Barbarism to Decadence: Nigeria and Foreign Complicity

By Abudu Rasheed Oki

Since independence in 1960, Nigeria’s successor leaderships and the private sector manifestly failed to dispense good governance and corporate social responsibility. Both sectors, tacitly aided by foreign institutions and corporations have perverted the ends of government and justice. Ergo, in Barbarism to Decadence, Abudu Rasheed “Richard” Oki offers an encompassing but cursory evaluation of each successor corrupting maladministration, participatory industry roles, and systemic debaucheries, along with the vast derivative adverse impacts on the citizenry. Through research, eyewitness accounts, personal experience, etc., the book presents an assessment of the devastating decades of adventitious effects of otherworldly corruption on the nation, and a look at the overall septic effects of the vice on the rest of other black African nations.

Ab initio, it delves in on characteristic fractious leaderships; past immiserating military decades; compromised judiciary/law enforcement; fraudulent elections; decrepit power supply and infrastructure; human health and educational fetidness, duplicitous and complicit local and international media; natural resource curse and colossal environmental pollution; modern-day religious chicanery and radicalized Islamic terrorism; elites’ otherworldly and authoritative brigandage; and ever-present suffocating misfeasance and malfeasance in the private sector. There are also the overall, undermining roles from overseas nations, institutions, and corporations; and, sui generis, China’s hegemonic role. These are part of vast interrelated factors that hermetically immure and immolate her lumpen masses in the bonds of anomie. That correlative societal demise is portrayed in marasmus and spectral looks, along with mass spiritual and mental atrophies. Yet her affluent minority and foreign expropriation of its raw wealth and assets remain at exhilarating boil. The grim hard facts and figures indicate that Nigeria absolutely needs to be set on the right path for the long-term needs of her marred population. Meanwhile, the masses intrinsically remain restive with brutish thoughts, here and there. To wit, the crystallization of that armed mass revolutionary mettle should never be discounted in her future. So, the book provides crosscurrents, and propounds on ways to sustainably adjust her venal course mainstream. Pithily, it seeks to provide a clarion call to jettison present, and block future, serially rogue leaderships for the summum bonum.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781663219152

Abudu Rasheed Oki

Dr. Abudu Rasheed Oki is a Consulting Geophysicist, providing water resources management and environmental engineering services to government and industry. He professionally served in various capacities for more than forty years, working for, or, directing various state and federal departmental programs, particularly with the Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Geological Survey, and the U.S. EPA. In his earlier years, he provided services at Mobil Producing Nigeria as a seismologist and as a scientist in consultancy at Superfund sites and contaminated hazardous waste sites, providing assessments, expert witness, and peer review services. He supported, on an ad hoc basis, risk and actuarial analyst services for pollution liability insurance corporations on damage and injury cases. The author is a board-certified Hydrogeologist with the American Institute of Hydrology and past president at the Association of Environmental and Engineering Geophysicists. He is also a participatory contributor in several other engineering geology and geophysical institutes.

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Copyright © 2021 Abudu Rasheed Oki.

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Vice Grip in Nigeria—Exemplar of Black Africa’s Generational Maladministration

Since 1960—Close to $2 trillion in revenue, assets, and natural resources fleeced and plundered, relegating more than one hundred million in multigenerational poverty, gratuitous high mortalities and more than one million dead from a civil war

Dedicated to more than nine hundred million black Africans that remain in tormenting, multigenerational misery—all deluged with generational tyrannies and foreign accomplices

For Brooke

—Devotedly

Man’s abiding happiness is not in getting anything but in giving himself up to what is greater than himself, to ideas which are larger than his individual life, the idea of his country, of humanity, of God.

—Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali Poet.

Salus populi suprema lex esto.

Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law

(Black African leaderships—Nota bene)

Contents

Exordium

Acknowledgments

PART ONE - GENERATIONAL MALVERSATION

I Colonial and Neocolonial Heritage

II Democracy and the Constitution

III Ochlocracy, Kakistocracy, Kleptocracy Athwart Democracy

IV Governance and Leadership

V Judiciary and Law Enforcement – Willful Ignorance and Corruption

VI Elections – Voter Fraud and Chicanery

VII Government – Structures and Strictures

PART TWO - ECONOMY AND WEALTH DISTRIBUTION

VIII Socioeconomic Development

PART THREE - LEGALIZED AND SYSTEMIC DEFALCATION

IX Government and Corruption

X Too Big to Fail – Financial Institutions and Private Sector

XI Cost of Government and Willful Prodigality

XII Privatization and Fleecing of Government Assets and Resources

XIII Power Supply – The Ravening Maw

XIV Infrastructure Projects – Gravy Train

PART FOUR - MEDIA – DUPLICITY AND COMPLICITY

XV Local Media – Complicity and Corruption

XVI International Media and Black Africa

PART FIVE - NATURAL RESOURCES CURSE

XVII Crude Oil – Discovery and Corruption

XVIII Niger Delta Insurgents and Crude Oil Curse

XIX Petroleum and Mineral Resource Cartage and Foreign Complicity

XX Petroleum and Mineral Resource Pollution and Foreign Complicity

PART SIX - INDIGENOUS AND FOREIGN USURPERS

XXI Otherworldly Fleecing – The Untouchables

XXII Government and Foreign Complicity

XXIII Second Scramble for Africa – Enter China in Nigeria

PART SEVEN - MASS SOCIETAL SPIRITUAL ATROPHY

XXIV Religion - Exploitation and Fraud

XXV Boko Haram and Government Barbarism

PART EIGHT - SOCIETY IN PUTRESCENCE

XXVI Education, Health and General Societal Demise

XXVII Society in the Bonds of Anomie

Conclusions

Appendix A: Notes

Appendix B: Glossary

Bibliography

Exordium

This brief abstract on the chronically despoiling settings in Nigeria since the late 1960s precipitated in the writing of Barbarism To Decadence-Nigeria and Foreign Complicity in 2016. To an overwhelming degree, the book dwells on chronic maladministration as to intrinsic malfeasance; the roles the private sector and foreign accomplices in the form of nations, global institutions, multinational corporations, and other putative investors play. In 2020, with retrospective editorial emendations and new, globally impacting events, it was updated and reissued. This, in part, has to do with the onset of the convulsive global impact of the leadership of President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and other climacteric events. The re-edited book has some government and socioeconomic discoveries, clarifications, and discussions on the creeping, unravelling of the new world order. Though not all facts and figures have been updated through 2021. However, given the global knowledge and well-documented topics on Nigeria’s economy and debt, economy and trade, and the impacts of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, they have been omitted in this new and concise version. The republication remains, in part, in shades of gray, not absolutes, given the changing global order and dynamics.

As part of transcendental humanism, race is a social construct; not biological. Since millennia, it has, and continues to hierarchically divide and breed hate and evilness globally—creating corrosive identity and sociopolitical pressures. Afterall, in reality, the human family has no differing peoples or races, we are one of the same—from the Mitochondrial Eve. So, this book, conforming to present-day reality of racial hierarchy; sees the African continent surgically—thus the geographic conterminous nature of Arab north is excluded in this publication. This is because the Arab man is of a different racial category and given their limited affinity and tacit disdain for the black man, rightly necessitates the book’s sole focus on black Africa. Intuitively, the Arab man deems (debatably) the black African as inferior. Also, the subcontinent’s compendium of ills had origins in the depredations of slavery by the Arabs, which in part, spearheaded the subsequent commercial scramble in mostly black Africa.

The book is intended primarily as a vehicle for logical form of social thought and analysis. As author, I seek not to be a contrarian, but to illuminate, to constructively criticize, and heighten the sensibilities. Nigeria’s putrescence is fact, not innuendo or fallacy. In order to aid in reversing its creative self-destruction, the book delivers snappily, caustically, and memorably, sometimes with vast witticism on its issues and events. It is thus not unlikely that the work upon its re-publication might be branded as the product of an aberrant, a misguided nonentity, who takes the powerful and mighty to task along with its foreign accomplices in the debauchery. And in this, I am prepared to be a victim of ideological ire, as I find it continuingly relevant in a book on contemporary socio-politics or public affairs, to attempt to controvert controvertible misinformation, misrepresentations or sheer falsehoods in all of Nigeria’s successor governments. Though I hope wistfully that some of the readers agree with me, though I am reconciled to residual differences. I have been wrong before…but no doubt, so have you too.

The book’s use of foreign language in certain circumstances rather than their English translation is not affectation, it is not merely that they have a special piquancy in the original, but because they additionally have a special incantatory sound—indicative of a special, sometimes extra-rational or magical meaning to home in on the point, message, or idea being made. Thus these foreign words have certain arresting effect desired in the struggle to translate human thought into words not easily provided by the English language. It is simply a passionate advocacy on lexicology based mostly on The Merriam-Webster American Dictionary (11th edition)—and The Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition) on usage.

In rewriting, I assembled notes, research papers, columns, and documents in varying loose leaves on the ferocious misrule and attendant social conflicts and deadly pathologies. It also encompassed knowledge acquired from few eyewitness discourses, research from national and international publications, interviews with non-governmental organizations and civil society, and opinions from government technocrats and political polemicists. Also, data was garnered from impromptu liaison with political and business elites who shed further light on the innards of the administrative and institutional workings as to policies, strategies, and stratagems.

Simply, the book elicits my views based on multiplicity of information, some remaining irregular or amorphous over the decades. Other sources of data mined came from rank and file in government, industry, scholars in academia and institutions, and perspectives were gained from credible, televised documentaries. Write-ups and op-eds were also obtained from the local and international print media. More importantly, data was obtained from pronouncements in informal association with the grassroots, both urban and rural, young and old. In search of veracity, I also conducted fact-checks against certain second- and third-party information. The book was also based on personal experience, growing up in the nation through the early 1970s. Derivatively, I drew on huge reserves of opinions, prejudices, priorities, presumptions, extraneous data, perceived ironies, drama, and histrionics. Nonetheless, given the oftentimes disparate database, my account to an extent is distillate.

As an objective observer, I state that I am a Nigerian, of dual citizenry, though remain a Nigerian at heart—a nation that had great potential at independence. In a way, it is a country club I belong—not indeed voluntarily but by birth, and I bear the burdens it imposes. As a conviction of truth, my spiritual ethos remains in egalitarianism in support of upgrading the nation’s downtrodden masses, seeking a charge athwart mankind’s multigenerational malevolent acts. Hence, I care naught for certain traditions or, of the nation’s suspect religiosity, and exogenous thought process on how Nigeria could be transformed, but fundamentally, care more for character and conscience on the expedient thing to do. So, I believe I can write convincingly in the idiom of the Nigerian—through the prism of its massive poor.

In that philosophical pursuit, I remain not easily influenced by contravening opinions that seek to allay, gloss over, even feel Pollyannaish; to arguably pronounce that there are positive changes ongoing in the nation. I am not a nostalgic seeking recolonization, but, neither am I a follower of Émile Coué, the French psychologist that theorized on the optimistic autosuggestion that things always get better. Therefore, this book analyzes disinterestedly, though curries resentment at all failed leaderships and institutions in Nigeria. It is thus not panegyric in scope to its generational governments and global fellow travelers. Therefore, I remain a caustic critic of its dispossessing leaderships that have hermetically sealed vested interests in the national brigandage, alongside deep putrescence and blight of its mankind and landscape. That ideological monoculture—that seemingly racial atavism as to instincts, beliefs, policies, and displays continue to be destructive to the collective progress, especially in the demonstrable transformation of its grassroots. It is acted out daily in a callous theatre of otherworldly corruption culture. And along with this, is the clear absence of condign repercussions and punishments against the despoiling über-elites, who have cemented state capture.

The book is a relatively comprehensive assessment though anecdotal in sections, on the vast interrelated factors that led to Nigeria’s lack of effectual progress on most fronts, along with attendant societal demise. It focuses primarily on the designed mismanagement of its vast wealth, and, correspondingly, its grinding poverty, in which, it is part of a subcontinent with the most downtrodden peoples on the face of the earth. Historically and insufferably, the black man is conceived as an atomized, arbitrary and random biological specimen to molded and abused in whatever way it suits all. In this, the nation clearly (based on the fetid settings) remains in relative descent rather than in a sustained ascendancy; a degradation that appears absolute and tragic in its generational levels of lack of probity. Globally, based on the UN’s annual Human Development Report; what is irrefutable is that Nigeria and other black Africa nations remain sclerotically at the bottom of the pile, in the hierarchy on the league of nations. Given its vast natural resources, this is, arguably, the wealthiest subregion in the world.

Chronologically, this revised and relatively concise edition starts of by assessing colonial and neocolonial aspects with respect to its historical parliamentary system of governance and successor military regimes. It then segues, by delving into its current putative the United States (U.S.)-style democracy that is more of an illiberal democracy—serial civilian leaderships weighed down by vice and lawlessness. It evaluates the nation’s revised constitution as it relates to, alas, further supporting opaqueness in governance, guaranteeing immunities to its leaders, arming them with near absolute powers in the usurpation. It goes on to assess and evaluate the nation’s sanctioned and systemic illegalities in government and the private sector. It delves into the supine nature with which government deals with overseas multinational corporations, investors, brokers, mercenaries of fortune, etc. In getting a feel of the otherworldly defalcation and plunder, the book looks into the nation’s history of profligacy and brigandage in the context of the fiscal and monetary policies. It assesses interlocking foreign complicities and conspiracies in the nation’s social and economic undressing and general incapacitation.

Cursory analyses on the intractable incapacities on power supply and infrastructure transformation are addressed alongside the institutionalized and embedded shenanigans. And in these interplays, the book delves into the roles local and international media play in the debauchery as to malfeasance, misinformation, and disinformation. It addresses the natural resources curse, insurrectionary and communities armed unrests. A chapter is wholly dedicated to China’s near hegemonic role in the nation and in the rest of black Africa. Along with this, it takes a forensic look at the roles of religious chicanery and terroristic Islamic schisms have in the overall mixed bouillabaisse in an impoverished nation—a society caught in the bonds of anomie.

In the nation’s historical annals, the civil war period in the late 1960s recorded more than a million dead due to successionist conflict that hinged, in most part, on who commandeered the crude oil wealth. Even after that horrific period, in contemporary times, societal conditions of unrelenting pogroms, terrorism, and inter-communal violence have left more than one hundred thousand dead and or maimed, and millions displaced through 2020. The uncontrollable bloodletting by heinous elements and barbaric government forces continue to this day. The despicable and decrepit settings remain. And alas, within the settings are microscopic points or island redoubts of a super affluent minority in an ocean of extreme poverty—yet putatively, Nigeria is touted as the largest economy in Africa. Over the past two decades, it reportedly had an average gross domestic product of $400 billion; and debatably, an average per capita of close to $1,500. Clearly, the decades-long statistical economic data are always mired in casuistry, nebulous numbers for the benefits of elements in government, the private sector, and overseas institutions.

This is a nation in which more than 70 percent barely survive on $2 dollars a day, while an infinitesimal elite minority, under state capture, owns assets or net worth that is conservatively worth more than the combined wealth of more than 99 percent of the population. The unsettling conspiratorial settings induce the vast antipodal and concretized economic disparity; willfully designed and fostered by successor regimes and administrations, and the private sector. Ostensibly, every incoming regime or administration tried to fight the arresting economic inequality chasm, despite their inherent penchant for willful government waste, gross fraudulence, and wholesale embezzlement. Hence all efforts on all fronts to right the ship from the decades-long misfeasance and malfeasance have been for naught. These are commonplace settings in Nigeria and in all other nations in black Africa—a subregion composed of banana republics—potentially unprogressive, even failing states.

Ergo, the best guess and results of the putative fight against corruption by its leaders or elite ranks always results in the usual kabuki followed by the usual fudge, as all allegations and accusations end up irresolute, and or with no condign punishments and complete regurgitation of the stolen commonwealth. This has been the zeitgeist for more than five decades. Corruption’s ugly head, which borders on institutionalized crimes, continues to take the nation on exhilarating romps though at a debilitating cost to its massive poor. This, in part, is because Nigeria has a judicial and law enforcement system that is absolutely not controlled by principles exterior to the will and self-interests of the justices, jurists, law enforcement and overall, national security apparatus. Democratically, all levels of government remain, not the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but syndicates comprised of government of elites, run by elites, for elites. Most people call their serial leaderships’; past and present, in all levels and organs of government as being similar to Italy’s mafia-like settings of La Cosa Nostra (this our thing—to subvert and plunder). In Nigeria, that mafia-like setting is based on the institutionalized patronage and patrimonial clientage network; the system.

Per the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the UN, and other global institutions’ assessments, which was further refined by this writer (based on experience); Nigeria, since ca. 1960, lost or was dispossessed cumulatively (based on proper valuation of all commodities and other raw wealth) more than $2 trillion. This was looting from within and without, from all known and unknown revenue sources that should have rightly accrued to the nation. Unbeknownst to most in the nation, this was based on true valuation of raw wealth siphoned or carted away with practically none the wiser. The unrelenting vile environment remains. And central to the large wealth defalcation or transfers are the ever-ready indigenous elites, multinational companies, phantom investors and mercenary elements, along with wily support from certain overseas governments, global institutions, tax havens, and professionals such as lawyers, accountants, brokerage houses, etc. They have varying degrees of interlocking and overarching orchestrations in the mass arrogations within a supinely capitulating nation—unstoppable pillaging enterprises throughout the nation.

Like the rest of other black African nations, such uncontrollable illicitness in Nigeria are conditions that are tacitly interpreted by the overseas world as a clear sign of weak to broken-down nation. And with precisionist focus most foreign players take advantage of that barbaric and lawless setting. To fight this global perception, it is way overdue for the nation and others in the subregion to independently look inwards; to demonstrably cleanse their governments wholesale and guard their assets and natural resource wealth, while making absolutely sure that their grassroots fulsomely and wholesomely reap the benefits of their birthright.

Additionally, as part of the maladministration, empirical data indicated that environmental pollution particularly in the Niger Delta and certain other regions of the country remain silent but deadly terrains. And in the putative efforts to conduct scattershot cleanup efforts here and there, it is estimated that more than $50 billion may be required to remediate, to a degree, the chronically toxic hazardous waste regions in the nation. Sadly, in such colossal anthropological tragedy, the people-poor nation would never, rightly so, expend such an amount to address these deadly pollution settings. They remain Silent Springs that would remain forever as silent killers to haunt generations—guaranteed to passively and acutely poison generations to come. Given this author’s expertise in natural resource damage assessment, valuation, and resource depletion impacts, unbeknownst to most in the nation, thousands may have died over the decades due to pollution-induced ambient settings—untraceable point and non-point sources due to innocent and supine ignorance of people and government.

At the other end of the terrible inhumanities, Nigeria must control or end the incessant compendium of dastardly, self-immolating ills, via civil and capable security architecture. The nation (and subcontinent) should stop the incessant supplication to overseas nations; to seek succor or transformative solutions for most of its perpetual social pathologies. This absolutist need for overseas aid or security support must have limitations; self-reliance via good leaderships and sound institutions must be made paramount; to sustain positive and long-lasting solutions. And given its vast human capital, wealth, rich culture, and entrepreneurial spirit, such conditions along with others could bring about national bliss, attracting positive changes within other black African nations. This would allow Nigeria to be respectfully recognized globally, within a bonhomie of high-functioning societies, leaving behind the age-old membership in a comity of morally and ethically bankrupt black African nations.

Given the above, and as corroborating evidence for the reading audience, anent the Canadian Parliament 2007 committee report on Africa, even when it comes to capability (at least in the higher fields of human endeavor), there are indications that suggest Africa is the only continent in the world that has not benefited from the last forty years of significant global growth. Specifically, it is unacceptable that the average citizen in Nigeria, or, in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa has not experienced a palpable increase in his or her overall well-being. That fragile to decrepit ecosystem must be turned around. As a result, and after hearing from more than four hundred witnesses globally, the committee concluded that most, if not all, of Africa’s generational leaders have failed the continent. Virtually all its leaderships and institutions have left oppressed and mutilated societies. What has happened for more than half a century is a phantasmagoria of horror and mystery for most in Nigeria and in other nations—perfect storms of governing tragedies and ineluctable natural catastrophes.

I believe the parliamentary report on Africa overwhelmingly described conditions in black Africa. This is a part of the world that all foreign players condescendingly pity as being self-immolating and not transformative and lo, they also concurrently, avariciously exploit it. The globally shared belief remains—that in modern-day settings, black Africa is still stuck in reverse gear—oftentimes, in Luddite gear, in a sense, in Neolithic barbarity.

Nigeria, given its size and wealth serves as a classic exemplar of the disunity and dislocation pervasive in the subregion athwart the ideal—for a civilized and functioning black African nation. So, clearly, historical events, in most part, were the root causes of the nation’s (and overall subcontinent’s) residual malaise and vast incongruities. Hitherto, predominantly assessed and evaluated in the book are derivative, intractable ills left in the wake of successive neocolonialist exploitations and plunder that are categorized under the rubric of trade and investment.

The above deplorable settings slowly crystallized after its independence as successor regimes and administrations and the colluding private sector manifestly failed to dispense good and visionary governance and Solomonic decisions. The public and private sectors tacitly aided by certain foreign players have perverted the ends of government and aided in the immolation of the people. Though seemingly constituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the whole nation, yet each serial leadership dispossessed the citizenry, and left their liberty manifestly endangered. To an extent, every means of redress by the plebeians that could muster change remain ineffectual; to permanently expunge the successive malversation and supporting cadre. Nevertheless, the people may, and, of right, ought to, and must reform the old immiserating ways and establish a truly new government that affords that aspirational opportunity for all.

The ongoing doctrine of complaisance and complacency towards jackbooted power and oppression is not only absurd and slavish, but also destroys the good and happiness of the citizenry. Presently, most of the population remains objectively underpowered, jaded, brainwashed, and hoodwinked. This has led most to be overwhelmed with low self-esteem and self-love, to be spiritually and morally atrophied due to the effects of decades of disillusionments, disenfranchisements, dispossessions, and other immolating actions due to dastardly policies and socioeconomic undressing. These have derivatively incessant outcomes in chronic multigenerational social and deadly pathologies as witnessed through 2021.

The compendium of ills led to decades of consistent lack of civil architecture and basic infrastructure. The chronic challenges and severe handicaps incapacitate palpable and sustainable national transformation. And alongside are some of the corollary outcomes, especially the gratuitous high death rates. Notwithstanding the immiserating malfeasance and outright rogueries in these fetid settings, yet all are consistently glossed over as the injurious criminalities (mostly perpetrated by its elites and exogenous actors) are considered practically pardonable crimes and misdemeanors. In a nation where the law and law enforcement are certifiably feckless and spineless, having been made an ass decades ago, the guilty elite is never dealt with condignly. Pithily, both institutions certifiably remain in disservice to upholding blind justice, a sine qua non for any transformative shift towards a progressive nation.

Like millions of others, those with moral conviction need to voice their opinions on the institutionalized malfeasances and reckless exploitations in this resource-rich, but people-poor nation. It might be next to impossible to find men able, capable, or, even willing to fight via sustained Satyagraha; to display passive resistance of civil disobedience, boycotts, and strikes—to risk their lives for the betterment of Nigeria and its people. This is because of decades of sclerotic and immiserating governments, tacitly aided by overseas elements in the shadows that have stood, and presently stand, athwart such transformative efforts. Nevertheless, the fight should be waged for however long it takes, to reify beneficial reforms for the common good.

While the citizenry almost certainly would not win a pitched battle against the concerted and systemic efforts of its generationally brutish governments, however, it would be almost impossible for these tyrannical leaderships to rule effectively when the masses are openly in revolt. That societal uproar could be executed successfully, though at a cost, as such outcome would certainly end in Pyrrhic victory. It is long overdue for these good people to take their chances in order to obtain spiritual and socioeconomic progress, and overall survival for the supreme good. Such steadfast grassroots action could presage brighter futures for them and posterity. In all aspects of daily life, while there is the supposition that Nigeria’s inglorious characterization and its struggling populace cannot be saved from being saddled with such fetid settings, mass geologic convulsion heaves in societal background, as a viable weapon of last resort to upset the applecart of bad leaderships. That restive setting could explode on the scene as the tectonic shift within the people bring about that transformational bliss desperately sought by a fundamentally good and enterprising people.

Thus let there be no mistake; past and present administrations continue to contribute to the dystopia, rarely creating any relative semblance of a crystallizing change. Possibly decades ago, most may have given up on experiencing any form of crystallizing utopia. Ergo, there is no more time for banalities, airy phrases, bombast, and harangue; no time for pontifications, windy platitudes and glittering advertisements; nor any humbug and blandishments from its leaders and their fellow travelers. The grim hard facts and figures indicate that Nigeria absolutely needs to be set on the right path. It is way past time for action to meet the immediate needs of true nation-building. For, after close to four decades of debilitating military rule, present and future civilian leaders need to prove to the people that they deserve their supposed electoral mandates.

In this effort, others and I promise to be leaderships’ foul-weather friends and fair-weather critics in their tenure at the helm. Presently, strident criticisms are in the offing on the present failing Muhammadu Buhari presidency mimetic of past rogue administrations and regimes. For, as in all unhealthy societies, Nigeria’s governments and peoples blame others for their incapacities or failures, whereas, in healthy societies, they, with an about-face and precision focus look inward for solutions; independently ascertaining the cause(s) of their failures and incapacities for progress and find remedies at all costs. In Nigeria, that should be the mindset of leadership and all others in the malversation.

While I would like to remain in implacable optimism, history counsels otherwise. I remain a misanthrope based on historical and current settings. My skepticism crystallizes into cynicism on Nigeria’s determination on an about-face towards manifestly good governance and leadership now or in the future. My proclivity towards pejoratives is clearly because of the horrific conditions of the people, which remains multigenerational and perennially deadly. For in Nigeria (as in the rest of black Africa), it is the powerful and wealthy that the people recognize, reckon, acclaim, worship, and applaud, regardless of the genealogy of their power and wealth, whether it originates from rogueries or questionable ventures and sources. To wit, in the Yoruba proverb, as similarly coined in other languages: "Olówó laiyèmọ́." The poor are eternally forsaken—doomed in their plight—condition that results from the handiwork of past and present government and business leaders and exogenous players and entropic forces. And in the dastardly settings, hereupon upwell the natural question of: Cui bono? Clearly, the poor are rarely transformed.

Unquestionably, overall, the nation is mirabile visu, blessed with more saints than rogues; more heroes than victims, and even with the overwhelming horrors—most keep hope alive in their restive rage. And in such present and (possibly) future settings, I venture no positive pronouncements on concrete solutions to the nation’s complex incapacities and challenges, to sustainably transform for the collective. Regardless of the adamantine settings, I however, propound possible remedial strategies as part of other comprehensive list of integrated earthshaking solutions.

And borrowing from the great African American writer, James Baldwin; a radical restructuring of the nation is way overdue. A bottom-up advocacy of revolutionary not evolutionary mettle might be unavoidable. This would be the long-overdue structural social reform to end the people’s seemingly eternal miseries. This desideratum is not only for Nigerians, but for all black African peoples in socioeconomic bondage, who are all of unassailable and monumental dignity; all never wanting to make peace with chronic poverty. Nigeria belongs to all its people; and the people must not suffer perpetually, while a negligible few bask in perpetual preternatural wealth. The plebeians can still make Nigeria what it can become—a great nation for all, if in the right hands. That tectonic shift will be hard, but possible, as these are people born of tradition; endowed with spirit, and nurtured by pride, with strong heritage and cultures, amidst the decades of brutality and dispossessions. Great well springs of human talent abound in its people; most waiting to be released, to collectively uplift the nation out of importunate doldrums and slough of despondency. And in that pursuit, this book corroborates the miasma of despair and seeks solutions to that fugitive but objective reality.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank few individuals. My gratitude is to IUniverse my publishing company that provided support in the reissuance of this book. Also my appreciation and love goes to my daughter Brooke for her additional comments and advice along with comments from other generation of intimates for their commentaries on the draft copy. And über alles, I would like to thank the Almighty—the Divine Spirit for vouchsafing me with the life to see this re-publication to fruition.

PART ONE

GENERATIONAL MALVERSATION

I

I. Colonial and Neocolonial Heritage

Since millennia (c. 5000 years BCE—Before Contemporary/Christian Era), black Africa had always been exploited within and from without, subjugated nonpareil to enslavement. This dated back to the powerful dynasties of old Egypt Pharaohs, the Phoenicians, the Roman empires, Libyan Garamantes, Berbers, Assyrian, Macedonian, and Persian dominions—they exploited and enslaved the Nubian kingdoms of Kush now present-day Sudan/Ethiopia and surrounding kingdoms (especially those of Bantu-speaking black Africans that make up today’s Nigeria/Cameroon and other West African nations). They were sold into markets in the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, and Persian Gulf. Circa seventh century BC, the name Africa was coined by the Roman after the destruction of Carthage as Provincia Africa, a name taken from small Berber tribe named Afri, which later was called Ifriqiya by Arab invaders. From the ninth century onwards (for more than a millennium), black Africans were trafficked across the Sahara desert. Estimably, more than twenty million traversed the desert. This was millennia before the trans-Atlantic slave trade (i.e., the later Anno Domini enslavements).

So, the subcontinent’s conditions today harken back millennia. Cumulatively, the millennia-old evil was arguably, primus inter pares, mankind’s evilest atrocities in recorded history; all as a result of comparatively advanced capabilities—particularly armed superiority. The mental effects or psychological residues of slavery and colonialism on the black man still resonate millennia later. As the American polymath, Benjamin Franklin (also a slave owner) said in 1772 that those centuries were …a constant butchery of human species… and were …pestilential, detestable traffic in the bodies and souls of men. Such horrific legacy is apparently seen in the atavistic displays, policies, and actions that are sometimes confounding, indiscernible, or subtle, and or are outrightly ugly as to vivid impacts on black African nations today. That legacy of the precolonial genocide continues to leave insufferable violence and wretchedness, and innumerable deaths. Though a large population of black Africans cooperated in the slave trade even before foreign participation via tribal or ethnic enslavements.

The part black Africans played in the sinful shadow of complicity in that millennia of horrific injustices remain insufferable, even to the present day. This led, ab initio, debatably, to the loss and or death of close to fifty million of the fittest and able men and women, skewing black Africa’s wholesome and transformative development. This was the evil that precipitated the black race to be seemingly cursed eternally as aptly stated by Thomas Jefferson (the third U.S. president) in his book: Constitution and slavery, Notes on Virginia, 1782; that God’s justice would not sleep forever as to unremitting despotism on the centuries of injury and injustice on fellow mankind.

Sadly, religion, be it Christianity and Islam, regardless of their salvific teachings, was partly the origins of racial hatred towards to the black man, the source of millennia of misery for the race, among other causes. Specifically, both were the genesis of the global racial bias. Even though the black African had rich cultural traditions and its own religions centuries before the advent of both alien religions—the Bible-toting European crusaders (most camouflaging as New World explorers) and, the Arabian Islamic jihadists set the seminal beginnings of black Africa’s demise. Both ostensibly arrived in the subregion to spread their faith to indigenous peoples they believed were heathens, though with the sole objectives to exploit, enslave, brainwash, and dominate. The historical onslaught of these supposed proselytes of righteousness to an extent severed the rich and functioning cultural and religious order in each black African society. Post trans-Atlantic and trans-Saharan slavery, colonialism later cemented the irremediable damages done.

The millennia of iniquities of enslavement, colonialism, neocolonialism and neoliberalism, and overall modern-day subjugation and slight of the black race by all other races remain status quo. These were the origins and causes, in most part, for the behavioral and psychological self-immolating settings in black Africa. It resulted in massive and irreparable societal dislocation and chaos, conditions that reflect themselves to the present day. The subregion is beset with intrinsic self-doubt and self-immolating rivalries and internecine outcomes. In Nigeria, the historical enslavements and corollary pogroms in communities, and post-independence civil war and armed unrests, in part, shaped its psyche. These are debilitating conditions that clung to it in a way that led to its apparently, intractable inability to discernibly transform. To a degree, the subregion, seen through eyes of the lumpen masses is now morally, ethically, and economically, a deracinated wasteland of sorts.¹

This evil event birthed the global dissemination of the race in the tens of millions. Family unit disintegration; traditional and cultural morals and ethics dissolution; inferiority complexes development; self-hate and internecine pogroms; escalating poverty, misery and death; disease and pestilence; callous greed and barbarism; and economic and natural resource rape from within and without. And the present-day recorded modern-day slavery; gratuitous deaths and killings from within and without; seemingly preternatural and irremediable environmental pollution; wildlife endangerment and ecosystem destruction; etc., are contemporary realities. These remain the compendium of ills visited upon the subcontinent, dire concerns for the people. The historical events were the beginning of the breakdown of cultural order of Nigeria and other black African nations, which resulted in deracination and chaos.

The trauma of slavery and its consequences is a perpetual psychological burden that have repercussive, known or unknown outcomes and outlooks that resonate to the present day. It is incalculable, but no less valid in understanding the black man’s (especially leaderships’) modern sensibilities. Historically, while human chattels were being bartered for beads, trinkets, gunpowder, etc. by native kings or monarchs; today, that exchange is in precious and rare earth minerals, crude oil, agricultural produce, land banks and deforestation-logging, etc. in exchange for development in cosmopolitan lifestyles and settings. The grossly asymmetric and systemic pillage and cartage gallops ahead.

For, as a world-renowned sociologist, author, and activist W.E.B. Du Bois said in The Soul of the Black Folk (1903), it is the old-world phenomenon of contact amongst the diverse races of men that led to the characteristic of our age. The European civilization contact among others, with black Africa, formed the chapter in human action not pleasant to look back upon. This recorded war, mass murder, ancient slavery, modern-day slavery, extermination, and debauchery; in part, the perennial results of carrying civilization and proselytizing to expunge the black man’s supposed heathenism without spiritual and moral law was the epitome of evil. Nor does it altogether satisfy the conscience of the modern world to be told complacently that all this has been right and proper, the fated triumph of their strength over native people’s weakness, of their righteousness over so-called native evil, and of their superiority over local folks’ inferiority. There are too many ugly facts for the millennia of atrocities on the black man that can be explained away and brushed aside. And who are they to tell the black man our position and destiny on this earth, save that omnipresent being?

And the black race in his double consciousness remains in a psychological challenge. The race continues to struggle to collectively uplift itself; always looking at one’s self (sic) through the eyes of other races, especially that of the white race; unconsciously as superior and as the standards to emulate. This harkens back to that evil millennia; outcomes today exhibited by its leaderships of all and sundry stripes that unconsciously (in that master-peasant mentality of yore) immolate and immure their peoples generationally to satisfy their avarice, callous power and, and commanding foreign exploitative wiles.

Before foreign intervention, the ethnic and tribal communities that made up Nigeria had instructive experience in choosing group leaders such as monarchs, village or religious elders, along with peculiar dynasties in varying kingdoms. When the legacy of slavery and colonialism formed the historical backdrop of the agglomerated peoples, naturally a great number in their attitude were in determined opposition to and conquest of the unnatural brute actions unleashed on them by foreign elements. And centuries later, when a latter-day, colonial and postcolonial brute-force was added to that environment of men and ideas, the attitude of these brutalized peoples took three main forms. Firstly, a feeling of revolt and revenge; secondly, an attempt to adjust all thought and action to the will of the colonialist and later, its indigenous elite; and finally, a determined effort at self-realization and self-development despite contrary environmental settings. The historical influence of all these attitudes at various times can be traced in the history or displays of the collective peoples that make up Nigeria; the evolution of callous power and wealth within its early native elites of the 1920s through 1950s and postcolonial leaders, who all cared less for the masses. That is why Nigeria is the way it is today—postcolonialism—is decrepit—six decades of complacent and complaisance to bad governance by immolated peoples kept in ideological and psychological straitjacket.

Epigenetics explains these congenital behaviors as programmed in the human DNA. Debatably, by logical extension, the heritable psychological changes imprinted on the black man after slavery, coloniality, and overall general subjugation might have caused certain modifications on his cognitive expression and behavior. Arguably, that foreign deposit or modification as to behavior that induced the subsequent self-debilitating thoughts and actions or incapacitating mentality is now evinced in Nigeria, as in most of the black race. That congenital, self-serving addiction with respect to chronically selfish and callous mentality that never sees the collective as the indispensable gestalt for national or racial progress is the problem—perpetual conditions that hamstring grassroots’ well-being. Uncontrollably, the otherworldly tropism for supreme power and wealth over the right of others is the root cause of its incapacities. Such extreme actions and reactions remain factors that shape the people’s long-term generational behavior—devolving mindset that remains athwart harmonious and sustaining national development. In a way, the residual effects of the sepsis created a mode—permanent mindset in individual/familial self-preservation—overly avaricious prehensility in daily arrogating pursuits that is always organically injurious to the collective.

That precisionist focus on—power grab and supernumerary wealth pillage is innate, modal expression that is also expressed advertently and inadvertently, as self-doubt and self-hate and varying degrees of inferiority complexes crystallize especially in interactions with the Caucasian race—the historical and main slave master. Over centuries, such vulnerability to such ancient or atavistic influences or experiences shaped to a degree, the behavioral ethics of the Nigerian (or black African) man. That symptomatic expression has been shaped over millennia—an exposure to his relative worthlessness. Though that causality today in discernment, oftentimes is not always or frequently transparent or straightforward as time has healed much of the deep horrific experiences and wounds—but restively, raw fears and vindictive displays abound.

So in the ever-present disharmonies among native groups, it is likely for violence and destruction to be a near daily occurrence. It is commonplace to witness generational, systemic bloodletting, grand corruption and callousness in every sinew that run through its societies; for chronic material underdevelopment to remain; for it to experience the absconding of its raw wealth by extrinsic forces with the aid of intrinsic forces; to witness the recrudescent of modern-day trading in human chattels; to see the innate behavioral fatuity on display when interacting with other races, etc. The seemingly global aversion to the Negro’s unmoored or unchained progress has to do with imported prejudices from pre-colonial and colonial history. With this and all others, pre- and post-independence, created the solid foundation for alarmingly global racism and racist ideas mostly at the exclusive expense of the black man. Some of these sad settings are now seen on display in various vestigial forms and shapes. Therefore, in Nigeria, the epoch’s evil is still on display as atavistic, unconscious psychosocial impacts on the thinking faculties within most of its leaders and a large segment of the population, settings injurious to the people’s and national transformation.

The dislocation of the black man’s traditions, customs, cultures, and communities after the scramble for Africa given the capricious carve out of supposed nations by the colonists possibly, irretrievably decimated the subregion. Specifically, an agglomeration of different cultures, customs, traditions, beliefs, etc., was carelessly morphed into agglutinated landmass of nations. This was brought about via the usual gunboat diplomacy by Great Britain and other colonialists—superior weaponry to corral or conquer the supinely helpless native peoples. Local chiefs, kings, even traditional diviner-healers or shamans were fraudulently hoodwinked and subdued, while all traditional, cultural, religious, and psychosocial ways of thinking underwent subtle to harsh degradation, some lost within modern-day settings. Overall, tribal or ethnic disciple of yore was lost. And the colonial era was all about foreign administrations and business interests within the economy of this landmass, all based mostly on British or other foreign common law and statue, where non-African migrants, expatriates, and few native administrators oversaw governance via a system of indirect rule.

All historical exploiters and oppressors through to the present day had, and have, little understanding of the people, culture, customs, and even geography of the land. They successively laid, and continue to lay waste the subregion, plundering, and undermining the varying, then ancient kingdoms and present independent nations. In a way, the history of Nigeria, just as others in black Africa were settings, where over land, the Arab man and, over the seas, the Caucasian man and subsequent alien civilization completely subdued the subregion. This was via unspeakable slaughter and barbarism unleashed on peoples that were deemed as native barbarians that needed civilizing. For as German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck said in a conference in 1884 with other European nations, in divvying up Africa—that they would bring forth civilization via commerce. This was to be flavored with ostensibly civil structures athwart the bestial native settings alongside suppression of slavery. And since independence, the native leaders, in that atavism are, in many ways, shapes, and forms, continue the same carnage in their nations. Past and present indigenous leaderships continue to exhibit residual footprints of bygone centuries of alien subjugation.

In 1914, as part of the scramble for Africa and in support of the British Crown’s administrative convenience, Lord Frederick Lugard as governor-general, amalgamated the north and south portions of a landmass that later became Nigeria. Such conflation of different regions and peoples induced the dismantling of varying traditional and communal self-rule and intrinsic rich cultures. Nigeria was thus created without any regard for ethnic diversities, affinities, and inherent granular differences, as its peoples were overwhelmed and denatured by the great transplantation of alien cultures, beliefs, conceptions, and standards. Although these native communities had traded and often lived among (and fought) each over millennia, the agglomerated land that became Nigeria never existed as a social or political unit. The tribal groups reluctantly, even sanguinely accepted the conglomeration with pensive and restive moods (even to the present day).

In a way, one could quip that the British lassoed a landmass to form Nigeria, essentially to make exploitative governance less unwieldy—to be rather, structured and relatively civilized in its management strategy. It was with this goal in mind that the British arbitrarily divided the territory seemingly into three major regions; north, east, and west—coincidentally the three major ethnic groups: the Hausa-Fulani in the north, the Yoruba in the west and southwest, and the Igbo to the east and southeast. In addition to the major ethnicities there are three hundred other ethnic groups mostly from the central, northeast, south, and southeast sections of the nation. And within the incongruous settings, the north, which is of the Islamic faith appeared to look down disdainfully on the mostly Christian south. Even tensions and disgruntlement among other ethnic groups were recorded against the three dominant ethnicities.

Through the twenty-first century, Christianity was mostly proselytized in the southern regions, which fortuitously brought increased Westernization and comparatively, faster societal development. Given Islam’s influence in the north, the Hausa-Fulani had more affinity with the Arab north Africa, thus was relatively isolated from European influence. Even, the then principal northern leader, the Sardauna of Sokoto at his first visit to Lagos said that: The whole place was alien to our ideas and we found the members of the other regions might well belong to another world as far as we were concerned. Yet the Yoruba because of their early contact with Europeans had progressed far in education, commerce, and administration. The Igbo was similarly well educated and industrious as evinced in their high degree of individual assertion and achievement. This, the northerners envied and at the same time resented, settings made more disparate along the Christianity-Islam divide.

Thus what is now Nigeria was originally a large region composed of an estimated three hundred and fifty languages and various systems of traditional rule. It is the most populated nation, with the highest number of ethnic groups and languages in black Africa, possibly a cause for its failure to congeal and assume that leadership role in black Africa. And finding a constitutional arrangement that satisfied so many diverse interests proved to be continuingly a protracted business. The Crown’s federal structure that served as an apparent effective compromise; balancing regional interests—gave the North (given its size, its structured Islamic kingdom, and because it was seen as less of a threat to the colonist) a commanding position. This was because Islam was fully established before the crusades or colonists, and thus comparatively irrepressible. It correspondingly had a crystallizing stranglehold over the political process, even in present-day settings.

Thus with such power, the north held on to certain traditions and ways of governing such as Islam’s sharia law as opposed to degradation of certain traditional laws and beliefs in the south. When one evaluates the stark difference between the northern and southern states’ progress, a reason for the overwhelming destitute settings in the north might have been due to the relative absence of strong Western values in the region. This historically, brought on social and economic tensions between north and south that ushered in the crystallization of the Muslim-Christian societal dichotomies and flare-ups. These were exhibited frequently along the lines of socioeconomic clashes, vocational, class, indigeneity, ethnic or tribal incongruities; most often to do with property rights, i.e., land and water rights.

Clearly, the amalgamation set up conditions that sowed the seeds of mutual suspicion, platonic dislike, and gestating disunity decades later in the governance. The colonially engineered circumstances welded different entities together into undefined, geopolitical groups that lacked direction all for the imperialistic machine’s mercantilist purpose; to congeal the tribal and ethnic groups into a well-oiled machinery of foreign economic greed. Nigeria (like others in black Africa), so to speak, was the troubled child of slavery and later imperialism; its rich mosaic of peoples locked into a nation-state in which most had no part in its design.

And regarding social behavior, native governance styles, and overall societal disharmonies in the subcontinent, observations made by certain colonialists were quite apt. Over a decade after the amalgamation, Lord Frederick Lugard in The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, (1922), described (black) Africans as follows:

In character and temperament, the typical African of this race-type is a happy, thriftless, excitable person, lacking in self-control, discipline, and foresight. Naturally courageous, and naturally courteous and polite, full of personal vanity, with little sense of veracity, fond of music and loving weapons, as an oriental loves jewelry. His thoughts are concentrated on the events and feelings of the moment, and he suffers little from the apprehension for the future or grief for the past. His mind is far nearer to the animal world than that of the European or Asiatic and exhibits something of the animals’ placidity and want of desire to rise beyond the state he has reached. Through the ages the African appears to have evolved no organized religious creed, and though some tribes appear to believe in a deity, the religious sense seldom rises above pantheistic animalism and seems more often to take the form of a vague dread of the supernatural. He lacks the power of organization and is conspicuously deficient in the management and control alike of men or business. He loves the display of power but fails to realize its responsibility…. He will work hard with a less incentive than most races. He has the courage of the fighting animal—an instinct rather than a moral virtue…. In brief, the virtues and defects of this race-type are those of attractive children, whose confidence when it is won is given ungrudgingly as to an older and wiser superior and without envy…. Perhaps the two traits which have impressed me as those most characteristic of the African native are his lack of apprehension and his ability to visualize the future.²

While Lord Lugard’s pronouncements were insultingly racist, there remains some kernel of truth embedded in his propounded statement. His historical characterizations, observations, and accompanying subtle insults, undoubtedly are not unique to the black race. They are universal traits exercised in varying degrees by all races; some comparatively, far less destructive to societies. His posit aptly applies to most present-day native leaders, business elites, and others that have the wherewithal to transform their nations. Nevertheless, it portrayed prejudice from a man that, a fortiori, was to a degree, devoid of saintly pursuits as to racial parity. Though the black man’s callously outlandish and devil-may-care displays and manners unfortunately remain—conditions that are now detrimental to racial togetherness and transformation.³

The Crown seemly sought to transform Nigeria (and other poor and backward possessions) into prosperous territories, while transitioning to local rule and civilly functioning society—that outcome was never vividly realized. Hitherto, with respect to positive governing capacities, his prescient statement confirms the more than six decades of self-immolating policies and immiserating actions of its leaders. Even with pre- and postcolonial era of imperial renaissance (i.e., British technical experts, specialists, etc., to aid in agriculture, education, health, etc.); decades later most of the historical achievements and functioning structures have gone moribund. Arguably, all native leaderships failed to anticipate their pernicious or virulent actions athwart sustaining the transformational goals Great Britain sought and landmarked. In that effort to end the empire, at independence its premier or forerunner political leaders were simply self-serving players in their demands on political or governing powers. Their focus was never to empower the people—or for the sake of the greater good via collective, true nation-building.

Later, as historian and author, Martin Meredith in The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair, 2005, opined on Lugard’s observations, such statements remain applicable today given the saturating maladministration in black nations. He indicated the vast governments’ waste and looting, reckless debts racked up, as the ruling potentates in dramatic and spectacular view immiserated their nations, now with kleptocracy and political jungle systems permeating all nations in the subregion. Governance to him were the causes and consequences of all failures evinced within black African nations.

It was mainly Great Britain that sowed the seeds that produced vassal-like Nigerian leaders; some preselected or preordained to rule on behalf of Great Britain. This was a divide and conquer artifice to create native leadership elites, separating them from their people; even most of these native leaders believed they were superior to their people; some even believed they were Englishmen, most having loyalty to the Crown, while accepting its type of parliamentary government and culture as the gold standard. More ruinous though was that most were imbued with shared unprincipled qualities, and, a congenitally corrupt vision of domination, requiring the people to do their bidding, and not to unshackle the people from perennial subjugation by arresting internal and external exploitation. These forerunner leaders did not seek wholeheartedly to break down barriers of ethnic divide, or, to build healthy self-esteem, self-worth, and seek love within people undergirded by solid and sustainable socioeconomic settings. They consciously or unconsciously, prevented a period of genuine transition from bottom-up, to take root throughout the populace.

And even decades after independence the British and overseas nations, as whole, continue to be successful in their extortionary economic overtures and ventures in Nigeria and in the subregion, given the helplessness induced, in part, in colonial mentalities and jaded amour propre complexes that beset all in subregion—supine conditions that afford economic access to foreign exploiters in the continued asymmetric trade and investment deals. And as each political and ethnic/tribal faction; in trying to assert power over their rivalry, end up in internecine unrests, mayhem, warfare, etc. In Nigeria, six decades later, that futile search for transitory and sustainable progress remains fugitive.

The inferiority complexes were vividly on display during the colonial era. For example, in the grand scheme of things, as part of modern Western political and intellectual culture, France (another colonial nation among others), benignly indoctrinated fledgling native leaders’ of their relative helplessness and inferior standing. Initially, a great number of francophone leaders rejected their heritage, family law and customs. In the 1950s/1960s, two exemplars of such foreign influence among others, was of Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal and Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire. In that age of Western enlightenment, both were seemingly brainwashed to scorn their ancestral cultures and religion while imbibing Western civilization—philosophy to make them civilized black Frenchmen. Even Senghor recalled that he among other native founding fathers gladly accepted the values of the West, its discursive reason and its techniques… .Our ambition was to become photographic negatives of the colonizers; black-skinned Frenchmen. He even voiced feelings of inferiority as to the black skin, knotty hair texture, flat noses…feelings of disdain that made him to disregard the black man’s ancient and rich civilization; saying that …our people…, secretly, cause us shame. Houphouët-Boigny was also of that thought process.

In a sense, with respect to colonialist governance that deviated from parliamentary democracy, as President Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire matter-of-factly said, that Democracy is a system of government for virtuous people. Imputing, in essence, the denigration of his own people as unworthy of an open field of participatory governance. And since independence, there appears to be self-evident truth in such assessments in the subcontinent’s woeful failures. Some akin native leaders and some of its peoples as no better than robbers, terrorists, thugs, etc. The result: A people and nation plundered—in despair and disrepair. These are generational patronage and patrimonial systems and mafia-like leaderships that remain gloriously grubby and ferociously prehensile, common and unsanctified men and women. And when one limns the failings and stupidities of these past and present leaderships, especially of presidential and legislative perfidies; that mandate continues. Thus, all are legitimate objects deserving relentless criticisms and utter contempt.

Later, both having found true enlightenment appeared to act against that self-immolating mindset. Yet subconsciously, they and all successor leaderships and native populations have not unshackled themselves from that stigma and transition towards that much-needed collective self-love or self-esteem—attributes needed to galvanize nationalist unity in pursuit of that evasive organic progress (Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa, A History of the Continent Since Independence, 2005).

Simply, the continuation of centuries old (possibly millennia old) color stigma has subconsciously ingrained the belief in white supremacy (even supremacy of other races). This continues to hinder most Nigerians, most black Africans, and a large population within the black race globally; to free themselves totally and boundlessly, in order to aspire and grow in mind and spirit—thinking confidently as a being of great self-worth with that boundless can-do spirit. Overall, the vast ramifications of millennia of subjugation through colonialism and neocolonialism, be it direct and indirect adverse impacts on his state of mind, health, education, socio-economy, thought process, etc. might be irreparable—an indelible stigma physiologically and mentally injurious.

This is because, as described by the eminent African Scholar, Basil Davidson, the colonialists’ institutions and authorities created nation-states that have ended up being the black man’s burden. An imprecation that subjugated ethnic groups within specific, superficial political spaces; settings that were, in part, the genesis of Nigeria’s (and all others) fractious, anfractuous, and social pathologies. Hence since independence, the colonialists’ stratagems and displays were imbibed by Nigeria’s pioneer politicians; neocolonialists that came into overnight power and wealth. Thus, entered the apparent founding fathers: Ahmadu Bello (Fulani), Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (Hausa), Obafemi Awolowo (Yoruba), and Nnamdi Azikiwe (Igbo), and others. Ostensibly in their pursuit of a Nigeria Project, each simply promoted their own ethnic proclivities and regional interests; and provincialism went awry. With the peoples standing at very unequal levels of development this culminated in settings that prompted Chief Obafemi Awolowo in 1947 to quip that, Nigeria is not a nation. It’s a mere geographical expression. There are no ‘Nigerians’ in the sense as there are ‘English,’ ‘Welsh,’ or ‘French.’ The word ‘Nigerian’ is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria from those who do not.

Similarly, in 1948, Abubakar Balewa stated that, Since 1914, the British Government has been trying to make Nigeria into one country, but the Nigerian people themselves are historically different in their backgrounds, in their religious beliefs and customs, and do not show themselves any sign of willingness to unite…. Nigerian unity is only a British intention for the country. In the similar vein, in 1966, a Yoruba military governor, Adeyinka Adebayo also echoed acerbically, the same sentiment. To wit, an agglomeration of peoples that resulted in a cohabitation without marriage.

Yet with such gnomic statements, they individually all had ulterior motives that played pivotal roles in the relatively unsavory governance to the present day. And as part of being in effectual progress, most were drawn to major infrastructural projects to ostensibly aid rapid industrialization disregarding agriculture, and its weak private sector. Ever since, government led a dirigiste interventionist approach to the economy. Leaderships had this propensity regarding nation-building not to opt for smaller, cheaper, simpler grassroots-based solutions, rather they wistfully programmed their progress based on existing Western structures and economic or industrial pursuits. They for example, sought superfluous, high capital-intensive technologies or industries, especially when the funding came from the West, even though