CHRISTIANITY AND TRADITIONAL BELIEFS: THE "HIDDEN CONFLICT" IN THE LIVES OF MANY NIGERIANS

I was having a conversation with my oldest son the other day about my earliest experiences in the village and it occurred to me that for the first and second generation of Nigerian Christians, there is an underlying conflict in their lives. They grew up hearing about how witches control people’s lives. But they also went to Church-sponsored schools where they were told not to believe in witches. God, the “Supreme Being” is the only one to be believed in. The conflict arises when you ask yourself “What should I believe in?  What I learned as a child or what I learned later in life?”

I have noticed that most “young people” in my part of Nigeria do not die of natural causes. People often ascribe their deaths to such causes as “bad relationships” with envious coworkers or someone in the family does not like them to make progress.

When a man is promoted at his job the first thing on his mind is to find how he can do all those things he thinks that “rich men” do. Therefore, he spends time and money on more beer and more eggs. This life style makes him fat and/or obese. Being this way is wrongly perceived as the one way to show others that “I have arrived”. The effects of such habits on the heart are hardly thought of. However, when the man suddenly collapses in his office, no one says that he died from bad habits. No! He died because someone in the office was jealous of his success or some witch in the village was envious of his apparent success and thus angry at him. 

I have also noted that my relatives who proclaim themselves Christians are often reluctant to practice Christianity in its pure form. Faced with trials and tribulations, they fall back on what they learned when they were young and innocent.  Someone else must be responsible for the trials and tribulations they face. They apparently never review their own lifestyles to see if they might be contributing to their current predicament.

Separating our original beliefs from those taught by the missionaries is a difficult task. The missionaries came with the soldiers who had been sent to bring our people under colonial rule. This colonial rule has some glaring weaknesses that we have not been able to erase from our minds. There is also the fact that the missionaries and their gun-toting countrymen might have had different goals.  Thus there are lingering doubts about the authenticity of the missionaries and their message of “Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to people of good will”.

The doubt is re-enforced when we realize that these missionaries come from countries whose practices and relationships to all people are still questioned by all well-meaning folks. The recent happenings in the United States reminds us all about the relationships between the white population and the Americans of African origin. I still remember my experiences when I first traveled around the US. In 1966, some of us from Nigeria had gone to the Catholic Church in Champaign, Illinois. When we arrived at the church we noticed that people were standing on the isles while there were still seats available. Alas, these seats were next to the few Nigerians who had arrived earlier. I left Nigeria when it was forbidden by the church for both sexes to sit together. I arrived in the US to find that this “forbidden” rule did not exist. Such “traditions” caused confusion in the minds of Nigerian Catholics. It thus is difficult to determine what the right belief is and whether it is right or wrong to toss out our initial or original belief.  

Lessons for President Jonathan from President Barak Obama

 

Following the bombing of the UN House in Abuja, the debate is on as to what to do with the perpetrators of the abominable crime. For some of Nigeria’s political elites, what happened was not criminal. Rather it was the result of massive unemployment among the youths in Nigeria, especially in northern Nigeria.

I am in total agreement that the idle mind is the devil’s workshop. Some estimates are that more than 60% of the young people in some states in the north are unemployed. And so, it is argued that the solution to the wanton destruction of life and property we witnessed lies in appeasing the criminals by providing them with jobs

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Since October 2010, there have been three bombing incidents in and around Abuja. Jonathan has been president for less than six months. Obviously, the situation of high unemployment was not of his own making. He inherited it from previous administrations

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Two of the terrorist acts were perpetrated by Boko Haram, a group that abhors “Western Education”. A cursory look at the world today suggests that countries that focus on education are the most progressive. Universities in Iran and Saudi Arabia are flourishing. Teaching mathematics, physics and chemistry and biology is strongly promoted. For the followers of Boko Haram, teaching these subjects in Nigerian schools would be disobeying the tenets of “pure Islam”. The same political elites who are themselves the products of western-style education and who see no crime in what happened to the UN House in Abuja refuse to see the danger that such doctrines pose to progress in Nigeria.

Having an illiterate class to manipulate for political gains is a profitable business. 

But I still wonder if the story-line would have been the same had Jonathan originated from the northern parts of Nigeria?

In January 2009, Barak Obama inherited an economy that was in deep recession. Beginning with Lehman Brothers, Wall Street was in complete melt-down. American banks were in trouble. A Republican president and a Republican congress had, over eight years, misled the American people into spending all their wealth in two wars that made little sense. On that January morning, everyone knew that the unemployment situation was going to get worse.

 In three years, Obama has only been able to stop the bleeding. The wound is still open and festering. Unemployment will remain very high come November 2012!

This past weekend, America’s policy makers, from the federal to the state governments and city halls, came together to prevent a disaster in the name of Hurricane Irene. This demonstrates that Americans can still come together in the face of an impending disaster. But then I ask “What is more disastrous than a lost generation of poorly trained and educated Americans?   What is more disastrous than a situation where America that used to lead the world in innovations is led by China, India and Germany?

So, why can the policy makers in Washington not come together to create the conditions that would get the economy rolling and create more jobs? No. Obama’s opponents are more interested in seeing that he is a “one-term president”. Of course their task has been made much easier by the banks (that Obama rescued) refusing to loan money to businesses. The result: American on Main Street are angry at Obama for using their hard-earned tax dollars to rescue Wall Street and the banks!

Here again, I wonder if the story-line would have been different if Barak Obama was not an African American who just happened to be the president of the United States of America. The difference between Jonathan and Barak is that Jonathan is not going for a second term.

 

Welcome to the politics of “the end justifies the means”.

Now, Can We Try Some Discipline?

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My last blog was to remind us that African leaders are not incapable of establishing both peace and good governance.  And, I looked forward to enjoying my one-week’s stay in the amazing commercial capital of Benin.

I have since left Cotonou for Dakar and I am currently in Bamako, Mali. Like Cotonou, Dakar and Bamako have witnessed tremendous improvement in road infrastructure. That the people’s wealth status has improved could be seen by the new buildings that lined the four-lane highways. However, the manner the citizens have embraced the changes continues to sadden me.

. On my way out of Cotonou I was petrified to see a child of not more than four or five on a motor cycle clinging to dear life behind what I would imagine was his father. I had hoped that a policeman would stop the rider and rebuke him for putting the life of this child in danger! But, nobody seemed to care.

  

In Dakar, the motor cycle taxis were replaced by yellow-painted taxis and new dual-carriage highways crisscross the city. These taxi drivers stop right in the middle of the highway to pick up passengers or to purchase items from the many hawkers on the sidewalks.

In Mali, there are traffic lights at critical junctions but it would seem that no one actually takes notice. On my way from the airport to the city, we stopped at one of the traffic lights. The green light on our side came on but the drivers on the other side would not yield!

Now that we have some modern infrastructure which should promote economic growth and overall well-being, what would it take to teach us discipline?

Welcome to Cotonou

Welcome Back to Cotonou

I am writing this blog from Cotonou, the economic capital of the Republic of Benin. 

My memories of Cotonou date back to the 1980’s and 1990’s when I was working in Togo [as Director of the Africa Division of the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) ]  and in Ghana  [as Director of the United Nations University Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (UNU-INRA)].  I remembered vividly that the portion of the East-West coastal road between Abidjan in Cote d’Ivoire and Lagos, Nigeria that goes through Cotonou was a major bottleneck. It consisted of a narrow, poorly-maintained stretch of this important corridor. It was usually choked with traffic, especially motor cycle traffic. In fact, Cotonou became the first city in Africa to officially recognize motor cycles for commercial transport of passengers (motor cycle taxis). In those days, from the western end of Cotonou to the eastern border was not much longer than four kilometers. But, if you were lucky, it would take you two hours to drive through Cotonou.

So, it was with much anticipation that I arrived in Cotonou from Accra last evening (Sunday the 26^th of June).  As I had expected, the traffic into the city was congested. The vehicular traffic had more than tripled. But, to my pleasant surprise, I soon discovered, as we drove into the city that dramatic changes had occurred. Cotonou compares favorably with Lagos in the density of “fly-overs”. The old narrow, poorly-maintained road had been replaced by dual carriage highways.

I am spending this morning in the offices of the Africa Rice Center (AfricaRice). Driving from my hotel to the office revealed that what I saw last evening was only the precursor of what was happening in Cotonou. The city has changed. Infrastructure development seems to have become the pre-occupation of the government. There are four-lane motor-ways with fly-overs already constructed or being constructed all over the city.

My friends tell me that what is happening is the dividend of peace and good governance. A lot has been said of the progress made by Ghana because the country has successfully carried out four elections since the end of military rule. The Republic of Benin has an equally impressive record. Multi-party elections were first held in 1991 and five successful elections have been held since then. What has happened in both Ghana and Benin demonstrates that progress is the product of peace and good governance. African leaders are not incapable of establishing both peace and good governance.  I am looking forward to enjoying my one-week’s stay in this amazing city with the motor cycle taxis and all!   

We Are Half-Way There.....

In my last blog (http://papauzom.blogspot.com/2011/06/well-done-but.html) I lauded the efforts of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (B&MGF) in sponsoring a study by the National Research Council (http://www.nap.edu) on how knowledge from physics, chemistry, electrical engineering, materials science, remote sensing and computer science can lead to innovations with potential to solve the problems of poverty and food insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and South Asia (SA). I argued that if the findings of the study were to benefit Africa, the B&MGF should develop a program specifically dedicated to revamping agricultural research, education and training in Africa’s universities. When I checked back on the B&MGF website (http://www.gatesfoundation.org/grantseeker/Pages/default.aspx)  I found out to my pleasant surprise that an effort in the direction I suggested was already underway. In 2009, the B&MGF awarded $12,730,748 to the Regional Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) (http://www.ruforum.org) to work towards improved productivity and wealth creation in Eastern and Southern Africa by developing effective agricultural universities and producing a new cadre of high-performing university research, training and outreach.

My plea is that this noble venture should be expanded to cover the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. And, this is the approach that I suggest it should take.

RUFORUM, which has begun to extend it membership to universities in all regions of Africa, will be involved in the new exercise as the lessons learned in operating the existing program since 2009 will be invaluable. Partnering RUFORUM will be the United Nations University-Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (UNU-INRA) (http://www.unu.edu/inra). UNU-INRA is the only institution in Africa with UN recognition and support to develop and strengthen capacity for research, education and outreach (including policy formulation and decision making) that would lead to the reduction of poverty and food insecurity through the proper management of Africa’s natural resources.  As stated in its current Strategic Plan, the mission of UNU-INRA is to empower African universities and research institutions through capacity strengthening. This is in order to enable them conduct high quality research and produce well-trained, well-equipped and motivated individuals. The knowledge created and the capacity built should be useful in developing, adapting and disseminating technologies that promote efficient and sustainable use of the continent’s natural resources.

Providing valuable support to these two African organs will be the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU) of the United States (https://www.aplu.org) .Over the years, many of the Land Grant Universities in the United States have been involved in upgrading agricultural research and training in Africa. Three examples from my own country come readily to mind. With support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), three Land Grant Universities got the chance to promote the “Land Grant System” in the then three regions of Nigeria. Michigan State University worked with the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Eastern Nigeria. The University of Wisconsin worked with the University of Ife (now the Obafemi Awolowo University) Ile-Ife, Western Nigeria while Kansas State University worked with the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in Northern Nigeria. At the Ahmadu Bello University, the team from Kansas State helped to create an “agricultural campus” made up of the Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR) with responsibility for agricultural research, the Faculty of Agriculture, with responsibility for teaching and the Agricultural Extension Research Liaison Service (AERLS) with responsibility for agricultural extension. Functioning as the “IAR Complex”, a Land Grant system was established where research, teaching and extension were undertaken by individuals that worked closely together.  In 1972, fresh out of a Land Grant university in the US, I was happy to be appointed to a 50/50 position as lecturer/research fellow at the complex. Although in recent times, poor governance has reduced the effectiveness of most Nigerian universities including the Ahmadu Bello University, the IAR-Complex has retained its structure and its effectiveness is attested to by the fact that agriculture is most productive in the mandate area of the IAR-complex. Today, this area has become the breadbasket of Nigeria.

I suggest that agents of RUFORUM, UNU-INRA and APLU should be empowered by the B&MGF to develop a program that would produce the future chemists, engineers, computer scientists, molecular biologists, physicists, socio-economists that will be the source of new scientific capabilities to address agricultural constraints in sub-Saharan Africa.

Well Done -----But-------

Early in May, 2011, I participated in the second of a series of workshops organized in Washington D.C by the National Academies titled “A Sustainability Challenge: Food Security for All” (http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/sustainability/foodsecurity/PGA) . I received a copy of a publication by the National Research Council titled “Emerging Technologies to Benefit Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia” (http://www.nap.edu) . This publication is the result of a study undertaken by a committee composed of eleven top scientists from some of the best institutions in the United States. The study was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Foundation is conscious of the fact that to meet the food needs of the more than 9 billion people by 2050 would require the use of innovations from physics, chemistry, electrical engineering, materials science, remote sensing and computer science. Africa and South Asia still contain the largest number of people that are food insecure. In the case of Africa where the absolute number and percentage of the hungry and malnourished people is still rising, finding the means to feed the more than two billion people projected for 2050 would be a major challenge.

The Committee organized by the National Research Council was tasked with identifying “emerging” technologies. They looked at two types of innovations: 1. applications that currently exist but have not been widely used or adapted in the two regions; 2. innovations in the conceptual or developmental stages that hold promise for improving agriculture. In my view, the committee did an excellent job. For me, as an African, the questions are “How can Africa take advantage of the relevant issues raised by this study?” “Is Africa going to depend on the scientists from the USA and Europe to undertake these innovations?”

My friends and colleagues who teach in the faculties of agriculture in many African countries tell me that the greatest problem they face is attracting qualified students in the pure sciences to study agriculture. Students who populate the faculties of agriculture are usually those who were denied entry into medicine, pure sciences or pharmacy. The situation becomes worse at the post-graduate level.  In the 1970s and the early 1980s, students who obtained (the British System’s) “first class” degree or “second class-upper division” degree were prized candidates for post-graduate studies. Today, the laboratories are closed and there is no exciting research going on in our national institutions. Most students who complete their first degree in agriculture and perform well are more likely to immediately find employment in the banking industry. Agriculture, which means “subsistence farming” in Africa is left for the mediocre students. So, who are these African physicists, chemists, electrical engineers and computer scientists that will create the innovations needed to transform Africa’s agriculture?.

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) (http://www.agra-alliance.org) with seed money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation is looking at the first type of innovations listed above. AGRA identified lack of trained manpower as a main reason why such innovations have not been adapted for wider use in Africa. They are taking steps to provide education and training to the plant breeders and soil scientists needed to promote their activities.

But it seems to me that the kind of chemists and engineers needed for the future innovations will not be sourced from the current crop of field workers. Forty years ago, there were no universities in many African countries. That is no longer the situation today. There are still many good scientists in Africa’s universities who wake up each day and ask themselves “what am I going to do with myself today?’ They are asking because they have laboratories that have no chemicals, no equipment (even rudimentary ones!) and in most cases, no regular source of power. I know about these scientists because in my years as the Director of the United Nations University Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (UNU-INRA) I interacted with many of these scientists. They were encouraged to apply and become members of the Institute’s College of Research Associates (CRA). Those scientists that were selected produced brilliant proposals dealing with ways to manage and add value to Africa’s natural resources. It was fascinating to know how much research output resulted from the very limited support that UNU-INRA could provide. Better still, these scientists were once again able to attract bright young students to work and become “good disciples”. These are the people upon which the future of Africa depends.

Every national university with an agricultural faculty has one or more of these talented scientists. I argue that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation should evolve an exclusive program aimed at discovering and supporting these talented scientists. This should only be a first step in the process of revamping agricultural education, research and information dissemination in Africa’s universities along the lines of the Land Grant System in the US.

Some Lessons Are Worth Learning Anew

The year was 1979. In the city of Monrovia, Liberia, Africa’s Heads of State and Government, at the 16^th Ordinary Meeting of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) adopted the Monrovia Declaration.  It was a declaration of commitment by the Heads of State and Government of the OAU on the guidelines and measures to foster national and collective self-reliance in economic and social development. What was unique about this period? Many of the African countries gathered in Monrovia were celebrating nearly 20 years of independence.

What had happened in these nineteen years?  Between 1960 and 1975, the percentage change in Africa’s Gross National Product (GNP) per capita as a proportion of world GNP was -5. Between 1975 and 1990, this drop in regional GNP per capacity compared to the rest of the world had widened to -33. In the mean time, African countries had gone from exporting about 1.3 million tons of food a year to depending on food imports and hand-outs so as to feed their growing populations. What went wrong? For the most part, the primary responsibility for the African tragedy was laid at the feet of African governments and Africa’s elites. The Report produced by Elliot Berg for the World Bank in 1981 declared unequivocally that African governments undermined the process of development by destroying agricultural producers’ incentives to increase output and exports. Marketing Boards which worked under colonial rule were improper instruments for the new African governments and elites.

Worldwide, however, the 1970’s were marked by the Iranian revolution that caused a major spike in the price of oil. In the United States of America, inflation was raging and there was a new and serious crisis of confidence on the US dollar. Unfortunately, such external issues were not considered by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in assessing the crises in Africa. Substantial currency devaluations, dismantling of industrial protection, promotion of price incentives for agricultural production and exports, and substitution of private for public enterprise—not just in industry but also in the provision of social services --(what you might call unbridled globalization) —became the chief elements of the Structural Adjustment programs imposed on African governments by the International Finance Institutions.

But, in the 1970’s, there was a lone voice at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) located at “Africa’s capital”, Addis Ababa. Prof. Adebayo Adedeji the then Executive Secretary of the UNECA led many African economists to point out that the instruments of “Structural Adjustment” would fail unless what was happening to Africa was looked at in terms of what was happening elsewhere in the rest of the world. When African Heads of State and Government met in Monrovia in 1979, they were willing to listen to the ideas promoted by Prof. Adedeji.

In 1980, the Monrovia Declaration was translated into the Lagos Plan of Action for the Economic Development of Africa (1980-2000) and was adopted by Africa’s Heads of State and Government at an Extraordinary Session of the OAU held in Lagos, Nigeria.

Permit me to quote from the preamble of the Plan: “The effects of unfulfilled promises of global development strategies has been more sharply felt in Africa more than in the other continents of the world. Indeed, rather than result in an improvement in the economic situation in the continent, successive strategies have made it stagnate and make it more susceptible than other regions to the economic and social crises suffered by the industrialized countries. Thus, Africa is unable to point to any significant growth rate or satisfactory index of general well-being in the past 20 years. Faced with this situation, and determined to take measures for the basic restructuring of the economic base of our continent, we resolve to adopt a far-reaching regional approach based primarily on collective self-reliance”----sound familiar to you? == (to me it sounds like this is the same principle that the African Renaissance was based,)

I leave it to historians to pass judgment on what African Heads of State and Government did to implement the Plan. An outcome of this Plan was the work by fifteen brilliant African scientists who developed the Prospectus that led to the establishment of the United Nations University-Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (UNU-INRA). The Institute will be celebrating its 25^th Anniversary later this year. I was fortunate and privileged to have served as its second Director. “