I was listening to the famous reality show host, Steve Harvey, on the UAE’s 50th anniversary with rapt attention, digesting every word he was saying. It was a point of reflection for me. He said two things that made me cringe, remembering what our people have been through in Africa, at the hands of their leaders.
Pure love, according to Mr Harvey, drove the vision that transformed the UAE from a barely known country to a bride of the entire world. It was a desert, avoided by both young and old. 50 years ago, Dubai, one of UAE’ s main cities, was a desert. It took the visionary leadership of the emirate to create a thriving tourism and commercial hub out of a desert of nearly 50° temperature.
From a little known fishing village of about 700 to 800 people in the early 18th century, the city has come to be identified with riches, technological specimen, masterful architectural designs, fast cars and other sorts of business.
Oil played a very key role in the acceleration of Dubai’s speedy development. My people say that one is rescued with what he has. Again I agree with Mr Harvey that vision creates money, not the other way round. A visionless person with the hugest amount of money and zero vision is bound to make a shipwreck of the entire thing.
It reminds me of a proverb told by Jesus in the book of Luke chapter 15 of a prodigal son who took his patrimony and wandered off to an unknown land. He acted affluent for a time but plunged into the abyss of abject poverty. It was bad enough for him to start eating what the pigs left off!
God has endowed Africa with lots of mineral and human resources. No doubt. But that’s where it ends. Let us take Nigeria as a case study. There is oil in Nigeria just as it is in the United Arab Emirates. Nigeria is the sixth oil producing country in the entire world.
It earns trillions of petrodollars annually but still at the moment houses the largest population of poor people in the world. Recently , the finance minister of the country made a heart breaking announcement. In a shameful pronouncement, she said that about 109 million of Nigeria’s 200+ million population risk falling below the poverty line in 2022!
The problem of Africa is beyond corruption. There is nowhere in the world where there is no corruption. Excessive corruption and maladministration spring from a deep seated oppressive and callous wickedness to fellow Africans. The problem was not spotted earlier. The oppressive nature of the black man aided slavery and colonialism because before the white man ever stepped into black Africa, there had been local slavery, feudalism, wife snatching, savage butchery and other heinous things.
The clever white man, like late Prof Achebe said in Things Fall Apart, put a knife on the thin rope that held society together and they fell apart. All he needed to do was paint a few people who he imposed on others. The black men killed themselves to please the colonialists. How many whites accompanies Philip to raze down Ovoramwen Nogbaisi’sflourishing and strong Benin Kingdom? What’s the number of the whites in the expedition to Kano?
I feel there is a deep self hate in the black man. He hates his likes. That’s why a commissioner of education would steal funds meant for schools. He would later take the money abroad and keep in q bank that would yield interests and buoy the economy of that country instead of his own.
A minister of transport would rather build roads to other countries than fix internal roads to help local economies. The government, instead of investing the oil revenue, prefers to share it among cronies who would ship it abroad. What does it take to build a refinery in Nigeria? But no! We would rather refine our oil abroad to hide how much we really spend. In the process, we lose money to the economy where we refine the oil. Then we add money from our natural treasury and call it subsidy.
Africa is full of hatred. Sit tight leaders who have zero ideas about governance just employ their family members and rip the nation apart. Any attempt to even steal would draw a brutal crackdown and massacres of any such dissidents.
It is a wonder that in the 21st century, governments across Africa are supporting their ethnic groups that are destroying and butchering others. The stories of misery, savagery and poverty arising out of Africa can make one cringe that only wild animals can be so mean and cannibalistic.
Now, what do the citizens do? They hear of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Delhi, Singapore, Hong Kong etc and they salivate. Yet they support ethno religious bigots to destroy their own countries. It is self hate. I am beginning to think that our people are allergic to good life.
In the savage butchery currently going on in Nigeria, I have read supportive statements. Some even go as far as using only to downplay the number of the dead. We are only concerned when it gets to us directly. This is another example of hate. And it is becoming an infection.
Every African is a dictator in waiting. We join politics to have a bite at the National Cake. No one is interested in creating our own Dubai. No wonder Africans kill, maim, rape, murder to get to political offices. Look at the governments of Africa. They run big governments with borrowed monies.
We have only one solution. We must change our attitude, grow some measure of humanity. We are too inhuman in this neck of the woods. Let us grow some original love. Let us love our neighbours a little. That alone has the power to change how we view wealth, politics and human lives.
Alex Agbo, head of Corporate Communications at PMDAfrica, writes from Lagos