By Edwin Madunagu
Olufemi Taiwo’s Africa must be modern proposes, and I agree, that the brand of modernity that colonialism brought to Africa was fake, not genuine; that this fake colonialist modernity did not, in particular, come with modern institutions - for advancing democracy, human rights and freedom of thought. But then, these are among the pillars of genuine modernity, which developed in Europe, the colonisers’ home.
Olufemi Taiwo’s Africa must be modern proposes, and I agree, that the brand of modernity that colonialism brought to Africa was fake, not genuine; that this fake colonialist modernity did not, in particular, come with modern institutions - for advancing democracy, human rights and freedom of thought. But then, these are among the pillars of genuine modernity, which developed in Europe, the colonisers’ home.
Africans, Taiwo says, are hostile to
modernity because of the latter’s historical connection with colonialism (case
of “throwing away the baby with the bath water”). He says that Africans,
especially its elite and intellectuals, live a double life with regard to
modernity: their attitudes to modernity are contradictory, hypocritical and
selective in the sense that they just pick aspects of modernity that are
convenient for them and reject those that are inconvenient or throw challenges.
The author argues that Africans largely confuse Modernity with Westernisation.
And I would add: Africans also confuse Westernisation with Imperialism.
In the second segment of this series, I
said that Modernity confronts me with what I have called contradictions of
progress. This is what I mean: Chinua Achebe’s four novels, Things fall apart,
No longer at ease, The arrow of God and Anthills of the Savannah, give me
successive pictures of an African society just before its encounters with
European merchants and Christian missionaries to these encounters, to
formal colonialism, to independence, to post-independence civilian administration,
down to military dictatorship. This is a long and tortuous movement
from primitivity and barbarity. Taking a long view of history, we see
that this particular society, and the African continent as a whole, have
made tremendous progress.
While not denying the reality of human
progress, we also know that there are existence-threatening problems with
Nigeria today, and that some of these problems are tied up with elements
of progress recorded. The composite picture (of progress and problems) is
the contradictions of progress. Who is not struck by the contradictions of:
coexistence of abject poverty and obscene wealth, hunger and waste; big
personal mansions with almost un-motorable access roads; “natives” living in
mud houses very close to ultra-modern cement factories; simultaneous increase
in crude oil production and prices of petroleum products, and the co-existence
of that reality with the virtual destruction of host communities’ means of
sustaining and reproducing life?
Who is genuinely interested in the
future of Africa and will not endorse Taiwo’s critique of state and society in
the continent: abject poverty, anti-science and anti-knowledge culture,
corruption, state robbery, ethnicity, religious intolerance and fundamentalism,
violence, godfatherism in politics and in bureaucracy, promotion of mediocrity,
cultural philistinism and backwardness and socio-economic and political
primitivity?
I have already proposed that to go
beyond denunciation and move toward acting on Taiwo’s manifesto, that is,
transforming African societies’ anti-modernist features, the manifesto itself
has to be liberated from its “idealist and capitalist integument.”
The point can be put differently: Anyone who has seriously given a thought to
the question of radical transformation in Nigeria, or any other country in
Africa for that matter, will not have any difficulty in agreeing that you
cannot take two steps in implementing Taiwo’s manifesto at any level of the
civil society or the state before encountering the mighty hand of the capitalist
ruling class. Your first step will alarm the real owners of the land and put
them on alert; the second step will result in a collision.
You will collide with the
powers-that-be unless you are executing the reform programme without lifting,
or without a plan to lift, some layers of the state-imposed existential problem
burden that the masses presently carry. You will encounter the capitalist power
brokers unless you, as “prophet without arms,” are planning your “crusade”
without a plan to redistribute and redeploy our national resources. You
will encounter them unless you are planning a transformation that will not
threaten the sanctity of the “free market” or the “contract system”.
Eric Hobsbawn has described the
commitment of the ruling class and its government, at all levels, to “handing
over human society to the (allegedly) self-controlling and wealth-or even
welfare-maximising market, populated (allegedly) by actors in rational pursuit
of their interests” as “market fundamentalism”, which is “closer to theology
than economic reality”.
Taiwo’s identification of social
agencies to lead the transformation is implicit, rather than explicit,
descriptive rather than concrete. He says: “Africa is not lacking in the seed
personnel for this transformation. As in all situations of progress, it does
not require large numbers to move things forward. But it does require the kind
of leadership that has the fortitude to realise the path that the continent is
right now will only make us permanent research assistants to the rest of
professional community. Such leadership will have to be supported and advised
by intellectuals equipped with the right kind of fierce pride and confidence in
their abilities, the kind of self-respect that Africans seem to lack at all
levels at the present times…” (pages 118-119).
You may see that Taiwo’s propositions
are ideologically neutral- in the sense that it is neither Right nor Left nor
Centrist. In concrete terms, there is no political party or group in Nigeria
that will not agree to endorse them. Most will, in fact, be ready to
appropriate and integrate them into their programmes and manifestos. They are
like free education, which can fit into a very broad range of ideological
orientations. In the propositions can be found large doses of harmless
nationalism, which no one will oppose. You will observe this feature runs
through Taiwo’s Africa must be modern: absence of class analysis, even
implicit; all we have are We, Africans, African intellectuals; among others, we
are all to blame. The closest to class analysis is Taiwo’s contempt for
Africa’s “wealthy classes” (page 139).
Chapter Three of Africa must be modern
is titled: The knowledge society and its rewards. A knowledge society, in the
sense of Taiwo, is one that is “dedicated to the expansion of the frontiers of
knowledge”. By this, he does not mean the sponsoring of “only that
knowledge that promotes immediate relevance to practical everyday concerns,”
but also knowledge that may not, or does not seem to have, immediate practical
application, but geared towards the “liberation” and “cultivation” of the human
mind. Incidentally, argues Taiwo, knowledge societies “are often the same
societies with more robust economies.” (Page 105).
The essence of Chapter Four, titled
Count, measure and count again, is captured by this statement: “In other words,
at the commencement of the second decade of the 21st Century, the government of
the Federal Republic of Nigeria and its constituent federated states do not
know roughly how many people inhabit their physical space or how that
population is distributed among the units” (Page 127).
In Chapter Five, with the title,
Process, not outcome:, not outcome: Why trusting your leader, godfather, ethnic
group or chief may not best secure your advantage, Taiwo argues for the “rule
of law” and “due process” in place of the “rule of men” and “godfatherism” that
currently predominate in African societies.
Chapter six, which is the concluding
chapter, is titled Against the philosophy of limits: installing a culture of
hope. The chapter summarises and integrates the arguments of the Introduction
and the preceding five chapters, and then, denounces the “philosophy of limits”
and upholds the “culture of hope”. He says on page 204: “We always look, not at
what enables us, but what disables us and we agree with our rulers-our
patrons-that Africa’s problems can only or ultimately be solved by divine
intervention…” This philosophy of resignation Taiwo rejects. I also reject it.
Femi Taiwo says in his Africa must be
modern that “capitalism is the economic component of modernism” (page xvii).
But he also says that he embarked on the writing of this book and, of course,
on the research which gave rise to the book because he wanted to “equip those
who wish to change the world with left interpretations: (page 6). The two
statements are not contradictory. For me, he has written a book, which anyone
worried by the present sad situation in Africa, in Nigeria -anyone from
whatever ideological or political orientation - will benefit from.
In conclusion: Africa must be
modern implicitly rejects the central claim of my book, The making and
unmaking of Nigeria (2001), namely, that the “blame” for the state in which
Nigeria finds itself today cannot be shared equally between all classes, social
groups and segments of society. This was how I put it in that book: “The main
feature of Nigerian history, truthfully observed and researched, is that it is
a simultaneous process of making and unmaking. In other words, while certain
social forces are making and building the country, others are unmaking and
dismantling it.” (Page 25). Taiwo’s rejection of this thesis notwithstanding, I
commend and recommend his book, Africa must be modern.
• Concluded.
No comments:
Post a Comment