Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense
By
His eccentricities (some prefer the word "vulgarities") notwithstanding, there remains a part of Fela Anikulapo which undeniably
still finds relevance in the Nigerian situation. Yesterday marked four years precisely that the man who taught us how to fight with music succumbed to
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. His classic, Teacher, Don't Teach Me Nonsense released in 1984, is a searing indictment of colonial Britain for
birthing a political Africa alienated from its cultural root. The poignancy of that song would appear all the more irresistible now with what looks like a
renewed campaign by Britain and France against the quest of African nations like Nigeria for debt forgiveness.
While visiting the country last week, the newly appointed UK Minister for Africa, Baronness Amos was quoted as saying that Nigeria should drop her
agitation for the cancellation of her debt and adhere strictly to the regimen prescribed by the International Monetary Fund in order to qualify for debt
rescheduling instead. Her sentiment echoed elsewhere in France as Madame Catherine Boivineau, the director in charge of Africa and countries of the Indian
Ocean in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France, said to be a member of the Paris Club, insisted that such agitation is unjustifiable. Their reason:
Nigeria earns much from oil and as such is disqualified from being addressed as a Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC). IMF and Paris Club are like a
certified economic dispensary. The largely destitute nations of Africa are expected to play the obedient patient: take as the gospel truth whatever the
physician divined.
The homily by Amos and Boivineau is surely instructive viewed against the fact that lately, Africa's leaders have constituted themselves into a debtors
cartel of sorts, lobbying the creditor nations to forgive their debts. Democracy, the leaders would say, should be synonymous with prosperity.
Fortunately, this same democracy is what the West always encourages Africa to practise. And prosperity, they say, will happen naturally if what goes into
debt servicing is ploughed back to social schemes that alleviate poverty. To hammer this message home, not even emotional blackmail is being spared now.
For instance, a picture is being circulated by Pride depicting the helplessness of Africa in this regard. A half-clad black woman looks on forlonly. In
her laps is a white baby pecking at one of her breasts already rendered flat presumably by over-sucking. Of course, the message is that mother Africa has
been milked dry.
It is hard to fault the logic of Britain and France here. From available records, a country like Nigeria is blessed enough with natural resources to
remove the mass of her people from want and squalor. But, on the contrary, misery has been the lot of the people. Just as they always offer to teach us
the ABCD of democracy, the West together with their non-governmental organisations would always want to help us push the blame to the doorstep of leaders
we have had in succession. As Fela reminds us in Teacher, Don't Teach Me Nonsense, by foisting imperialism on Nigeria and other African nations in 20th
century, Britain had assumed the role of a teacher with a historic mandate to modernise. But Britain that conceptualised the Nigerian Army as an
institution of a modern state, Fela tells us, failed to teach the soldiers that in England it's not the portion of uniformed men to topple elected
government. Democracy being preached feverishly by the "Oyinbo", according to him, hardly takes into cognisance the individuality of the African
people. Alienated from her own past and unsure of its tomorrow, Africa, to him, has found herself in a demonstration of craze ( a corruption of
democracy).
Britain today teaches us through the Amoses on the virtues in paying debts but is shy to lecture us what to do when it is discovered that the ancient
loans that are today referred to as "national debt" were actually hijacked by our own leaders and buried in secret accounts in the same Britain.
There is even an argument that what the nation has paid over the years in terms of interests has exceeded the principal money taken as loan. It is a moral
question. This essentially is the "debt trap" to which Africa has been consigned. For instance, it is an open secret that scores of Nigeria's
past leaders have bank accounts in Britain laden with money stolen directly from the Nigerian people. On Sani Abacha alone, for instance, litigations have
continued to drag forward and backward whether to repatriate the discovered loot to Nigeria or not. Abacha is only one out of scores of others with
questionable fortune stashed in UK. With her liberal policies on such blood money, therefore, Britain only aids and abets the pauperisation of the Nigeian
people. Do we need any more plank to reinforce the argument of Walter Rodney in his "How Europe Under-developed Africa". Suffice to mention that
Rodney would be assassinated later.
Again, Britain failed to teach us what to do in a situation whereby our retired generals own vast golf courses and fabulous castles in Europe even when we
know all their salaries for the years they put into service would not have been enough to buy a parcel of land there. For sure, the government of the day
cannot unilaterally take them into custody to explain how they came about that wealth. As Britain teaches us, that would amount to an infringement of
their human rights. For sure, it is also impossible for the people themselves to vent their anger by directly taking on this category of people in their
neighbourhood. That, by the standard of Britain, would be termed "barbarism" or "man's inhumanity to man". We were taught the
catechism of equality under the Rule of Law. But the teacher failed to teach us what to do in the event that generals get subpoenaed by a judicial
commission like the Oputa Panel and they refuse to appear even against the tidal wave of public opinion to answer charges of brigandage and sadism. In
this circumstance, we are marooned at a cross-roads.
This writer will hardly pretend to be an economist. But from the basic lesson one learnt from elementary Economics, it is often said that you cannot give
what you do not have. Or, put in another way, you cannot build on zero. Monetarists at IMF are free to rhapsodise on the benefits of having a weakened
currency in a developing economy. But common sense teaches that that option is only desirable in an economy with production base. The therapy of
Structural Adjustment Programme which IMF mouths so romantically is supposed to open new vista for the production base of the economy. The idea is to
stimulate the existing production base to achieve its optimum potentials since export would have been made more attractive. But the truth is that IMF only
helped Babangida to unleash SAP on a Nigeria with a production base that was already dead if not non-existent. Naira would not be the same again. The
scars of that catastrophe remain with us today.
Indeed, as the voices of Amos and Boivineau resonate in the air today, what echoes back from the background is surely the plaintive rhythm of Fela's
Teacher, Don't Teach Me Nonsense. There cannot be a finer compliment to the memory of the Afro Beat musician.