edmund-obilo-blog

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KOFI ANNAN

Africa on Saturday 18 August 2018 lost one of its outstanding sons, Kofi Annan. He died in Bern, Switzerland, at the age of 80 after a brief illness.

He was United Nations (UN) Secretary-General from December 1996 to January 2007. Antonio Gutarres, Secretary General of the UN in a tribute says "Kofi Annan was a champion for peace and a guiding force for good."

Annan was born in Kumasi in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) on 8 April 1938. He studied economics at the Kumasi College of Science and Technology, now the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology of Ghana. He completed his undergraduate studies in economics at Macalester, United States, in 1961. He got a degree in International Relations at The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. He also studied at the MIT Sloan School of Management and earned a master's degree in management.

He joined the UN in 1962, working for the World Health Organization. When the Rwandan Genocide occurred in 1994, he was the Under Secretary General of the Department of Peace Keeping Operations.

In his book “Interventions: A Life in War and Peace”, he regrets the inability of his department to make better use of the media to raise awareness of the genocide.

The genocide became a dark spot in a bright career for Annan.

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GUNS AND SOCIETY IN COLONIAL NIGERIA — A REVIEW

Social interaction in Africa before the coming of Europeans was family based and community inspired. This encouraged shared participation in the deployment of the predominant factors of production (land and labour), confirming its communal nature. It was a system of reciprocity. The coming of Europeans meant a confrontation with new ideals and systems.

The role guns played in reshaping African societies takes a preeminent position in that they became instruments of conquest. The movement of people and ideas were concealed in the elaborate plans to make African societies abide to the powers of European innovation. Guns and their usage clearly define the engagement.

It is this raucous evolutionary action that Saheed Aderinto captures in the book “Guns and Society in Colonial Nigeria”. The book reflects the social meaning a commodity like gun gives to domestic realities. Aderinto argues that Nigeria became a gun society as a function of British Colonialism. Europeans put guns to use for war and state building. Guns became issues of race, ethnicity and class, thus raising the question of culture.

Gun culture is different from a gun society.

In Aderinto’s definition, a society becomes a gun society when it cannot do without firearms in its daily social, political, cultural and religious life. In our case, it is the consequence of colonialism.

In conclusion, the book is a rich reservoir of history. History creates values. According to Francis Fukuyama “things that happened hundreds or even thousands of years ago continue to exert major influence on the nature of politics”. To him the understanding of the functioning of contemporary institutions is contingent on the knowledge of their origins and the forces that created them. This is the mission Aderinto has accomplished with his new book.

Note:

Saheed Aderinto, author of Guns and Society in Colonial Nigeria, is a professor of history at Western Carolina University.

Picture: Cartoon titled “Better to Die Honourably Fighting Alone Than Live Forever in an Enslaved State” by Akinola Lasekan, West African Pilot, June 17, 1949. Recreated for better reprint by Ganiyu Jimoh (Jimga).

Figure 5.1. on page 158 of the book.

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BUHARI IN CHINA

President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday left for China to participate in the 7th summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) holding from September 3 – 4, 2018 in Beijing.

The theme of the summit is “Towards an even Stronger China-Africa Community with a shared Future”. The last FOCAC summit was in Johannesburg, South Africa in December 2015.

President Buhari appreciates China. In January 2018 while receiving the Board of Directors of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group, he said:

‘‘We send our gratitude to the Chinese for all their support to Nigeria. Since independence, no country has helped our country on infrastructural development like the Chinese. In some projects, the Chinese help us with 85 percent payment, and soft loans that span 20 years. No country has done that for us.’’

Buhari should be more appreciative now that China will spend $60 billion to finance projects in Africa, as announced by President Xi Jinping at the opening ceremony of the ongoing Summit. The funding will be provided as government assistance and as investment. China is also ready to forgive some African countries of their outstanding debts due by the end of 2018.

On the relationship between China and African countries, a school of thought warns that in the long run, as Africans evolve the task will be to ensure that the‭ relations‭ ‬between‭ ‬Africa‭ and‭ China is not similar to centuries of exploitation pursued my Europe and the United States.‭‭

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MEN OF POWER

Growing up I wondered how the men of power manipulate the system. I remember visiting a military officer while in secondary school. I wanted to know why military officers carry out bloody coups. He told me it is a game of power and relevance. He said it takes planning, strategy and betrayal. I asked if they must kill to attain power. He said “young man, in this part of the world, applying brutish tactics to attain power is allowed.”

I also wanted to know if there are books they read to understand the game of power. He went inside and came out with some books. He said in the military most of them interested in brutal power read the books. I asked him to release the books to me for my reading pleasure. He refused saying I was too young to understand and interpret the ideas in them. I was in SSS3.

However, he allowed me to go through one of the books there. That was the first time I came in contact with the book “The Prince” by Niccolo Machiavelli. I was intrigued by the expression of manipulation in the book.

I would later buy mine as a first year university student. I also bought “The 48 Laws of Power” by Robert Greene. With the help of these books, I started conceptualizing the behavior of the military in governance and the instruments of violence deployed in the interest of power not the people. I got worried.

The books registered an impression.

Can the 81 year old Obasanjo be described as a man exhibiting huge Machiavellian trait?

Greene’s first law of power is “never outshine the master”.

He says outshining the master inspires fear and insecurity. He says make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power. Could that be the reason in the Nigerian case sycophants hero worship our failing leaders to attain power?

Did Atiku as Vice President try to outshine Obasanjo the president? Could that be the reason Obasanjo tried to put Atiku in his place?

Remember the 15th law of power - “crush your enemy totally”. Was that what Obasanjo intended to do to Atiku?

Was that the reason Abacha crushed Yar Adua in detention? I mean the older Yar Adua, not his younger brother that became the President of Nigeria in 2007.

Can Buhari crush Obasanjo or Saraki?