REVISING AFRICA’S BOUNDARIES
Ozodi Thomas Osuji
Africans complain that the countries they inherited from
Europeans are problematic. They complain that Europeans made mistakes in
arbitrarily lumping different tribes into the same countries thus
creating intertribal problems for the ensuing Multi tribal African
countries. They complain about Europeans having their favored tribes
placed in key government and military positions. They complain about the
parting gifts of the Europeans of rigging elections to enable their
preferred tribes handed governments. They complain about the emergent
neocolonial situation whereby Europeans (Metropolis) dictate what takes
place in Africa (Periphery); about Europe carting Africa’s resources to
Europe and keeping Africa underdeveloped; about Europeans keeping Africa
a plantation economy that feeds the industries of Europe while selling
Africans manufactured goods at exorbitant prices and thus keeping
Africans poor.
Africans have complained ad nausea about what Europeans did to
them. Fifty years after gaining Independence from Europe is enough time
to have done something about the issues been complained about? Most
people are, therefore, no longer listening to Africans constant
complaints about what other people did to them; Asians, too, were ruled
by Europeans and were subjected to the same negative treatment Africans
were, but they have gotten a good handle on their situation and today
are among the leading economies of the world.
As the old adage says: if life gives you lemon, make lemonade out
of it; don’t just sit on your sorry ass and bitch about your sorry
situation; do something about it. Make the most with what you got, that
is the nature of living on planet earth.
Children complain about their lot in life, adults do something to
improve their lot in life. It is childish to just talk about problems,
especially if all that one does is blame other people for them.
Blaming other people for ones problems is a sign of emotional
immaturity. Mature adults know that whereas in the nature of things,
others always contribute to our problems, we also contribute to them.
Mature adults do not sit around whining about how unfair life is to
them; they take responsibility for their situation and do what they
could to improve it.
To be an adult is to take ownership of ones inherited biological
datum, personality and social circumstances; study them and where
problems exist in them take corrective measures.
Life on planet earth is an on going problem to be solved. The
solution to one problem becomes another problem to be solved, ad
infinitum. The Greeks said that the human condition is like the
metaphoric Sisyphus who rolled a stone up a hill only to see it roll
right back down and he rolled it up again, and it rolled down again, and
he does it again, again and again for that is his life’s job. The moment
we stop solving our seeming intractable problems we have given up on
life and we die.
Life is a bitch, pardon my French; you cannot live with her and
you cannot live without her! What a bummer; a catch 22.
Still, life is a joy for those who take responsibility for
perpetually solving their problems. How do they say it: every problem is
an opportunity, a challenge to do something about it and in so doing
grow! Don’t cry over spilled milk, clean it up.
It is true that Europe gave Africans a gift of thorns. But such
is life in general, cest la vie. Nobody ever promised us that life is a
bed of roses!
Still, in every cloud is a silver lining.
Actually, if life was all roses and peaches it would be boring!
Excitement lies in trying to solve life’s inherent problems and while at
it making mistakes and trying again, again and again, and never giving
up.
Let us get on with it and quit whining about inevitable human
problems. So, Europeans gave us countries constituted of many tribes and
these different tribes are having a difficult time getting along with
each other? Okay.
So, what are we going to do about this problem? We have talked
about it for so long that nobody wants to hear about our talking, any
more. All my life, I have heard about this problem and certainly do not
want to hear one more word of it; I want to hear about realistic
solutions to it.
History teaches us that many countries are composed of many
ethnic groups who had difficulty getting along with each other. History
teaches us how that difficulty was resolved.
The old fashioned way of resolving the problem of multiethnic
societies was for one tribe to become militarily and politically
powerful and subjugate the other tribes and force them to embrace its
culture and language. Here are examples.
In the last century before our common era, Julius Caesar
conquered what he called Britannia. In that piece of land lived many
Celtic tribes. He forced the different tribes to embrace the culture and
language of Rome. The Romans used the sward to compel the “Britons” to
speak their language, Latin. Four hundred years later, when the Romans
abandoned their British enterprise to go home and defend Rome from
invading Barbarian hordes, most Celtic Britons spoke Latin. In 450 AD,
Rome fell to German barbarians.
The same German Barbarians sailed across the “English” Channel
and invaded England. These Germans: Angles, Saxons, Jutes etc, defeated
the Latin speaking “Britons” and took their real estate. They forced
their subjects to speak their German language.
In 1066, Norman French men (who were, in fact, French speaking
Scandinavians) conquered Britain and compelled their new subjects to
speak their French language.
Over time, Latin, German, French and Celtic dialects mixed to
form what we now call English language. English language is a pidgin
language, a language that evolved from the mixture of many languages.
In Gaul (France), the Romans established suzerainty and had the
Celtic tribes that inhabited that land speak Latin. In the fifth
century, Rome fell to marauding Germanic tribes. One of the Germanic
tribes, Franks, swept into Gaul (and changed its name to France). The
Germans (who, by the way, still rule contemporary France) and their
language absorbed the languages of the people they conquered and mixed
them with theirs and the ensuing language is French. French, though a
called a Latin language is a mixture of German, Latin and Celtic. French
is a pidgin language.
We can go on and on narrating historical realism; the salient
point is that a powerful tribe used force to impose its culture and
language on its conquered subjects and that over time, the culture and
language of the conqueror and the conquered merged to form a new culture
and language.
If this pattern of history were to be repeated in Africa, say, in
Nigeria, one of the Nigerian tribes could become very powerful and use
force to compel the other Nigerian tribes to embrace its culture and
language and, hopefully, solve the present ethnic strife in the
country. One tribe would secure Carthaginian peace in the country. Over
time, say, five hundred years, a new Nigerian culture and language would
emerge, one that combined the culture and language of the conquering
tribe and the conquered tribes.
As you can readily see, there is a problem with transferring this
pattern of historical development to Nigeria. Nigeria and other African
countries were not put together by conquering African tribes.
Contemporary African countries came into being through European
conquest and, as usual, the Europeans superimposed their cultures and
languages on them. All things being constant, in five hundred years,
Africans would evolve unique pidgin cultures languages, those that
combined their conquerors cultures and languages and their local
cultures and languages; in Nigeria, that is probably going to be a
variation of the Creole culture of the urban areas and Pidgin English.
The fact at hand is that none of the emergent African countries
came into being as a result of the conquest of one African tribe over
others. Therefore, no one African tribe has the right (and for that
matter ability) to use force of arms to impose its culture and language
on others.
In Nigeria, the British, for any number of reasons, preferred that
a certain group rule the country and before departing rigged things up
for that group to inherit the country. (The same phenomenon was repeated
in other African countries, so, let us not cry over spilled milk; let us
deal with the problem, squarely.)
The reality on the African ground needs being repeated:
contemporary African countries did not come into being as a result of a
few powerful tribes putting others into their sphere of influence. This
is the reality that we have to deal with and forgetting it makes us make
mistakes. I am talking about the mistake made in certain African
countries where some tribes now think that it is their divine right to
rule others. I understand that in Nigeria certain groups seem to believe
that it is their God given right to rule Nigeria! Well, if they have
that delusion, let me disabuse them by reminding them that they did not
put Nigeria together through their own force of arms, nor are they
capable of doing so now. Contemporary African countries were put
together by Europeans and solidified at the infamous Berlin conference.
(After unifying Germany in 1870, Otto Von Bismarck attacked and
humiliated France, her traditional enemy; he then called the conference,
1882-1884, and demanded that other European powers give Germany
territories in Africa.)
The idea of internal colonialism whereby one African tribe rules
all others is a short sighted political adventure that could only breed
political instability in extant African countries.
Even if it were possible to replicate the European model in
Africa, we must appreciate that that model was not an unqualified
success. The countries created by that model are currently making
adjustments to present political reality.
Consider Britain. The Germanic tribes used force of arms to
subjugate the Celtic tribes, to bring the Welch, the Scott, and the
Irish into their sphere of control. Think of Oliver Cromwell’s army in
Ireland; he used military force to compel the Irish (who are themselves
a mix of Celts and Scandinavians) to embrace English language and rule.
The Irish were ruled by the English until 1920 (Northern Ireland is
still part of Britain). The English used force of arms to bring their
neighbors into their Kingdom. But the natives are now agitating for
independence. That is correct, after over one thousand years of English
efforts to assimilate the Celtic tribes; those tribes are today trying
to resurrect their cultures and languages. In Wells, Scotland and
Ireland, the natives are making conscious efforts to resurrect their
Celtic languages. The natives are restive and seeking independence from
England. To keep the English empire together, England has devolved
power: give Scotland and Wells self government. The alternative would be
war and social unrest.
All over Europe, attempts are now made to give self governance to
hitherto subjugated minority tribes. European countries are splitting
into their tribal components; examples are USSR, Czechoslovakia,
Yugoslavia etc. (If you know anything about history, you know that the
current Russia federation, composed of over one hundred tribes, is
scheduled to split up in the future and, in the meantime, Russia will be
unstable as her internal colonies work against her national interests,
and are subjugated by force…Russia’s autocracy actually emanated from
her need to subjugate her different tribes; Russia will never be a
stable polity until she gives some sort of independence to her restive
colonies. Russia remains the sick man of Europe. Russia, that weird
amalgam of Asiatic and European peoples refuses to be become
democratic.)
What may have worked in the past, using force to compel different
tribes to form a country, is no longer going to work in the contemporary
world. I say so in case an African tribe has the delusion that she is
powerful and could use force to compel her neighbors to accept her
perpetual ruler ship.
No one extant African tribe is powerful enough to subjugate
others and if any tribe attempts to do so, the result would be chaos and
anarchy.
As we have established, contemporary African countries were put
together by Europeans, not Africans and no African should have the
delusion that their ancestors brought their country into being hence
that they are entitled to ruling it as their birth right.
It is not the birth right of some groups to rule Nigeria for
they did not put Nigeria together; in fact, in the past, they were only
able to rule Nigeria because the British wanted them to do so and gave
them the wherewithal to do so; without the British other Nigerian tribes
would have eaten them alive.
In case Nigerian Muslims are not trained in real politics, let me
remind them that the Christian West is now at war with the Arab Muslim
world and will not likely support those Muslims that want to rule
Nigeria in perpetuity.
This is no longer the twentieth century; we now live in a world
characterized by what Samuel Huntington called Clash of civilizations:
Muslim versus Christian, theocratic versus democratic; the West is now
fighting for her survival and is very unlikely to make alliances with
theocratic Muslim Africans, as she did before when it served her need to
control the Christianized Africa that challenged the West for power and
control of Africa.
What goes for Nigeria goes for other African countries where the
tribe preferred by Europeans and propped up by Europeans pretends to
rule other tribes. (Think of Rwanda; there, the Germans preferred the
Tutsi over the Hutu; when the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 gave Rwanda
to Belgium; the Belgians continued that preference. Now see what the
devil has wrought in Rwanda: perpetual strife between the Hutu and
Tutsi.)
The old pattern of holding restive tribes together through the
force of arms is no longer tenable and will not work in contemporary
Africa. That leaves us with efforts to find a more acceptable and
realistic solution to the problems engendered by multi ethnicity in
emergent African countries. We really do not need to look far to find a
model solution to this problem. We can take what is taking place in
Europe as our guide.
No doubt, reactionary and conservative Europeans would have
preferred to exist along their traditional tribal lines: German, French,
English, Italian, Swede, Norwegian, Danish, and Belgian etc, identify in
separate tribe based countries. But each of these tribes is too small.
Alone, none of them can compete with the giant countries of the twenty
first century: USA, China, Brazil, India, and the sick but humongous
Russia.
If Europeans defended their tribal states they would become
irrelevant in the current world economy. So what to do? They agreed to
abridge their national sovereignties and create a super European state,
the European Union, and give it powers to make laws that affected all of
them. The idea is to create a large economic and political entity that
could compete with the large countries that matter in today’s world.
The EU is composed of nearly 400 million persons, about the same
population as North America (USA, Canada and Mexico). The EU is a large
enough market for European businesses to be as large as Americans’. The
EU has enough collective resources to mount an army that can challenge
the American army. Simply stated, The EU can compete with the USA or
China, but each European country can not do so.
The Euro is already challenging the almighty American dollar as
the world’s most desired currency. But left to each European country,
their monies are insignificant in the world economy.
What can we learn from Europeans? We can learn that African
countries, as presently constituted, are, with a few exceptions, too
small to amount to anything significant in the contemporary world.
Therefore, Balkanizing the already too small African countries is not
the right solution to African tribal issues.
The real solution is to rearrange the internal constitution of
African countries and make them realistic to human nature (selfishness).
Each African country is composed of many tribes. In Europe, the
solution is to make each tribe a state within the visualized super state
called European Union. In this light, what we must do is divide African
countries along tribal lines. That is correct; the only realistic
solution to our tribal problems is to embrace our tribal reality. Each
African tribe must eventually become a state (within a larger political
entity).
Obafemi Awolowo made a similar suggestion in a book he wrote in
1945.
Nigeria is composed of about ten large tribes and numerous small
ones. The large tribes are: Hausa (though Hausa is really a language
spoken by many groups, we can consider it a tribe), Yoruba, Igbo,
Fulani, Bornu, Edo, Efik, Ijaw, Uhrobo, Ishikiri, and Tivi. Divide
Nigeria into ten states with each tribe a state. The small tribes can be
lumped into two additional states.
Nigeria must be divided into twelve self sustaining states. This
is the future of Nigeria; folks may hem and haw about it but what will
be must be if Nigeria is to survive as a political entity.
The present thirty six states of Nigeria is a joke; most of these
states do not even have the resources to pay their civil servants, let
alone engage in economic development; they run to the Federal government
for money with which to do anything; yet they demand true federalism!
True federalism, indeed; he who pays the piper calls the tune.
Moreover, the Federal government has to steal the money it gives these
economically unviable states from the Nigeria Delta and that is not
right; each state ought to be self standing and carry itself.
Consider the size of Nigeria’s large tribes. Since Nigeria is
unable to come up with a census with reliable population figures, I
shall take the figures provided by the World Almanac; according to its
latest edition, there are 24 million Hausas, 20 million Yorubas and 18
million Igbos. Compare and contrast those figures with the population of
some European countries, particularly Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium,
Netherland, Portugal etc. Each of these European countries is smaller
in population than each of the three large Nigerian tribes.
Each of the Nigerian (and many other African tribes, such as
Kikuyu, Zulu, Xhosa, Amharic, Somali, Shona, etc) is larger than many
European countries. Therefore, the idea of smallness cannot be used to
rule African tribes out as nations; what can be used to disqualify them
as countries is contemporary world political economy.
Flippant anthropologists tell us that there are over 3000 tribes
in Africa. They tend to count those who speak dialects of the same
language as different tribes. Consider Igbo. They counted more than
twenty tribes in Alaigbo (such as seeing Ikwerre, Ika, etc as not Igbos).
Well, those twenty tribes are Igbos. Igbo land stretches from Agbor in
present Delta state to Port Harcourt in present Rivers state.
If you exclude dialects there are about five hundred authentic
tribes in Africa. (I enumerated these elsewhere.)
What this means is that Africa must be divided into the five
hundred tribes in it. Each African tribe must become a state (those
that comprise only a few thousand persons should be lumped together into
states).
In the short run, we can maintain the present African countries
but it is obvious that history will, sooner or later, rearrange them. By
the end of this century, all of West Africa will probably become one
country, all of East Africa will probably become one country, all of
South Africa will probably become one country and all of Central Africa
will probably become one country; there will probably be only four
countries in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2100. By the 2200, all of Africa
will probably become one country, a true Africa union or Africa
Federation, with each tribe a state, a federation of about five hundred
states. (Given historical trends, these are inevitabilities; one is,
therefore, not proposing to debate with reactionary and retrogressive
forces. I make no pretense about it; I am a Pan-Africanist; I prefer
that all of Africa be one united country, a federation.)
At present, we could leave the present national boundaries as
they are and restructure their internal organizations along tribal
lines. I say so because the ex-colonial powers: Britain, France,
Portugal, and Spain are still too powerful and invested in their brain
children, African countries. Any effort to rearrange Africa’s
contemporary boundaries will probably make these European states to
intervene in African politics. If we tried to have all of West Africa
merge as one country, France will probably go to war to prevent that
from happening; she probably wants to retain her sphere of influence,
keep her neocolonial outposts. But reality being what it is, European
powers will wane; in fact, by the middle of this century, France, for
example, would no longer be able to project power to Africa and at that
point we must work for the proposed interim four African nations (a
prelude to one Africa).
One is a political realist (and political idealist) and knows that
at present Europeans still have some political, economic and military
clout and would frustrate the emergence of large African countries that
could challenge their control of them. One gives to the colonials their
due, aware that they are making their last gasps before expiring and
exiting from the world stage, as new powers emerge and replace them.
In the present, what seems doable is to rearrange the internal
structures of all African countries and make each tribe a state.
Nigeria, Congo, Sudan, South Africa, to pick on the largest African
countries, must restructure their internal political framework
immediately. One sees each of these giant countries having many states.
Smaller African countries would have less states; Zimbabwe, for example,
would have only two states, Shona and Ndebele states.
The various states in each polity can then choose a federation or
confederation as their national structure. (Unitary form of government
seem suited to homogenous societies and that seems to rule it out in
heterogeneous and multi tribal African countries?)
Each state must have an elected legislature (not to exceed fifty
members); the earliest age at election should be thirty; five year term
in office, with maximum of six terms in office; a governor, the earliest
age in office is forty, six year term in office, with two terms maximum,
must have served, at least, one full term in the legislature; an
independent judiciary, a civil service based judiciary; young lawyers
take examinations to work for the ministry of justice, after ten years
of lawyering take examinations to qualify as judges and thereafter climb
the judicial ladder until they get to the state high court (which is not
to exceed thirteen justices).
The local government structure follows the pattern of the state:
District Council (not to exceed thirteen members, five year term, six
terms limit; District administrator with six year term, two terms limit;
District judiciary should be part of the state ministry of Justice; the
three tier court system should be town/city court, district court and
state high court).
Each state must be in charge of its resources and economy, but
all citizens must pay state and national taxes to run the state and
central government. (A minimum of twenty percent flat tax must be paid
by all citizens towards defraying the cost of governments.)
The central government should maintain the military and run the
country’s foreign affairs. Like the state, the central government must
have an elected unicameral legislature (not to exceed three hundred
members, age thirty earliest at election, five year term in office, with
six term limit), a president (must be at least age forty-five at
election, six year term in office, with two terms limit, must have
served, at least, one full term in the National Legislature), and prime
minister (selected from the National Legislature) heading a cabinet of
ministers (selected from the National Legislature), and an independent
judiciary (lawyers take examinations to work for the national ministry
of justice, after ten years take examinations to qualify as potential
judges, when appointed judges, minimum age thirty five, work their way
through the three tier court system: federal district courts, federal
appeals courts and federal Supreme Court of thirteen justices, one of
whom is the chief justice, minimum age of Supreme Court justices at
appointment is fifty, age of retirement is eighty).
(We do not need bicameral legislatures; they are duplicative
and waste our meager resources; the USA chose it for political reasons:
to allay the fear of small states that they could be overshadowed by
bigger states; the structure I propose for African countries prevents
the domination of smaller states by larger ones.)
In a democracy there are supposed to be many political parties
competing to gain control of the government(s) and many interest groups
competing to influence the decisions made by the government. This is
nice on paper. The facts on the ground are different everywhere.
In Africa, folks form political parties to serve their individual
ego needs and or tribal needs. In as much as we want to build a united
country/continent, we do not need more than two or three political
parties; we need one party that offers conservatives/capitalists’
opportunity to join it, another that offers liberals/socialists'
opportunity to join it and a third that offers the rest of the people,
mixed everything, opportunity to use it as the tool for articulating
their political aspirations. Under no circumstances should political
parties be for propagating individual vanity and or for tribal gains.
If this proposition abridges democracy, may I ask: what is democracy?
Do we have democracy in the USA where only the rich have their goals met
and the poor are ignored? Forty five million Americans do not have
health insurance and struggle for their daily bread while America
masquerades as the richest country in the world! Is China any less
democratic because it is ruled by one party, a country that provides its
people basic needs? Two or three ideologically based political parties
are all we need in Africa at this point in our evolution. (And if I
sound autocratic, so be it; we need strong personalities like me who
know what they want out of life; every persons does not have to be
wishy-washy, vacillating, fence sitting do nothing person.)
Political decision making requires many political actors to
present their ideas of putative solutions, preferred policy choices, and
those become talking points. What ultimately become policies are a
result of bargaining, trade offs and compromises. All significant
political actors must give and get something or else the resultant
policy will not be accepted by them.
Given political realism, what I presented above are mere talking
points. All Africans talking points would have to compete with mine and,
ultimately, a decision made that somewhat satisfies most African
political forces.
I believe that when Africans face their problems squarely, rather
than avoiding them, the resultant political structure of Africa would
not be too different from what I described above.
Once Africa’s structural problem is addressed, we must then face
the real challenge confronting us: developing Africa. Africa is the
most backward continent and we need to develop it, fast. We need to
modernize Africa and join the rest of the world in producing and selling
goods and services in the global economy.
Elsewhere, I described my wish list for Africa: FREE and
COMPULSORY EDUCATION FOR all Africans in primary, secondary, technical
and university education.
All children must begin school at age six; have six years
elementary schooling, proceed to six years secondary schooling. In the
nature of things, not all pupils are bright enough to do university
work, so have the top third of secondary school graduates, 33%, proceed
to state run universities and the next fifty percent go to local
government run technical colleges where they learn how to fix things.
(See the German model of two years class work and two years
apprenticeship, sitting for national examinations to qualify for
technical specialist certificates.)
Upon completing undergraduate education, the top ten percent
proceed to graduate school and, ultimately, about one percent qualifies
for the doctorate degree, which should be mostly in the sciences and
applied physical sciences.
There must be universal medical insurance for all Africans. In
this there is no compromise. Free Education and Health insurance are
human right.
There must be subsidized public transportation, housing for the
poor etc. Other than these critical areas where the public plays a
decisive role, the economy should be free enterprise (actually, a
regulated, mixed economy).
What I really want is to have an Africa where the leaders totally
commit themselves to modernizing the continent. I am sick and tired of
coming from the most backward continent on earth. I wish that we could
all discard our silly feudal robes (agbada) and put on khaki pants and
shirts and go to work industrializing Africa. I wish that each of us
worked twelve hour days in pursuit of the development of our continent.
My wishes are political idealism. Political realism modifies my
wishes and produces what, in fact, is doable at any point in time.
It should be noted, however, that without wishes, idealism,
human beings are not different from animals. Nevertheless, idealism
without realism and human beings are living in fantasyland. The key
thing is to separate idealism from fantasy, to make sure that what one
wishes for can be accomplished in the world of space, time and matter.
Some wishes are simply not doable in a world where the external
environment limits what we can do. For example, we can wish all we want
to fly but we cannot do so for the laws of aerodynamics requires wings
for animals to fly. Fortunately, understanding the same law enables us
to build airplanes to fly with; idealism must comport with science and
technology otherwise it is illusion.
The time for mere talking about what is wrong with Africa and who
is responsible for it is over; it is now time to proffer solutions and
implement them.
In this essay, I presented my wish list of what I want Africa to
become. No doubt, you have your own wish list. Let us hear about them.
Let us mix them up and select doable solutions and vigorously implement
them.
It is now time to solve Africa’s problems rather than just talk
about them. We have talked Africa’s problems to death; only solutions
now matters.
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