Toba Alabi. [email protected]
Since 1980 when I was admitted into the Department of Political Science of the University of Lagos I have been hearing of the evils of global capital. We were made to read extensively on this concept. 'How Europe Underdeveloped Africa' by Walter Rodney and the 'Wretched of the Earth' by Franz Fanon are some of the compulsory texts for us then. On my I read 'Roots' by Alex Hailey and the evils of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
In addition to these extensive readings we had fantastic teachers that really helped us to understand the inner dynamics of global capital and the place of the Third World in international economic relations. Alaba Ogunsawo, Moyibi Amoda, Derin Ologbenla and the late Prof. Deoye Akinsanya are some of these incredible scholars that indeed shaped our intellectual trajectory way back then.
But over thirty years ago when I became a university teacher myself I started questioning some of the submissions of many of these scholars and the way out of the deepening contradictions in the African continent. After sixty years of independence, must the Third World scholars continue to lament and blame the West for all their woes? What can the Africans themselves do to rid themselves of the manacles and chains of global capital?
Since 1991 I have come up with what I refer to as the 'lamentation thesis' in the Third World scholarship. This is a thesis that offen closes its eyes to the huge and bewildering contradictions at home but will continue to blame Western Capitalist imperialism for the continued backwardness in Africa and the Third World . After half of a century! Certainly, this cannot stand.
When the coronavirus broke out in 2020 there was a huge dose of the lamentation thesis on its effects in Africa. Again since 24 February, 2022 that Russia invaded Ukraine, the media is awashed with the history of the evils of global capital. Most of these writings would hardly tell you how Africa could liberate itself from the influence of the West. Global capital killed Patrice Lumumba, Muammar Gaddaffi, invaded Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria etc are what you read. But what is the way out for Africa? This is what I believe should be the main concern of the African scholars.
To be sure, there is dejavu in the whole scenario. The forces that broke up the Soviet Union are still at work under Putin, the strong man in Russia. Given the virulence and the damage that the West has caused the developing world, the axiomatic obligation for any African analyst is to proffer solution to the problem of exploitation of Africa by the West. And Russia and perhaps China could play a major role in this regard. But this cannot be realised through military conquest and brute force. Without periodic elections and democratic ethos gaining footholds in Russia, ultimately it willl still crumble. The enforcement of the fundamental human rights of its citizens are crucial to winning the hearts and minds of the erstwhile member states of the defunct Soviet Union by Russia. With the current dictatorship of Putin, Russia will continue to get increasingly isolated and in the end, it might face an internal uprising and implosion that will be similar to what the USSR witnessed in 1989.
For those analysts that have always been drawing attention to the evil of the West, let them pause for a moment and reflect. Without addressing the internal problems in Africa and the predatory leadership in the continent, there is no way the West could be defeated. Corruption and misrule are the bane of development in Africa and without addressing them frontally, the continent of Africa will continue to be in the limbo of backwardness.
Perhaps, it might even be necessary to remind ourselves of what governs international politics either now in the future. Power and interest. I would want to bring in some excerpts of the article I wrote in April 2020 on the United States and the World Health Organisation. Here we go:
"Power and Interest in International Politics :The Suspension of Funding of the World Health Organization by the United States."
One of the factors that led to the collapse of the socialist doctrine at the level of praxis is its limited pragmatic reach and inability to grasp the psychology of man, a psychology that is shaped largely by the principle of self interest and personal aggradisement. Obafemi Awolowo in his 1976 lecture in the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Lecture Series at the University of Legon, Ghana demonstrated a high capacity in the understanding of the internal logic of socialism as vehicles of social transformation. One of his major submissions is that the central problem of man is economic and that all other problems are ancillary. He so much defended this position to the point of submitting that most religious people that rush to the church and mosque every day do that so that they could have economic bliss here on earth and at the extra-terrestial plane, that is, paradise, a phenomenon that is highly visible and celebrated in the realm of theology and divinity but a piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense at the scientific plane.
Woodrow Wilson, the American President during the first World War and one of the architects of the League of Nations belonged to the Idealist hue in the field of International Relations and it was this idealist thesis that formed the basis of the League of Nations. These idealists believed in the universal goodness of man and war is as a result of satanic manipulation. Man should therefore love his fellow brother like himself. What a good submission in the realm of spiritualism! Love your fellow brother in a global space where resources are limited and in competition. It was therefore this idealism and romanticism that led to the collapse of the League of Nations and the World War II commenced in 1939.
In any Contemporary analysis of the Third World in the international economic relations, two paradigms are contending for interogation. The first is the Realist approach and the second is the dependency school. What is the major submission of the Realist approach? That in the international system morality is a tragic farce and that the activities of actors in international politics, both state and non-state actors, will always be governed by power and interest. Any rational actor would therefore delineate its interests in the international system and therefore seek power to consummate them. And of course, this power could be in military, diplomatic, propagandist and economic terms. If you are in any world organization and your interests are not met, no matter how selfish and unpopular, you withdraw. What the rest members of the system think of you is of no substance. And this is what the United States has just done by withdrawing its funding of the World Health Organization at this most crucial moment when the raging coronavirus is at its peak.
In the Third World lamentation scholarship, it is very likely that Donald Trump would have been viewed as Lucifer personified. And it is not unlikely to read that the unholy actions of the United States would make God to accelerate its decline. Trump is a racist. Trump is a devil. Trump is a Zionist. These are the likely refrain in the defeatist orchestra of the Third World lamentation thesis. But this is indeed a delusional paradigm.
The United States and its Western allies are facing the worst pandemic in generations, a problem believed in the West to be caused by China, yet you go ahead and start praising China to the disadvantage of your major benefactor! In international politics, this is the height of political absurdity and irrationality.
For years, China has built concentration camps for thousands of Muslims in China because Islamic fundamentalist terror is a luxury they could ill afford. In January 2020, the American Forces neutralized General Soleimani of Iran in Iraq through drones because America saw him as a threat to its interests. In international politics, nothing is right and nothing is wrong. The only right thing is your national interest.
With regards to the dependency school, their major submission is that their organic link of the Third World to capitalist system is its nemesis that will always abort its destiny and future development. For virtually everything, the Third World depends on the West-automobiles, electronics, medical services, ICT, infrastructure, education, textiles and even toothpicks. This has been the perilous situation in the World for more than half of a century. The situation is even more dire in the Francophone countries where the commanding heights of their economy are controlled from Paris.
Now, for fifty years, the Third World has been in the doldrums of backwardness believed to be orchestrated by the global capitalist system. A pertinent question here. Where is the Third World and Africa in particular, has not been able to free itself from its current deepening predicaments? A plethora of reasons. A decadent, predatory and backward leadership. Religion and its dogma and anti-revolutionary import. A sedate, timid and reactionary followership that is incapable of engineering internal people power to eliminate and neutralize its current criminal leaders. As a result of their self inflicted timidity, external forces become handy scapegoats in rationalizing their poverty, ignorance and babarism. Bill Gates and his agencies are sending mosquitoes to eliminate blacks, the GM foods are sent to Africa to wipe off the continent. The UNICEF vaccines are to sterilize the continent. The list is endless. You can't feed yourself, yet some people sent food to you and you said is GM food. Why don't your leaders embark on realistic agricultural policies that will banish hunger and starvation in your fold? In Nigeria, your senators earn N13.5 as monthly running costs and you cannonise them in the churches and mosques. Your leaders run to the West to treat ordinary headaches and you applaud them as God sent leaders. What a tragic oxymoron! Africa in particular is a metaphor for anything corrupt, bizarre and ignoble. The truth should be told. The West is not your problem. You are your own enemy. The crooks and the thieves that govern you are...
Wuthout addressing these huge internal contradictions in Africa, the West will continue to flourish in its oppression of the world...
No doubt, Ukraine might not be able to resist the Russian forces for long. But ultimately Russia will realise that its adventure in that country is a costly mistake.
Toba Alabi is Professor of Political Science and Defence Studies.
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