Nigerias Moshood Abiolas reparation efforts in perspective Yorubas and Japan are in the same development before slavery and colonization... MKO Abiola.. #REPARATIONSNOW! Mko Abiola’s forgotten reparations crusade Towards the end of 2012, an explosive new book by Africa’s first literature Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, titled: ‘Harmattan Haze on an African Spring’ was quietly released to the reading public. I guess this must have been about the same time that Professor Chinua Achebe’s highly controversial and contentious book, ‘There was A Country: A personal history of Biafra” also emerged on the country’s literary firmament. The focus of Achebe’s book is Nigeria and the civil war that rocked the country to its very foundations between 1969 and 1971. On its part, Soyinka’s latest literary offering takes an incisive look at the African condition exploring how her tragic and bitter past has shaped the present but may also contain those elements necessary for the redemption of a much abused continent. ‘Harmattan Haze on an African Spring’ is a characteristically ‘Soyinkaesque’ tour de force traversing diverse spheres of human knowledge including history, geography, political economy, literary and visual arts, philosophy and psychology among several others. Without exculpating Africans from responsibility for the present condition of the continent – its backwardness, ceaseless conflicts and deepening underdevelopment – Soyinka insists that a confrontation with the continent’s history and a refusal to sweep its lessons under the carpet is foundational to understanding Africa and charting a viable path to her socio-economic, moral and political rejuvenation. I am not very much concerned in this piece with Soyinka’s rather controversial advocacy of a return to pristine pre-colonial African spirituality as part of the necessary processes for the salvation of the continent. Like Achebe, Soyinka extols the tolerance, accommodation and liberal spirit of African traditional religions comparing this to the perceived totalising authoritarianism and hegemonic aspirations of Islam and Christianity on the continent. Traditional African spirituality, he believes, has a lot to teach contemporary Africa on the virtues of religious tolerance but also stemming the destructive tide of sectarian extremism in diverse parts of the continent. For me, the most moving parts of Soyinka’s rendering of our history are those in which he dwells at length on the slave trade and its’ terribly dehumanizing implications for the black race. Soyinka’s vivid imagery confirms Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s press statement on 28th June, 1961, that “From the beginning of recorded history, the black man has been the conspicuous butt of all manner of inhuman treatment. In the palaces of the Arabian potentates – both in the Middle East and in North Africa – he was degraded and enslaved. When the so-called ‘Dark Continent of Africa’ was discovered, the European marauders hunted him down like a common beast, captured him, and sold him into slavery in the Americas and West Indies.” Awolowo goes on to detail the negative consequences of colonialism and neo-colonialism for the African continent. Of course, we are aware of Walter Rodney’s seminal work, ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’, which proved incontrovertibly that the very same exploitative forces of slavery and colonialism responsible largely for the underdevelopment of Africa also played pivotal roles in the socio-economic and industrial ascendancy and triumphalism of the West. Yet, there are those who, despite these glaring facts of history, see in the position of scholars like Rodney only an attempt to push onto others the responsibility for Africa’s predicament while denying Africans of any culpability. This was certainly the view of President Barak Obama, when in his speech to Ghana’s parliament on Saturday, July 11, 2009 he said: “It is easy to point fingers, and to pin the blame for these problems on others. Yes, a colonial map that made little sense bred conflict, but the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants.” This kind of superficial reading of history will surely benefit from the following insight from one of Africa’s foremost scholars, the late Professor Claude Ake: “The slave trade disorganized and devastated Africa on such scale that she was forever available for domination by virtually everyone. Not surprisingly the Europeans carved up Africa among themselves, colonized her and proceeded to complete the work of disorganization and debasement which had begun with the slave trade. A great deal of emphasis has been placed on the detrimental economic effects of colonization. But this was not necessarily its most damaging effect. In all probability, it contributed less to our problems than the political and cultural policies. Colonialism was premised on the inferiority of the colonised. That premise is the very content of the ‘civilising mission’”. Ruminating on these issues reminded me, once again, of the indelible role of the late Chief M.K.O. Abiola in the history both of Nigeria and Africa. Mention the name Abiola today, and what comes to mind are either his numerous philanthropic activities or his bid for the country’s presidency in the historic but cruelly aborted June 12, 1993, presidential election. But Abiola meant much more than these. He was easily the wealthiest black man in his life time. A key mission he adopted later in his life was the vigorous campaign for the payment of reparations to Africa for the depredations of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism. Abiola selflessly deployed his enormous resources towards the attainment of this end of correcting a historic injustice and monumental crime against humanity. Given a rationale for his crusade in a speech in London in 1992, Abiola declared “Our demand for reparations is based on the tripod of moral, historic and legal arguments. Who knows what path Africa’s social development would have taken if our great centres of civilisation had not been razed in search of human cargo? Who knows how our economies would have developed…?”. In December 1990, Abiola convened and sponsored the first world conference on reparations at the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Lagos, where he formally inaugurated the reparations campaign. The campaign moved to the continental level in June 1991 when the Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity now the African Union as well as the 55th Council of Ministers of the Union passed a resolution recognizing the injustice of slavery in Africa and affirmed the continent’s right to reparations. The Eminent Persons Group set up to steer the reparations campaign convened the first Pan-African conference on Reparations in Abuja in April 1993 with participants drawn from Africa, Asia, America and Europe. The conference issued a communiqué reiterating the imperative of paying reparations to Africa for the physical and psychological brutality, socio-cultural dislocation and economic dysfunction caused by slavery, colonialism and imperialism in general; acts of injustice without parallel in human history. All of these efforts were personally funded by Chief MKO Abiola even though the Babangida regime later donated the sum of $500,000 to the cause. It was as the campaign was gaining momentum that Abiola ventured into politics to contest Nigeria’s presidency on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) – a distraction that led to his eventual tragic fate. But why did MKO abandon the reparations crusade? Could he have seen that paying reparations to largely corrupt, decadent and oppressive African states would be like pouring water down a basket? Could he have noticed that most African leaders in their brazen contempt for and mistreatment of their own people are no better than the pre-colonial slave masters and their African collaborators? Could he have noticed that the majority of African leaders have slavishly and voluntarily sold their intellects to western International Financial Institutions like the IMF and World Bank and lack the capacity to pursue autonomous policies that can liberate the socio-economic potentials of an otherwise well endowed continent? Indeed, Professor Nworisara Nwolise of the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan, recently noted that if a slave ship were to berth on the ports of African countries today, millions would voluntarily scramble to get aboard and be relieved of the agony of an existence no different from hell on earth. Surely, it cannot get worse than that. True, the case for reparations to Africa for the depredations of slavery and colonialism remains unassailable. If the Jews have been paid billions in reparations for the holocaust that lasted roughly twelve years, how much should Africa be recompensed for dehumanizing slavery and colonialism that lasted over 400 years, deprived the continent of the best of her human resource while also mercilessly exploiting her natural and mineral resources? But right now, African leaders simply lacks the moral integrity to make a case for reparations. Indeed, the way Africa is largely misgoverned today simply validates the case of those who argue that the slave raiders actually did the captured slaves a favour by liberating them from the ‘heart of darkness”. What a great pity.
Posted on: Sat, 17 May 2014 18:22:48 +0000
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