Do not panic or despair (God is always faithful)

As the year draws to an end, with Christmas only 11 days away, it is tempting to conclude that this is probably the most violent period in the entire history of mankind. A case in point is the longstanding war along the border of Uganda and the Congo. It has gone on for almost 15 years with heavy casualties but the rest of the world has chosen to ignore it entirely. It is also instructive that the United States of America, Britain and France are in real anguish over terrorism and random shooting.

On CNN the other day, US presidential candidate Donald Trump capitalised on the climate of fear by calling for a total and complete shutdown/prohibition of Muslims entering the United States – immigrants and visitors alike (except diplomats and sportsmen) – because of what he describes as hatred.

A recent front page report in The Times is enough to keep all of us awake at night. It has gone viral. “RUSSIA GETS READY FOR WAR WITH WEST”. As for Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen, they are in a special category where death and cruelty are the staple diet. The contest is between barbarism and savagery.

Even if we focus our attention and energy on our continent Africa, we are confronted with a most chilling dossier, in respect of which France has refused to comment or issue a rebuttal: “14 African Countries Forced By France To Pay Colonial Tax For The Benefits Of Slavery And Colonization”.

“When SékouTouré of Guinea decided in 1958 to get out of French colonial empire, and opted for the country’s independence, the French colonial elite in Paris got so furious, and in a historic act of fury the French administration in Guinea destroyed everything in the country which represented what they called the benefits from French colonization. Three thousand French left the country, taking all their property and destroying anything which could not be moved: schools, nurseries, and public administration buildings were crumbled; cars, books, medicine, research institute instruments, tractors were crushed and sabotaged; horses, cows in the farms were killed, and food in warehouses was burned or poisoned.

“The purpose of this outrageous act was to send a clear message to all other colonies that the consequences for rejecting France would be very high. Slowly fear spread through the African elite, and none after the Guinea events ever found the courage to follow the example of Sékou Touré, whose slogan was, ‘We prefer freedom in poverty to opulence in slavery’.

“Sylvanus Olympio, the first president of the Republic of Togo, a tiny country in West Africa, found a middle ground solution with the French. He didn’t want his country to continue to be a French dominion, therefore he refused to sign the colonisation continuation pact De Gaule proposed, but agreed to pay an annual debt to France for the so-called benefits Togo got from French colonization. It was the only conditions for the French not to destroy the country before leaving. However, the amount estimated by France was so huge that the reimbursement of the so-called ‘colonial debt’ was close to 40 percent of the country’s budget in 1963.

“The financial situation of the newly independent Togo was very unstable, so in order to get out of the situation, Olympio decided to get out of the French colonial money FCFA (the franc for French African colonies), and issue the country’s own currency. On January 13, 1963, three days after he started printing his country’s own currency, a squad of illiterate soldiers backed by France killed the first elected president of newly independent Africa. Olympio was killed by an ex-French foreign legionnaire army sergeant called Etienne Gnassingbe who supposedly received a bounty of $612 from the local French embassy for the hit-man job. Olympio’s dream was to build an independent and self-sufficient and self-reliant country. But the French didn’t like the idea.

“On June 30, 1962, Modiba Keita, the first president of the Republic of Mali, decided to withdraw from the French colonial currency FCFA which was imposed on 12 newly independent African countries. For the Malian president, who was leaning more to a socialist economy, it was clear that colonisation continuation pact with France was a trap and a burden for the country’s development. On November 19, 1968, like Olympio, Keita was the victim of a coup carried out by another ex-French foreign legionnaire, Lieutenant MoussaTraoré.

“In fact, during that turbulent period of Africans fighting to liberate themselves from European colonization, France would repeatedly use many ex-foreign legionnaires to carry out coups against elected presidents: On January 1st, 1966, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, an ex-French foreign legionnaire, carried out a coup against David Dacko, the first president of the Central African Republic. On January 3, 1966, Maurice Yaméogo, the first president of the Republic of Upper Volta, now called Burkina Faso, was victim of a coup carried out by Aboubacar Sangoulé Lamizana, an ex-French legionnaire who fought with French troops in Indonesia and Algeria against those countries’ independence. On 26 October, 1972, Mathieu Kérékou who was a security guard to President Hubert Maga, the first president of the Republic of Benin, carried out a coup against the president, after he attended French military schools from 1968 to 1970.

“In fact, during the last 50 years, a total of 67 coups happened in 26 countries in Africa; 16 of those countries are French ex-colonies, which means 61 percent of the coups happened in Francophone Africa.”

It is somewhat overwhelming to retrieve from the archives that: “As far back as 1898 Dr. John Kehinde Randle; Dr. Akinwande Savage; and Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford (of the Gold Coast), the founders of the National Congress of British West Africa, had begun to agitate for the Independence of Nigeria and the rest of West Africa.” Their mission was to leverage on western education to which they had had been exposed to lift up their fellow men and women. Since then, all we appear to have been doing is a race to the bottom – hence our continent is in chaos and turmoil. Perhaps we should avail ourselves of the wisdom of the late multi-billionaire co-founder of Apple Inc., Steve Jobs, who on his deathbed in 2011 wrote: “Non-stop pursuit of wealth will only turn a person into a twisted being. God gave us the senses to let us feel the love in everyone’s heart, not the illusions brought about by wealth.”

Indeed, it is tempting to add that when Barewa College was founded in 1921 admission was strictly limited to the elite – sons of sultans and emirs (and the occasional district head) who were accompanied by their servants to minister to their needs as well as look after their horses. They brought their horses to school because they had to travel long distances across the vast terrain of Northern Nigeria. Anyway, the school has produced five heads of state/prime minister of Nigeria: Abubakar Tafawa Balewa; General Yakubu Gowon; General Murtala Mohammed; Shehu Shagari, and Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.

As we grapple with the huge problems which now confront us as a nation, the obvious starting point is a national inquest – to determine how we got into this monumental mess anchored firmly on mutual suspicion and distrust. Below the superficial peace, the drums of war are already beating. Yet amongst our ancestors and, indeed, within the present generation there are unsung heroes who have been dutifully serving our nation with immense commitment and integrity without expecting anything in return or participating in corruption or the plundering of the public treasury, while others have gone on RAMPAGE!

J.K Randle