it contains some empirical facts from history.

In part of the book, I will briefly look at the system of democracy in Europe before the scramble for Africa. An attempt will be made to understand the reason why the Westminster system of democracy was imposed on all the British colonial assets in Africa at the turn of the century (1900). To argue this point, it will be necessary to look at Europe between 1815 and 1914 in order to prove that the British justification in imposing Westminster’s form of democracy on its subjects in colonial African was unjustifiable.

Colonisation

Colonisation began before the Berlin conference, and it would be an inconclusive exercise if one does not look at the period before the infamous colonial conference in 1884. In 1880, most of the continent was still ruled by Africans and barely explored. By 1902, after the Berlin conference in 1884, five European powers had grabbed almost the whole continent, and by 1914, there were seven European nations present in the continent. The European powers had grabbed thirty new colonies and protectorates and over 100 million new subjects.[1]

There have been different explanations by different historians on the subject of the growth of empires in the nineteenth century. Various theories were espoused, such as:

a) The search for secure trade routes around the world

b) Looking for high returns on surplus European capital

c) Search for markets, trades, and raw materials

d) Domination by supposed superior race (Darwinism)

e) Urge to spread the Gospel (Christianity), exporting Western civilisation

And indulging in commerce at the same time, referred to as the 3Cs.

f) Settling surplus population in overseas territories

g) The idea that great naval power will guarantee greatness

It will be an interesting academic study to try and look at the reasons given by some of the historians and also to look at some evidence that could provide us with some more enlightened knowledge about this period. Explorers had an indirect part to play in the quest for new territories, and it should be interesting drawing on their thoughts.

David Livingstone for instance… ‘All I can add in my solitude is, may heaven’s rich blessing come down on everyone, American, English, or Turk, who will help to heal this open sore of the world.’ David Livingstone was worried about the new slave trade organised by Swahilis and Arabs in East Africa. This prompted him to appeal to governments to come into the continent with the 3Cs—commerce, Christianity, and civilisation.

Another explorer, Verney Cameron, addressing the Royal Geographical Society in London in 1876 said,

‘The interior is mostly magnificent and healthy country of unspeakable riches. I have a specimen of good coal. Other minerals such as gold, copper, iron, and silver are abundant, and I am confident that with a wise and liberal (not lavish) expenditure of capital, one of the greatest system of inland navigation in the world might be utilised and from thirty months to thirty-six months begin to repay any enterprising capitalist that might take the matter in hand.’

Because of reports by explorers, such as Cameron, Livingstone, and Stanley, about the potential riches of the African continent, plans were already afoot by the Belgians, before the Berlin conference, to get into Africa and plunder the continent just as the Spaniards did in Peru (Inca gold and silver).

The idea of the big powers searching for markets for their manufactured goods cannot be justified at this period of time. Apart from the Mediterranean coasts around Egypt and Algeria, Africa was an unknown continent. What would they use for currency? There was no foreign earning in those days. A system of trading had to be found before trading could commence, and this system was referred to later, after its implementation, as ‘trade by batter’.

On 17 November 1877, King Leopold II of Belgium wrote to the Belgian Ambassador in London:

‘I am sure if I quite openly charged Stanley with the task of taking possession in my name of some part of Africa, the English will stop me. If I asked their advice, they will stop me just the same. So I think I will just give Stanley some job of exploration which would offend no one, and will give us the bases and headquarters which we can take over later on.’ (Is this for prestige, imperialism, or exploitation?)

Some historians said that prestige was one reason for colonisation, but from the account of Cameron and the letter of the king to the ambassador, one can see that it was an opportunity for some capitalists to make some money in the foreseeable future and for European Powers to start exploiting the continent.

The growth of empire in the nineteenth century can also be explained by the words of Cecil Rhodes:

‘In order to save forty million inhabitants in the United Kingdom from bloody civil war, our statesmen must acquire new lands for settling the surplus population of this country; to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and mines. The empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialist.’

One could therefore assume from this statement that the growth of empires in this period had something to do with Imperialism.[2] The idea of Imperialism is a plausible one. Before the Berlin conference, Livingstone had appealed to the powers to come to the rescue of the continent in a benevolent sort of way. He pleaded with them to go in and try to civilize the natives, and in the process they can introduce Christianity and the Western way of life, that is, commerce, administration, and their supposed superiority (Darwinism). Some historians felt that this can be seen as the prestige side of colonisation—showing off their superiority to the colonised natives.

A. J. P. Taylor, writing in English History, 1914-1945, observed that:

‘It has been assumed for years after the war that Great Britain would gain from monopolizing the raw materials of her colonies. They were an undeveloped estate, a precious heritage. It was now discovered that they were already developed too much for present needs, and the British government, far from monopolizing the colonies raw materials, ramshackle the world for outlets of colonial goods abroad.’

The colonies in tropical Africa had been regarded as great prizes in the days of late-Victorian imperialism.[3] Their development proved disappointing! ‘The colonies turned out to be liabilities, not assets,’ some argued, including A. J. P. Taylor[4]. Why? ‘Because all the colonies aspired also to develop their own industries to Great Britain’s regret, they refused to be exploited anymore! Gone were the cheap cotton from India to Lancashire busy cotton mills; gone are the cheap raw materials such as wheat, wool, gold, copper, and timber—which Great Britain consumed. Although the colonies were still administered autocratically from Whitehall, they now demanded some self-determination and were therefore able to trade with other independent sovereign states.’[5]

I am sure Mr Taylor was not referring to the African colonies or the Asian colonies because they were forced out of these colonies by nationalists; and encouraged by the United States to get out because they, the USA wanted a bit of the trade action! This goes to show you how history can also tell unfactual accounts of the past!

Because of this situation, it was recorded in history, that Great Britain decided the colonisation exercise had been financially unrewarding; hence statistics were generated to support this view. Unfortunately, statistics can be manipulated and this was definitely the case! The people who were subjected to colonisation do not believe this account of the era. Some African writers have observed, in their account of this period, that colonisation was an ethos of conquest and plunder. When the natives realised this, their attitudes changed and colonisation became a liability and not an asset! Armed struggle also contributed to the decision to begin the process of decolonisation. The Egyptians nationalised the Suez Canal, which resulted to war with their colonial masters and events started to snowball from there on.

One eminent African commentator wrote:

‘They got raw materials cheaply; taxations were extracted from the natives; priceless works of arts were plundered and repatriated to the fatherland (Elgin Marble, Benin bronze carvings, and so forth). These can all be seen at the Natural History Museum and the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London. How much are all these artefacts worth today?’

Also the idea that the European powers wanted to colonise because of their superior civilisation was of course not true because at this particular period there existed in the northern part of Nigeria an administration comparable to the system in Whitehall (the rule of Emirs and Sultans in Kano and Sokoto—Dr Aminu Kano, speaking on the Discovery Channel); also superior works of arts found in Benin and Ife proved that the civilisation in Africa was older (this has been proved by anthropologists).

The teaching of history and politics nowadays is that it tends to refer only to the period from the enlightenment (Ancien Regime), for whatever reason, it would be very enlightening to know the answer. Some reserved perception could be due to the fact that before this period, there existed in Europe a few powerful blacks or mulattoes who ruled in Europe such as John VI of Portugal and maker of Brazil (the Braganzas); Alessandro De Medici, son of Pope Clement, first reigning Duke of Florence; Pushkin in Russia and some powerful black leaders in The New World, such as Dom Pedro II, the grandson of John VI, who abolished slavery in Brazil; Tuoussaint L’ Ouverture, who resisted Napoleon’s army in Haiti, and Jean Jacques Dessalines, who finally defeated the French and liberated Haiti[6]. According to J. A. Rogers, the United States owes a great debt to L’Ouverture because the power of France in the New World was broken, hastening the sale of Louisiana territory, or nearly the half of what is now the United States of America, for a trifling sum. Whether these facts were deliberately left out of the present day study of history is anyone’s guess. These were great events in history and international relations. One cannot stop wondering whether it has been a deliberate conspiracy to exclude the ‘people of colour’ from attaining the same level of development with the rest of the Western world.

When one travels to places like Antigua, Ghana, Nigeria, Benin, and so forth that were under colonial rule, one would not be exaggerating to observe that all these places were not left with some solid infrastructures to progress their development after power (independence) was handed over to these countries. The legacies they were left with were Western democratic systems that were not suitable for these countries[7]. These Western powers had the experiences of nationality movements in the countries they had occupied. They also knew the consequences of nationality movements when they were building their empires in Europe before embarking on the colonisation of Africa. The Russians had problems in their empire so did the Habsburg Empire. One would have thought that they learnt from these experiences. But it did not seem like it when Great Britain started drawing lines across boundaries in Africa, which was done for the simplicity of administration. It never occurred to them that these people were different; although they were all entirely of the same complexion, but they were different! They had different cultures and different traditions. All of these were of no paramount importance to the colonisers in Nigeria and the rest of Africa. In the real sense of it, Nigeria could have been split into four different countries when the boundary lines were being drawn, but nonetheless, all those people were all grouped into the same boundaries to form the country we now know as Nigeria. There is trouble in Rwanda and Burundi because the colonial masters drew the boundary lines in the wrong places. These mistakes have cost millions of lives today. Were these deliberate mistakes to keep the people at each other’s throats? Could this be the foundation of divide and rule?

The Westminster imposed system of ‘first pass the post’ in democratic elections makes it impossible to have proper democracy. Majority tribes believed it was their divine right to govern the minorities since voting amongst the illiterates and semi-illiterates would be on ethnic and tribal divisions! A really good example of putting different people together in the process of empire building was the case of the Old Russian Empire. It was very interesting to note what Comrade Lenin said after the overthrow of the Tsar, after the revolutions in the old USSR. He referred to the Russian Empire as ‘prison house of nationalities’.[8] Another historian referred the growth of empire thus: ‘Empires were put together like a multinational agglomeration. And the problem with this agglomeration’ was that it acquired too many different nationalities in the process… and frontier lines were drawn in the wrong places displacing nationhood people speaking the same language within a defined border agreed before the colonial masters came along.’[9]

What was it like (the social and political systems) in Africa before the colonial masters came along to the continent? Was there a political system in sub-Saharan Africa before the colonisers came along to impose their systems?

In the middle of this century or earlier, the continent of Africa captivated anthropologists and historians. They were impressed by some of the artefacts that were brought back into Western countries by explorers and colonial officers; the discoveries led to the study of the continent. Some have actually claimed that the human race and civilisation started in that continent. Some experts are still arguing about the claim since some of them do not want to admit that Africans could have been their ancestors. What is certain though is that there was a sophisticated form of rule in the continent before the colonial masters arrived in the continent. There were famous kings and rulers in the continent before the arrival of the colonisers such as the Oba of Benin, who ruled the Benin Empire in what is now the mid-western part of Nigeria. There was in the Gold Coast, King Prempeh of Ashanti,[10] king of nearly all of the Gold Coast, later renamed Ghana. Also in Nigeria, the early explorers and colonisers wrote about another powerful king in the delta area of Nigeria. His name was King JaJa of Opobo.[11] He was the absolute ruler in the area, which is part of the now-famous Ogoni Land. The earlier Europeans could not believe their eyes when they first saw the pyramids in Egypt. They have always thought that their civilisation was unsurpassed, but what they saw in Egypt and the other art artefacts found in various places in the continent convinced some anthropologists and historians[12] that Africa was really not that backward; instead, it could have been the bed of civilisation! The civilisation was perceived to be more superior to the West by some early anthropologists, and they said it would be wrong to judge Africa by Western standard because the customs and cultures were not parallel with that of the Europeans. For instance, the native Africans knew how to make fire before the Europeans invented the matchsticks. Africa was not as dark as some people perceived it to be!

The British Rule in Nigeria

This is a paragraph from a special supplement on Nigeria, published by The Sunday Observer,

‘Implanting democracy in Africa has never been easy, and particularly difficult in Nigeria, the most populous nation on the continent. Nigeria’s ninety million people are divided into the various, and often hostile, ethnic and religious groups. About half the population is Muslim, 40 per cent are Christian, and the remainder animist. There are four main tribal groups and some 250 smaller ones. At least 5,000 people have been killed in ethnic and religious fighting in the northern and eastern parts of the country over the last three years (1991-1994).’

This passage from the Observer has highlighted the problem of democracy in Nigeria. On a serious note, where has democracy worked in the West? About 42 per cent of the people voted for the Tory in the last election.[13] What happened to the wishes of the other 58 per cent of the people that did not vote for the government? In the case of the last presidential election in America; fewer than 41 per cent of the American people voted for Bill Clinton.[14] What happened to the wishes of the other 59 per cent of voters? Is this real democracy when the wishes of so many people can be discounted? The system that has been implanted in the country is itself not perfect and one wonders how the Nigerian people (in the real sense of it) can make sense of the system, considering their limited exposure to liberal democracy. It took centuries before universal suffrage was granted to the adult voting population in Great Britain and to expect Nigeria to be as sophisticated in Western democratic system was asking for the impossible at this time. It was doomed to fail from its onset. Why was it doomed from the onset? It was doomed from the onset because,

1. The people were used to being ruled (governed) by a different system, which was based on elders, chiefs, or kings.

2. Nigeria’s demography is made up of four different nations. (This may be disputed but it is true. Hausa, Ibo, Yoruba, Benin) The others are spin-offs of these four empires.

i) Who is the Nigerian?

ii) The democratic system implanted in the country was not the right one.

iii) It was for the interest of the coloniser—for the simplification of administration for the colonial masters.

3. The varying diverse customs and traditional values of the people invited the dreaded ‘nationalism/tribalism idealism’.

4. Nigeria’s economic base.

5. The oppositions in Nigeria and the press.

6. The way forward—Constitutional Conference underway. (Details in appendix)

Nigeria is actually made up of four main tribes. The northern part of the country, northern region, is the Hausa land; the western part of the country, western region, is the Yoruba land; the eastern part of the country, eastern region, is the Ibo land, and the mid-western part of the country, mid-western region, is the Benin enclave. Lagos is a cosmopolitan district. The Yorubas dominated its population because it was part of the Yoruba Empire. There existed in the area (now known as Nigeria) three ancient empires before the explorers started their voyages to the continent of Africa; the Fulani Empire in the north; the Yoruba Empire in the west, and the Benin Empire in the (mid-west) delta area.

Nigeria is about four times the size of the United Kingdom and larger than Italy and France combined. Nigeria has the world’s largest block of people of African racial origin. Nigeria’s climate, topography, and vegetation are varied. There are extreme heat and arid conditions in the north due to its proximity to the Sahara Desert. As one travels inland from the north, one is confronted by savannah vegetation, hilly ranges, mountains, rain forests, and mangrove swamps. The River Niger flows into the country from the neighbouring French protectorate of Dahomey (now Benin) and passes through northern region, western region, mid-west region and flows out to the east and delta regions to join up with the Atlantic Ocean again. The river was used by the British colonial masters as the boundary line in Nigeria with its sister river the Benue.

Who is the Nigerian before the advent of colonisation? The country was made up of polyglot gathering of numerous groups of West African Negro stocks, which through marriages and wars came to Nigeria due to commerce conducted along the river and through the caravan routes from Sudan, Libya, and Egypt. Also because of the war in Arabia and the Mediterranean, groups sought refuge in the fertile land in the northern towns of Nigeria. This was achieved by coercion and sometimes by wars. The displaced groups moved inland until stopped by existing warlords. Empire grew because stronger ones conquered weaker neighbours.

Over a thousand years ago, according to Sam Epelle, a distinguished Nigerian scholar and writer:

‘People such as the Ibos, Ibibios, and Gwaris lived in their present boundaries. At the time, the Fulanis were unknown; the Yorubas were just beginning to arrive in small groups, and Lake Chad attracted the Kanuris to what is now the Bornu state.

Who were the Nigerians exposed to the colonisers and who are today’s Nigerians?

‘Comprising such diverse elements to have stayed in a single country for so long can be credited to the determination, resilience, and bond of friendship on the part of the different people of the country. That all who live in Nigeria realise that they have one future and one destiny is an example unparalleled elsewhere, except perhaps in the melting pot of America (USA). Nigerians, be they Hausas, Fulanis, Ibos, Yorubas, Ibibios, Ijaws, Binis, or Kanuris, know that the differences among them are not deep-rooted enough to break their country into warring parts; they appreciated that these differences provide the variety in thought and action that nourishes the democratic machines.[15]

A passage from The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, by Maj.-Gen. Alexander A. Madiebo, Ret’d Commander, Biafran Army, sees it differently. Here is a quote from his book[16]

‘The Federation of Nigeria, as it exits today, has never really been one homogeneous country, for its widely differing people and tribes are yet to find a basis for true unity. This unfortunate yet obvious fact notwithstanding the former colonial master had to keep the country one in order to effectively control his vital economic interests concentrated mainly in the more advanced and politically unreliable south. Thus for administrative convenience, northern and southern Nigeria became amalgamated in 1914. Thereafter, the only thing these people had in common became the name of their country. That alone was an insufficient basis for true unity.’

In retrospect, the situation in Nigeria can be compared with the political situation that existed in the old Hapsburg Empire. From our knowledge of history, we know that due to nationalism after the First World War, the old empire was broken up and states were created from the old boundary.

Nationalism or tribalism is a problem in Nigeria and has been a problem since the colonial masters were there. Some believed that their ‘ideology of divide and rule’ created the problems that exist in Nigeria today. Under different circumstances, the people of