Some countries of Africa, like Nigeria, have doubtful national records. It has nothing to do with a certain phobia for right figures. Largely, for the fact of being politically and morally unwilling, to respect the sanctity of “facts and figures”. Nigeria for instance has not come up for many decades, with clean, reliable census records that clearly depict demographic realties as it stands. Often times, its Central Bank published inflation figures, for instance, is so hugely disagreeable with what stands on the ground. A staggering figure of starving majority, against a flimsy statistics of a rebounding economy. Who lied? The well placed information technocrat, living off his country’s patronising perks of office, or the starry-eyed market woman pushed into the pit, where she ply her trade? One only learns the truths of Africa’ natural conditions at up close acquaintance with its environment, how development reports, and news items, are so often falsely served up in the public media. Statistics, like histories, and other important national records only serve as tools and technical foundations for the structures of national and regional enterprises. Aside Africa’s economic standstill, it’s social and media infrastructure, have as well been captured, and subjected to the same ethical torture and ruin, by same political means and forces, that foiled its aspiration to realistic developments. I saw a documentary quite recently on one of British channels, how forensic investigations yielded cheerful results, thus unveiling murders, crimes, and injustices, done to people, and to state, after many years of cold responses from traditional, orthodox mechanisms. Such societies like Britain, that pay genuine respect and place sacred value on accurate information, and how such records affects the wellbeing of society and its development structures, has no choice, but do well. Records have emerged on erstwhile BBC executive, Jimmy Saville, who committed moral blunders, and the nation would later make sincere and documented efforts to bring justice to bear after a long span of indolent silence. Such crucial national moral landmarks ties inextricably to the critical fabric of its national developments. How and why? No nation develops in the positive sense of the word without recourse to the foundations of moral and ethical justice. So many years after, the Scotland Lockerbie bomber from Libya would face the international criminal court of justice, got a sentence for his grievous murder and crime against humanity.
Charles Taylor of Liberia after rigorous inquest and investigative efforts would get a fifty year jail term for his hideous involvements in the murders that claimed millions of lives in Sierra Leone, and his native Liberia. These efforts at justice were mainly instituted and championed by America and Europe, with only collaborative inputs coming from Africa. America went to a far moral and ethical distance, when it tried and sentenced its nationals involved in the Halliburton’s bribe scandal which took place in Nigeria. To date, no Nigerian involved in that huge, notorious scam has been brought to book. The webs of political scheming have brought that case to a dead end. Africa resents the paradigm of moral justice. Justice has universal gravity. It weighs same on both the ephemeral and eternal scale. The Watergate scandal that saw off Richard Nixon out of the white house, should serve an iconic political lesson to those who come to power in Africa, through dubious means, even when unvoiced. Africa for many years turned deaf ears to the cringing voices of suppressed atrocities committed by its citizens, politicians, public servants, religious zealots, until such crimes go cold and information-dismembered. For Instance, the Oputa panel in Nigeria, and facts emerging from it, stay cold today in grave of subverted justice. The famed Okigbo panel, with all its formidable findings, which could institute a new legacy of political accountability and reforms, was smudged and desecrated, today lies prostrate in the same cemetery of national historical losses. The information repositories of many African nations would like Nigeria’s, serve chilling records of criminal raids of national vaults and institutional assets, classified information, brutally suppressed by political means. What one seeks to find in a well run information infrastructure, can never be less of facts and figures, driven by passion, propensity for truth and ethical honesty, aimed to serve the highest purpose of authentic national and regional developments. A nation or continent can only harvest what it sows. Africa reaps mainly from its storehouse of decades of ethical and institutional falsehoods. Graduates from its schools and colleges put forward certificates, diplomas and degrees achieved through questionable scholarship. How would such a nation or continent dream of genuine Technology transfer and its blessings of economic miracles when indeed its foundations are murky, only few inches down in wet quicksand? The western world understands these peculiar complexities that has wound up the polity of the African region, and gladly would turn its face to the other side; so long Africa’s familiar illusions continue to fuel Europe and America’s dominance and economic prosperity. For those who understand the technicalities and subtle maneuverings of the politics of the western world, would easily take pity on Africa. Even at this present spot in time, Africa is indeed, at the bottom of real development indices; and has yet to come to terms with realities of such shameful depravity. Africa is yet face down on the table, working “tirelessly hard”, serving up false hopes, flying make-believe rhetoric’s of its abundant promise and potentials. A good way I suggest, for Africa to come out of the woods, is not by such hefty optimism and self-indulgence. It is by making genuine, realistic efforts, to lay a new foundation like the likes of Singapore, India and China-speaking the truths to oneself in plain words, in self-dignity. Thirteen years down into the twenty first centuries, Africa is still riveting on the fading spins and fantasies of the last centuries gone, imagining how great it can become in the decades ahead. Such staggering Illusions follow hard after those who only dream but fail to work.
Steve Orji
Brainpac@yahoo.com
United Kingdom
Comments