A month after the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) did a story on Dillibe Onyeama’s experience of racism at Britain’s most prestigious boy’s school, Eton and his laughable decision to travel to the United Kingdom on the bill of Eton to accept a personal apology from the Headmaster of the school even while rationalising and excusing his grandfathers’ role in the abominable slave trade, little did we know that the writer of the story, Adaobi Tracia Nwaubani, fully shared his views. She has also decided, not for the first time though, to write about her great-grandfather’s role in the slave trade, not to apologise or show remorse, but to excuse and rationalise his actions. Nwaubani’s rationalisation reads almost exactly like Onyeama’s.
“Nwaubani Ogogo lived in a time when the fittest survived and the bravest excelled”, she wrote.” The concept of ‘all men are created equal’ was completely alien to traditional religion and law in his society”. “It would [therefore] be unfair to judge a 19th Century man by 21st Century principles”, she concluded.
But like I wrote two weeks ago in the case of Onyeama, this rationalisation is an often repeated lie. Like Basil Davidson, the celebrated scholar of African history opines, “the notion that Europe altogether imposed the slave trade on Africa is without any foundation in history. Those Africans who were involved in the trade were seldom the helpless victims of a commerce they did not understand. On the contrary, they responded to its challenges. They exploited its opportunities.”
The Igbo society of the 19th Century was not an anarchic society like the rationalisers of the slave trade wanted us to believe. Rather, greedy individuals/slave traders, motivated purely by love for filthy lucre manipulated traditions and customs to ensure a constant supply of slaves. Neither is the excuse that those sold into slavery were criminals or war captives doomed for execution.
Igbo slave traders skilfully set the Chukwu Abia cave temple as the Supreme Court, from which all other shrines and temples sent cases on appeal. All those condemned at the shrine (mostly unjustly) were sold to slave merchants. They also commissioned wars and expeditions, not for defensive or prestige purposes as was the tradition, but to ensure a steady supply of humans to be sold into slavery. Of course, the fact that many free people of conscience during that period would not partake in the slave trade because is conveniently left out of the discourse.
I’m not surprised though by Nwanbani’s despicable rationalisation of her great-grandfather’s role in the slave trade and the denial of his agency. That is the classical African or Nigerian approach to uncomfortable topics. They were very comfortable with blaming Europeans/Americans for the evils of the slave trade but now that the roles of African actors are being assessed, the escape route is to deny African agency altogether.
Going by Nwaubani’s logic, neither should the Europeans and Americans involved in the slave trade be blamed. Until the 18th Century, very few Europeans had any moral reservations about slavery, which did not contradict any important social or religious value for most people around the world. Virtually all anthropological and pseudo scientific studies that existed at the time were unanimous that Africans were lesser humans. In fact, in the United States, blacks were seen as three-fifths of a person.
Even the church and the Holy Books, to which most European/American merchants subscribed to, permitted or even justified slavery. What’s more, the Supreme Court of the United States recognised the rights of slaveholders to keep slaves. So, why should those people, who were born into the practice of slave trade and who just went along with the only life they knew be blamed for the evils of the slave trade? Why should the Headmaster of Eton, in 2020, apologise for the actions of students in the 1960s who knew no better and were only taking a cue from their parents and the society?
Are we really surprised Africa has been missing in the current global conversation on slavery, justice, equity and the dignity of the black person? Are we surprised that black Americans, black Europeans and blacks in the Americas view Africans with barely concealed contempt? Their overwhelming emotion towards Africa is captured by the words of Zora Neale Hurston: “…white people held my people in slavery here in America. They had bought us, it is true, and exploited us. But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw was: My people had sold me…My own people had exterminated whole nations and torn families apart for a profit before the strangers got their chance at a cut. It was a sobering thought. It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed.”
Africa also never featured in the fight to end the slave trade. In fact, when Britain tried to enforce the ban on slavery, African slave traders resisted and continued dealing with other European and slave merchants from the Americas. The need to end the capture of slaves at the source was one of the reasons Europeans ventured into the hinterlands of Africa, which led to its eventual colonisation.
Yet, even in the 21th Century, those people and their descendants won’t admit they did anything wrong and won’t apologise for the evils of their ancestors. But that is not so with all Africans. President Mathieu Kerekou of Benin in 2000 offered a wholehearted apology for his country’s role in selling fellow Africans to white merchants. According to Cyrukke Iguin, Benin’s ambassador to the United States at the time: “We share in the responsibility for this terrible human tragedy.” In 2001, Senegal’s Abdoulaye Wade – a descended of generations of slave traders himself – urged Europeans, Americans, and Africans to “acknowledge publicly and teach openly about their shared responsibility for the Atlantic slave trade.
But what about Nigeria, one of the notorious slave trading country in Africa? Its only contribution to the slavery debate was in 1990 when its president called on Western nations to pay compensation to Africa for the damages caused by the slave trade. In fact, M.K.O Abiola, who was to later contest for and win the Nigerian presidential election, had made a name for himself campaigning for reparations to African countries for the damages they suffered through slave trade.
Beyond the denial of African agency however, it appears Nwaubani’s chief concern is about her great-grandfather’s place in history.
“Assessing the people of Africa’s past by today’s standards would compel us to cast the majority of our heroes as villains, denying us the right to fully celebrate anyone who was not influenced by Western ideology,” she argued.
Apparently, having accumulated riches from their trade in their fellow human beings (Nwaubani wouldn’t even call her great-grandfather a slave trader but a businessman), Nwaubani Ogogo transitioned to trading in other commodities when the slave trade was banned. With his wealth and influence, he was appointed warrant chief and was instrumental in the establishment of Christian missions in his locality. It is this dubious and despicable legacy Nwaubani is desperate to protect.
We obviously have a problem of accepting responsibility in Nigeria. It is why no leader or politician in Nigeria, even when caught with his hands in the public till, will ever accept responsibility for the despoliation of the country. It is why 60 years after independence and with so many resources at our disposal, we are unable to build a capable state and our government is unable to perform the basic or primary duties of a government. It is why the country is being run more as a criminal enterprise than a state.
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