Prince Justice Faloye
With adoption of IMF policies of removal of subsidies and devaluation of Naira by the Tinubu government, we are once again witnessing Western apologists claim those that speak against these racist policies only forced on Black nations as ‘anti-West’.
Even the confirmation of the two time head of state, Chief Obasanjo saying publicly that IMF and World Bank debilitating policies are forced on us, those that haven’t won a local government election are dismissing his confirmation. It’s like when President Jonathan complained that the West were openly against him, and despite the video of President Obama addressing the electorate of a foreign nation Nigeria, which floats international law, those who quote it are labelled anti-West or conspiracy theorists.
In early Nineties discussions on Neocolonization and White Privilege that I had at work in London with fellow Nigerians, I was often shushed by those that didn’t want to cause offense to their hosts. They were recent immigrants while I was born and bred in London and had no fear of criticizing government policies in a democracy. Luckily, the disagreements were often resolved when White co-workers authenticated what I said to the Nigerians surprise. My London School of Economics graduate co-workers made it clear to them that Western, Afroasiatic or any other civilization naturally push their agenda to the detriment of other civilizations.
The London arguments were frustrating but not as bad as when I relocated to Nigeria, and fellow Nigerians called me anti-West when I spoke about how IMF/World Bank policies destroyed over 60 Black economies from the Eighties until when the Chinese arrived in the late Nineties to resuscitate them. Or when I refer to indisputable evidences of coloniality of power whereby the Western Powers choose African puppets to carry out their exploitative neocolonial agenda. Or through economic and political destabilization removed governments that implement social welfarism, who they refer to as Populists or Marxists.
Can I be anti-Nigerian if I talk about the Northern hegemony or inappropriate constitution of internal colonization, so why when we raise issues of Western imperfections are we called anti-West?
I take all criticisms on the chin knowing the history that those that fought against slavery were called troublemakers or Uppity Negroes, while those that fought against colonization were labelled as Communists. Now that direct colonization has been replaced with Neocolonization whereby the local administrators are Black people like me, you are called anti-West, Communists or Black Radicals. Nevertheless, the pain of misconceptual labelling can never be as painful as the effects of our arrested development, so those truly concerned with creating an egalitarian society ignore such labelling of Black ‘White Supremacists’ that blame the Black victims.
Moreover, the term communists were only relevant propaganda until the Nineties when we started seeing Russians oligarchs and Chinese billionaires. The same applies to those that wear the toga of capitalism, when the so called capitalism system is sustained by social welfarism, which is part capitalism part Marxism. For those that care to learn, I identify myself as an Africanist and not with terms created by the Whites. My agenda is not to be a slave to either the capitalist or communists agenda but to define my civilizational agenda as an Indigenous African and, if necessary, use either the West or East to aid the empowerment of my people. Or use the foreign civilizations to balance or cancel each others exploitative agenda.
Like back in the days on slave plantations when you dare not say a word against the slavemaster, there is a form of totalitarianism in African nations since the neocolonial guards are the rich well to do members of the society – the bankers, lawyers and academicians – so one might suffer victimization or ostracization by those who feel threatened that you are shaking the table where they share our commonwealth. The oppressive regime is noticeable in the academia where the West is the major donor of research grants, foreign conferences and overseas temporary lecturing, so expressing such thoughts is inimical to your professional progress and wealth.
I remember my favorite lecturer in Ife Pierre Mutambuka, a Rwanda refugee from the Sixties Rwanda social upheaval, who was a victim of the French neocolonial stranglehold and because he spoke about neocolonialism was harassed and refused his PhD. The late Professor Sylvia Oluwole often spoke of the opposition from fellow professors for being a proponent of African philosophy. All education is civilizationally imperialistic by trying to denigrate and obsifucate other civilizations, so to propagate that there is a common African philosophy means there is an indigenous African civilization, therefore viewed inimical to the Western civilizational coloniality and would attract institutional oppresion from the Western designed and funded academia.
In our Western indoctrinated and equipped army, those that criticize negative Western influences are overlooked for promotion and might even be killed. Like in the slave plantations where a slave could lose a privileges to attend the slavemasters parties, many politically exposed Africans are scared of losing their visas to travel to the West. Bankers are also wary of such truths about our arrested development since most monies in the system come from Western sources, despite being a fraction of what is exploited from us. Lawyers are not to question the legal system upon which they profess and earn a living.
This can be traced to the beginning of the colonial system when you couldn’t even be allowed to step on the socioeconomic ladder, as told by Nnamidi Azikwe. In Haiti, children of traditionalists, Babalawos and Dibias, were refused school registration. In Francophone African nations, those viewed as Populists and Africanists were not allowed on the political stage. The sociopolitical barriers enforced cultural conformity that led to majority forced to become Christians and dress European.
Chief Awolowo’s social welfarism that was to uplift the people, was viewed as taking out of the amount creamed by the West, so he was kept from federal power in Nigeria. From the Eighties, social welfarists like Afenifere were kept out of power unless you broke ranks like Tinubu to push neoliberalism that has failed in every one of the over sixty Black nations forced to adopt them. The simple truth is no country can survive without subsidies, and if the Black elite don’t pay them like all White countries did to prevent Russian type revolutions, they will lose power to African revolutions.
The silencing of the elites has led to their mistrust by the masses and an era of anti-intellectualism. This is one of the reasons why throughout Black Africa, ideological politics has taken a backseat to money politics. If you refer to past or current Western exploitation, you won’t be allowed on the corridors of power. Little do they know that if you stop true freedom of speech and the audio protest against the status quo of coloniality causing widespread poverty, eventually the masses will rise in revolution and sweep the psuedo elite into the dustbins of history.
Infact Tinubu and other current African leaders are the last of these neocolonial class of leaders, because this status quo of socioeconomic and cultural injustices can’t continue much longer. No Black nation is industrialized because the West are fearful of Black industrialization since industrialization it has an industrial military complex component that could be used to fight White domination. Being deprived of true representative democracy, and especially social welfarism and subsidies to spur industrialization, African leaders won’t be able to provide employment to uplift the fast growing populations, so poverty will continue to increase and it will certainly lead to social upheavals and revolutions pretty soon.
