Understanding The Poverty Of Nigeria By Ahmed Oduntan

Months ago, I swore my soul and senses to the task of developing a manual devoted to the grandiose Art and Science of Nation Building. This endeavor takes tons of lonesome philosophizing. At this juncture, However, in all honesty, I should confess that a lone intellectual masturbation in one’s closet is the unhealthiest strategy to devise solutions to challenges and problems that are not only national in scope but also continental in scale. Our continent, our nation is haunted by a twenty centuries old problem. The work that must be done and the solutions needed transcend individual genius.

To this end, I have most times complemented my efforts by luring my Negroid brothers and sisters into an intellectual intercourse about the challenges we face and how they can be solved. Of the solutions, sometimes we reach a bipartisan orgasm but sometimes we do not.

It is sad to note that I have found that many do not have a grasp or handle on our problems. No matter how learned we are, if we do not have a handle to our problems, we are condemned to mishandle it. And the only success we get from mishandling our problems is we create more problems.

To give us an objective handle, allow me the privilege to borrow the scientific method of historical materialism which says “to know the present, we must look into the past and to know the future, we must look into the past and present.” If we are serious, the scientific method of historical materialism combined with the Tree Problem Analysis gets us to the roots of our problems.

Though our challenges are twenty centuries old, continental in scale but to avoid complications and further obfuscating our web of problems for an already lethargic and apathetic population, it is very important to zoom in and maintain an eagle eyed focus on our nation Nigeria.

Our continent in general and our nation in particular is in a chokehold. We are stuck between the deadly claws and jaw of a predatory international capitalist beast. We are like the misfortuned impala held between the jaws of an imperial tiger. And for over two thousand years we continue to feel the bite force of this beast on our jugular vein. Unfortunately however, we continue to be wishful and prayerful that this insatiable beast loses his appetite and let us loose and roam freely as we desire and deserve. Let us assume that by some miracle, we are freed from the deadly jaws of the tiger, the true Law of Nature holds that if not for this tiger but surely for its cubs, the impala is destined to be food. As a matter of fact, benevolent Nature will invite the vultures and hyenas to the party. Unfortunately, what the spirit has refused to reveal to us in spite of our piousness and religiosity is that this is the true and objective Law of Nature neither designed by the predator nor the prey.

However vicious the Law of Nature appears to be, there lies an inherent dialectical benevolence which affords every creature no matter how lowly their position is on the food chain an inherent defense mechanism.

It is unsafe to continue to provoke you by reducing us to the wretched impalas of the earth. I must at once abandon this metaphorical adventure and leave the rest to your imagination.

Though our situation is bleak and dire like that of the impala, yet we are humans and we are Black too. There is an abundance of historical and archaeological evidence that we are the mother of all civilizations. And being human, at the core of our being is a restless desire to be free. We the Black Man of Africa suffered fourteen centuries of Trans-Sahara (Arab) slavery. And again, for four hundred and fifty years we was prey to the Trans Atlantic slave trade during which an overly conservative estimate of twenty million men, women and children were bound and thrown into the darkest hours of human history. Africa for those four centuries and half suffered a vicious man power drain that continues to this day disguised in a different pyjamas. The subtle tunic of mass immigration (Japaism) which is a topic deserving a separate surgery.

Again, when the monster of slavery let Africa loose and while our fathers were still clinking their wine calabashes toasting to the end of slavery, we were immediately beset with the clanging chains of colonialism and apartheid. For over seven decades and a half, we were victims of a direct vicious political, economic and sociocultural and mental subjugation and exploitation that further dehumanized Africans on African soil.

Our natural resources were excavated, expropriated and exported for the building and betterment of another continent. Also, under a system of forced labour, another euphemism for slavery, Africans in Africa were forced to till and toil the soil under the crack of whips and the slice of bayonets. We suffered the evils of apartheid and racism on our own ancestral lands.

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We have always fought long and hard, tooth and nail to break these chains. Yet, like a chameleon, this insatiable beast, this hydra headed monster has an inexhaustible wardrobe. When we are lured into thinking it has disappeared, it reappears in a much more subtle colour not easily discernible to human senses except by a genius grasp of the dialectical nature of human and transnational relations.

In devising a way out of our problems, we shall hold no grudge against the Law of Nature. We must embrace it as a scientific fact to aid our understanding and also employable as a methodology for our reaction.

In all objectivity, we must agree with the scientificity of the Darwinist theory of Natural Selection ( Survival of the Fittest ).

Within that same theory, we the Black Man of the Motherland, the children of the Sun, we the Matriarch of all Civilizations must relearn and draw inspiration from our great, hidden and forgotten history. We must take advantage of Charles Darwin’s theory of Change. The theory of Evolution. We must break forth from the bottom of the food chain.

The food chain, the global internationalist capitalist ecosystem where Africa has been systematically designed and economically compartmentalized to be the village of the world while Europe is the city. In case you are lost, it is kindergarten knowledge that to grow and develop the city, all raw natural resources have to be drained and mobilized from the village. The village is underdeveloped to develop the city. Thus, any such Art and Science of Nation Building that is ignorant of this dialectical reality is doomed to failure.

However, a dialectical grasp of our situation is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Our objective end is to upend the global predatory capitalist food chain which for centuries has reduced us to impalas in a jungle where the Law of Nature is the arbiter of life or death.

Confronted with this arduous generational task, we can either choose to bend our backs and attack the task or turn our backs and abandon the task. Should we choose the latter, for how long I ask, shall we the children of the Sun, our sons and daughters, our nephews and nieces continue to bend their knees in perpetual subjugation and vicious exploitation by this global predatory system?

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

If you have come with me this far, then I owe you a sense of direction but please accept that I dare not lay claim to all the genius in this matter. However, from hours of lone pondering and meditation, hours of intellectual intercourse among ourselves, it is my humble submission that the present crop of Nigerian leaders are lost souls. They are aware of our situation but they are a willing tool in the bloody hands of the ruthless global capitalist hegemony. They are deformed leaders. Their scrotum is empty of the twin balls of nationalism and patriotism.

Our only hope lies in our ability to organize the mass of the people into a literate Army of New Nigerians. A Brigade of Brotherhood with presence in every corner of our country. We agree that national disunity is rife. A sense of nationhood, of belonging to the nation is at an all time low yet bridge-building, national solidarity are the limestones of Nation Building.

Also, an hydra headed Movement, such as without a leader but wherein anyone and everyone shall possess the quality and depth to take the baton and continue in spite of the heavy artillery of attacks and suppression that we must expect to come our way.

As stated earlier, all of the how-tos of organizing and strategy are beyond individual genius. Only a constant national ideological and intellectual orgy can bring us to that climax.