Underdevelopment: A Guide for the Perfect Nigerian Idiot

By  

Kòmbò Mason Braide, Ph.D.

Port Harcourt, Nigeria.  

kombomasonbraide@msn.com

Sunday, 1 June 2003 @ 2:44 pm.

Appreciating Hell From Paradise:

Belgium, the former colonial sole administrator of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), became independent from the Netherlands some 173 years ago, in 1830, and was occupied by Germany during the First and Second World Wars. Today, Belgium is an industrialised, stable, and modern federal parliamentary democracy, under the peaceful and majestic reign of a constitutional monarch. Belgium has prospered over the past 50 years. It is a key member of both the European Union (EU), and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

Belgium has a population of about 10 million, an infant mortality rate of less than 5 deaths per 1,000 newborns, a life expectancy of 78 years, with less than two (2) babies per adult woman, a literacy rate of 98%, and an impressive GDP per capita of US$26,100 - many thanks to the mouth-watering, finger-licking, wealth-generating, and prosperity-inducing solid (and liquid) mineral resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo. On the other hand, the disparaging and patronising phrase, “Darkest Africa”, might just as well be an apt synonym for the Democratic Republic of Congo, the current embodiment of a nation that has been severally known as Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Congo-Leopoldville, Congo-Kinshasa, and, until recently, Zaire.

The Democratic Republic of Congo attained independence from Belgium some 43 years ago, on Thursday, 30 June 1960, 93 days ahead of Nigeria. The country has a population of about 55 million, (which is less than half of Nigeria’s presumed population, and over five times the population of Belgium). Infant mortality rate in the DRC amounts to about 98 deaths per 1,000 newborns, while life expectancy is 49 years.  In the DRC, about seven (7) babies are born per adult woman. Literacy rate is 77%, and the GDP per capita is US$590. In comparison, Nigeria’s infant mortality rate is 73 deaths per 1,000 newborns. While life expectancy is 51 years, the literacy rate is 57%, and the GDP per capita is US$840. According to the CIA, in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, about six (6) babies are born per (typically beautiful) adult Nigerian woman, on the average.

The DRC is surrounded by nine (9) fellow banana republics: i.e. Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. The perimeter of the DRC is over twice that of Nigeria, and over five times that of Belgium. The Democratic Republic of Congo has about two and half (2.5) times the land area of Nigeria, and seventy-five (75) times the land area of Belgium. Like Nigeria, the DRC has over 200 ethnic groups, with frequently mutually conflicting narrow interests.

In contrast, in Belgium, recent strained ethnic tensions between the Dutch-speaking tribe of Flemings in the north, and the French-speaking tribe of Walloons in the south, led to major constitutional reforms, granting Belgian ethno-geopolitical zones formal recognition, and political autonomy. Regrettably, such political sagacity, and institutional obligations to accord due recognition, and accommodation for cultural diversity, in the interest of progress, peace, and stability, via amicable constitutional resolution of conflicts, hardly happens in most former colonies of “Old Europe” in Africa, most of them, banana republics.

Unfolding developments in the Democratic Republic of Congo could suddenly degenerate into one of the most lethal self-inflicted ethnic conflicts on earth today, (far worse than those of Ogoni, Bosnia, Odi, Kosovo, Rumuechem, East Timor, Zaki-Biam, Rwanda, Choba, Tse-Adoor, or Kurdish Iraq), yet most human beings, especially Nigerians, are either blissfully ignorant of the unfolding catastrophe, or may never have even bothered to wonder why.

The Solid Mineral Foundations:

The Democratic Republic of Congo, the former colonial treasure base of Belgium, is probably the most mineral-rich territory on Planet Earth today. It has about 60% of the world’s supply of cobalt, and over 30% of the world’s reserves of diamonds. About 20% of our planet’s copper reserves are in the DRC, incidentally, the largest source of high-grade copper known to mankind.

Other mineral resources of that country include petroleum, cadmium, uranium, germanium, radium, gold, silver, manganese, bauxite, zinc, coal, iron ore, and coltan, a highly strategic, and scarce variant of the rare metal, tantalum, used in such diverse high-tech applications as avionics, aerospace, cellular telephony, night vision, fibre optics, and robotics. DRC also has large stocks of timber, coffee, and about 400 Gigawatt hours (GWhr) per annum of exportable hydro-electricity

However, despite all their country’s abundant mineral resources, and potential vast wealth, the citizens of the DRC are, more or less, an endangered species, living in abject poverty, and sheer hopelessness. Their country is a full-blown banana republic. Much of the mineral wealth of the DRC has been ravaged by “foreign core investors” since the civil war in that country, and wantonly mismanaged (before, and after the war) by an ineffective and dismally corrupt ruling elite. Very much like what happened in Nigeria (for only two and a half years, between July 1967 and January 1970), many citizens of the DRC died during the recurrent civil wars, and ethnic skirmishes in that country, more as a result of starvation, than from direct gunfire.

Meanwhile, peasant farmers, and petty traders in the DRC are fighting a losing battle against foreign business shacks, and trans-national “investors”, that dump foodstuffs, sold at less than the break-even cost of local production, in their country. The Democratic Republic of Congo is on the verge of another wave of nightmarish ethnic cleansing. The Ebola virus is rampant there, and HIV/AIDS is apparently unavoidable nowadays in the DRC.

It is pertinent to add here and now, that the DRC is not unique. Most sub-Saharan African nations, like Nigeria, have comparable tragedies playing themselves out (even if in slow-motion), or posses a frightening similarity with the DRC in their colonial and post-colonial developmental trajectories.

Predictably, the end result is essentially the same: they are all over-glorified banana republics. The natural resources in question may vary from country to country. However, the unrelenting desire of external interests, the so-called “foreign core investors”, to grab those resources, has been very much like a never-ending aggravation between the raped and the rapist, marooned in a nudist colony, on a remote island, during a total eclipse of the sun.

Fundamental Banana Republicanism:

From the 15^th century to date, the experience of most Black Africans has been one of protracted European-driven aggression, slavery, racism, colonialism, imposed disadvantage, resistance, and finally, superficial independence, quickly followed by indigenous brands of neo-colonial, so-called “home grown democracies” of the civilian and military kinds, and prolonged general revulsion, and resistance to indigenous predatory dictatorships.

Many sub-Saharan countries achieved independence from the colonial administrators of “Old Europe” in the 1950s and 1960s, and thereafter, speedily degenerated into bitter squabbles and conflicts inside, and outside of their borders, much of which were actually conceived, inspired, and designed by “foreign core investors” that stepped into the void left in the wake  of various European imperial majesties of the mid 20^th century.

Of course, sub-Saharan Africa has a long history of ethnic conflicts, some of them violent. However, such violence witnessed a marked increase with the unsolicited arrival of European discoverers, explorers, merchant sailors, Bible-peddling missionaries, settlers, and colonial administrators, who quickly embedded themselves into the colonies, and then commenced their systematic assignment of extracting anything of value that the continent could offer, to the best of their ability. For the most part, they simply enslaved their African hosts, and/or forced them to produce goods, which they then shipped off overseas to their homes, and other far away global markets, all in the name of international trading, and “fruitful multi-faceted multi-lateral relations”.

Understandably, the colonialists betrayed supreme disdain, and unabashed disregard for the subtle historical relationships, and interactions between the disparate peoples of their African colonies. They either tried to forcibly amalgamate (or unite) unfriendly people, or deliberately incited unwarranted suspicion, and mutually assured violence between them, like the British did successfully in Nigeria, despite all odds.

Occasionally, some Africans rebelled, and extracted sweet revenge from their European hosts, turned tormentors. However, the payback was usually swift, brutal, and summary. In some cases, from time to time, as the need arose, the offended colonial administrators mercifully shipped some of their problematic or intransigent hosts overseas for purposes of “effective pacification”. At least, today’s descendants of monarchs of Opobo, Badagry, Mombassa, Benin, Brass, Warri, Lagos, Calabar, and Ashanti Kingdom can confirm.

Today, we find most sub-Saharan Africa countries comprised of disparate peoples, with a long history of deep-rooted mutual suspicion, antagonism, or general paranoia. To compound the comic tragedy further, most newly independent African countries started (on a wrong first step) with some of the most bitter indigenous critics and/or antagonists of their former colonial overlords later becoming their first so-called “indigenous Head of State” at independence. Typically, the African “Head of State” is a local superhero, with some colonial (military or guerrilla warfare, or oratorical) skills and mentality, but with very little (if any) meaningful political grooming under democratic settings, or near-zero managerial capacity, and less morals, or no financial discipline, or with no nation-building vision, or even a tangible guiding political philosophy that may be taken as their ideological baseline.

Instead, pockets are lined; treasuries are effortlessly efficiently looted; and the mineral and natural resources of their countries are often traded for peanuts to phoney “foreign core investors”, some of whom appear to be permanently resident in Nigeria, and similar other banana republics scattered across the entire African continent. Very few of those “foreign core investors” may even be vaguely considered as good corporate citizens of any civilised society on earth. Yet, they thrive in banana republics.

The citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo continue to be brutalised by an awkward admixture of bad governance, undue interference from other so-called “brother” African countries, a criminally cold benign disinterest by the international community, and raw intimidation and exploitation by ruthless foreign multinational companies from the USA, the EU, Japan, and South East Asia. Here is a territory that is very difficult to manage, with much of its terrain being equatorial rain forest, jungle, or mangrove swamps, very much like the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. However, most disheartening is the observation that the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), indeed, sub-Saharan Africa, is no longer on the diplomatic radar screen of the world.

Curiously, during the Cold War era, the United States of America was very interested in the then Belgian Congo, as it was a fertile ground for USA-USSR imperial ego trips, and mindless pursuit of their perceived vital mineral interests. The White House “invested” billions of US tax payers’ dollars right into the very deep, voracious, and divinely anointed pockets of His Excellency, ex-colonial Sergeant Joseph Mobutu, later post-Independence General (Dictator) Mobuto Sese Seko (JP), in order to kill “communist influence” in equatorial Africa. Actually, the same scenario has been played out in Iraq, Haiti, Central African Republic, Philippines, Liberia, Afghanistan, Iran, Colombia, Indonesia, Nigeria, and in several other countries.

Of course, the ubiquitous “foreign core investors” have not missed the wonderful window of opportunity to aggressively explore and exploit much of the land stretching across the equatorial belt of Africa, (from the Atlantic Ocean, in the  extreme West African coast, to the Indian Ocean, in the East African coast), which coincidentally, is also endowed with mouth-watering, and finger-licking quantities, and varieties of minerals, and other natural resources, including human beings (for “brain drain” strategic operations).

A Road Map For Perplexed Banana Republics:

Over the past 500years, sub-Saharan Africans in particular have been systematically rewired, and their nervous systems painstakingly reconfigured, to make them desperate for just about anything they need. In short, they have been reduced to allow themselves to be used and abused as neo-slaves of the neo-conservatives of the USA and the EU, and to helplessly watch “foreign core investors” extract massive inventories of their mineral resources, at practically zero cost. In the process, weak, and pathologically depraved local superheroes of the banana republics of Africa have lined their private piggy banks overseas, with goodies – Thanks to the appreciation and benevolence of “foreign core investors”.

Many people in the USA, or the EU, or even the so-called “Asian Tigers” have not hesitated to enjoy the pleasure-enhancing products of African blood, sweat, and tears, although there are emerging lobbies in the USA, and the EU, campaigning vigorously against money laundry, cross-border terrorism, and so-called “blood diamonds” in the Third World, as token gestures toward suffering local diamond mine workers, and government-assisted smugglers, who obviously need urgent “liberation” from nascent local “money-miss-roads”, and mafias in Liberia, Sierra Leone, DRC, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria, and others. However, this may actually be a very carefully choreographed diversion, created by some very powerful trans-national diamond smuggling cartels, criminal syndicates, and business conglomerates, obviously to stifle competition from the banana republics of sub-Saharan Africa.

Most people living in the United States of America, or/and the EU, do not ask from where the electronic components in their GSM handsets come, or the stuff of which the micro-chips in the digital-to-analogue controllers of their “Play Station 2” are made, or the country of origin of the cocoa seeds of the chocolate, and the coffee beans of the coffee they consume routinely. Of course, every living moron on earth knows very well that they come from what amounts to sheer slave labour, often carried out under brutal conditions, sadly enough, in the 21^st century, in the banana republics of Africa.

It is therefore trite to glibly aver that such “foreign core investors” merely take advantage of the approval to do legitimate businesses by their host governments, most of whom, incidentally, are rabidly parasitic or predatory in their perception of their roles in the affairs of their country; or that their mere presence, as “foreign core investors”, helps to energise  the economies of their victims; or that they help to create employment, and actualise some inane kind of bogus “technology transfer”.

Simply stated, most so-called “foreign core investors” are merely a new variety of colonial slave drivers of the 21^st century pedigree, neatly packaged as corporate entities, for whom both the self-esteem and lives of Black Africans are simply trivial, or at best, meaningless abstractions,  and as such, easily disposable as inconsequential.

Most African banana republics, like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Central African Republic (CAR), Republic of Liberia, Benin Republic, Republic of Zimbabwe, and the Federal Republic of Nigeria, have active and/or retired military, or quasi-military civilian rulers, most of them, geriatric autocrats, itching to pick a fight with just about anyone, especially, and preferably, their own citizens. Once again, (as usually effortlessly vigorously propagated by CNN, Fox News, Sky News, BBC World, and VOA), sub-Saharan Africa is dangling on the brink of drought and massive crop failures. The situation is rather precarious, with state-sponsored brigandage being the norm in most African banana republics today.

One wonders aloud how much more urgency, concern, and attention the world in general, and the United States of America in particular, would have given if only the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo, or Liberia, or Sierra Leone, or Central African Republic, or Nigeria were not Black Africans. The world must pay attention. It is not too late yet to help. Nigerians, in particular, must quickly learn that economic mismanagement is fatal, and that predatory autocracy, even if expertly disguised as “home grown democracy”, is a key precursor to banana republicanism.

Department Of Marginal Thinking & Brainwaves:

Worldwide, hardened criminals, saboteurs, congenital idiots, lunatics, and similar harbingers of anti-social tendency, despite their undisputed status as free citizens of a country, do not qualify to hold any public office. By the same logic, in Nigeria, strictly speaking, human rights abusers, expired tyrants, and impudent coup plotters (i.e. the lucky living remnants of the planners, financiers, expediters, implementers, coordinators, and chief executives of successful, phantom or failed coups d’état, and treasonable rebellions), should not qualify to hold any public office, much more contest elective offices in Nigeria, for the balance of their lives, here on earth.

However, unfortunately, it is now getting pretty obvious that there are certain desperate, and sometimes, brazen efforts at glorifying the unforgettable gory past, and on-going acts of benign perfidy of some living felons, and coup plotters in Nigeria, given the rather sweeping assumptions, and imagined latitude of conditionalities typically inherent in the expression of Nigerian magnanimity, and particularly, the porosity of the collective memory of Nigerians.

No right-thinking Briton, for example, would want to even vaguely glorify, or beatify the ignominious memory of Guy Fawkes, the fellow who tried to blow the British Parliament sky high, a couple of centuries ago, in his quixotic attempt to subvert the unwritten constitution of the United Kingdom, or contemplate the unimaginable event of Sir Edward Heath becoming the Prime Minister of Great Britain, yet again, a quarter of a century after his last tenure.

No rational American can, even for a moment, tolerate the sick joke that US Army General Tommy Franks could return to the United States of America, straight from the battle fields of Afghanistan, and Iraq, in the “Axis of Evil”, and become a key member of the triumphant administration of US President George W. Bush (The Younger), in recognition of his supreme sacrifice to lay down his life in order to make Planet Earth safe from terrorists; or that Jimmy Carter could be recycled into the White House, over a quarter of a century after his last tenure there, as President of the United States of America; or that Americans would condone the sloppy, and clearly lack-lustre performance of a retired three-star US Army General, appointed to deliver the “dividends of liberation” following the “regime change” in Iraq, any longer than necessary.

However, in banana republics, anything goes:

Charles Taylor, a former jailbird in the USA, relocates to Liberia, and becomes a “consensus democratically selected” President. Meanwhile ex-serviceman, Corporal Foday Sankoh (retired), one of Sierra Leone’s ethnic cleansing local superheroes, a one time cheerleader of a band of rag-tag village bandits, the so-called Revolutionary United Front (RUF), and the architect of benevolent cannibalism, amputation of war-orphaned infants, and several unprintable barbaric crimes against humanity, transforms mysteriously into a later-day saint, and a candidate for a key position in a “government of national unity” in Sierra Leone.

Mutinous idle soldiers, and exuberant juvenile civilian delinquents in Cote D’Ivoire, ably inspired, instigated, and assisted by local and foreign criminal syndicates, geriatric influence peddlers, retired mercenaries, and ex-coup plotters, dictate the pace of “national reconciliation”, including stipulating criteria for eligibility, and desirability of candidates in their passionate desire to control strategic cabinet portfolios in a proposed “interim government of national unity”, even after reducing their once economically prosperous, and politically stable country to rubble.

All of the above permutations, and combinations of social aberration, and political surrealism, are in full profile in the Federal Republic of Nigeria today, simply because, for some strange reason yet to make sense, Nigerians, like most citizens of banana republics worldwide, allow the unthinkable to happen to them: a sad case of collective masochism.

Postscript:

Amnesty should not be amnesia.

Kòmbò Mason Braide (PhD)

Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

Sunday, 1 June 2003 @ 2:44 pm.

References & Sources:

1.       The CIA Fact Book: “Nigeria: Population And Age Structure”; Central Intelligence Agency, Washington DC, USA; (2002);

2.        UNDP: “Human Development Report 2002”; United Nations Development Programme, (UNDP), New York; Oxford University Press; (2002).