Maduabuchi Dukor
In the fleeting passage of history and wasting of generations unfortunately peculiar to Africa we are again confronted with the generational and global cycle of pandemic. This time we are trying our capacity to survive as a race and if possible, shame Charles’ Darwin’s evolutionary theory, the philosophy of the masters of the universe, the so called developed nations responsible for slavery, fascism, holocaust, colonialism, world war I and II, gene-editing, robotic and artificial intelligence, environmental degradation, global warming and genocidal pandemic. What is the stand of Africa on COVID-19 pandemic order?
Africa runs with the hare and hunts with the hounds: This is not the first-time pandemic is ravaging the world; each turn had been a global concern, but the battle had been solemnly fought, albeit intelligently, from partisan ideological fortresses. Beyond the question of African ideological, philosophical or scientific response to survival, the most important existential question is, what is the stake of the black in the global village, as it were, in the globalization phenomenon? Now, given Nigerian experience so far in the war against COVID-19, every social and medical information including vaccine solidarity against the dreaded virus and the concepts associated with it must flow from WHO, an arm of UN heavily funded by US. US has placed a moratorium on her financial commitment to WHO due to its perceived influence by China. China has taken the gauntlet to capitalize anywhere US failed or is absent. The black mortality and fatality rates in US have re-enforced a conspiracy theory against the latter. We Africans had long reeled under the carrot and stick approach of conspiracy theory. We had lived experience of dependency theory and had been subjected to periphery theory where the center- US and Europe – control our economy and worst for it, control our history. Yet, we seem to forget the African philosophy that “one who does not know where the rain started beaten him or her will not know where it ends”. We seem not to have the capacity to learn from our philosophy.
Our strategic responses to the ravaging dreaded virus and post COVID-19 era agenda would be otiose without Franze Fanon words in our fingertips thus: each generation must out of relative obscurity discover itself or fulfill it. While WHO is routinely dictating modus – operando of lockdown, quarantine, testing, contact tracing, isolation and treatment our banana republic’s and satellite nation- states are swallowing these protocols hook and sinker. Even as important the economic palliative in the battle against COVID-19 is, the world powers are looking beyond that in search of intelligent or invisible hand behind the pandemic in order to survive as either a race or a people along the rung of the evolutionary ladder. What matters for the masters of the universe, the philosopher – leaders in the West, is not only protocol and palliative but also ultimately meta-protocol, meta-physics, and meta-technology, all of which are philosophical perspectives to the crises which weigh heavily against food on the table.
With the fatality rate of the blacks in US and Europe, the back to Africa movement from North of the hemisphere, the avalanche suspicion of the Chinese as the cause of the global pandemic and Africa seemingly being the safest place in the world, how is Africa Union (AU) positioning herself as a race or global leader? We must stop running with the hare and hunting with the hound. Certainly, Marcus Garvey from Jamaica, in the 1930s foresaw this height of imperialism when he campaigned for back to Africa movement.
What the Existentialist philosophy that man is the measure of all things and the Charles Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest in the racist world is playing out is conscious emergence of the 21st century superior races. It is hypothetically so as a simulated virus whose name was SARS-2-nCov in the previous life, some years back, and now called 2019-nCov or COVID-19. The agenda of COVID-19 is clear and different from the agenda of the previous pandemics in history. COVID-19 is (1) driven by globalization (2) death sentence (3) genocide (4) imperialism and (5) creating a new world order causing plummeting of stock markets, unemployment and population reduction against black race; embracing electronic ID, digitized money and 5Gs. Amid the speculations based on the hypothesis of an invisible enemy the master minds of the game changing technology are, by and large China, US, Russia, France, UK, and to some degree India. We would not easily succumb to the thesis on a possible coalition of Europe and U.S, but the fact remains that both power blocks have always mainstreamed a solidarity that would overwhelm the world.
In changing to new geopolitical normal Russia and Vatican City would stand by the mainstream coalition with the consent of the pontifical authority. Africa is not and will never be in the picture, albeit dirty game, ostensibly trade war or diplomacy, but in actuality survival of the fittest. The rest of the Western countries had been watching the trade war between China and US while prescoping the underlying racist ambience. Israel, one of the smallest states in the world is a master in cognizing where the survival game is moving towards having been world biggest victim of racism called anti-Semitism. Africa Union, easily traded off in the game are banana appendices of either China, US, UK or France.
Africa’s crisis of trade imbalance, chronic inflation, abysmal GDP, per capita income below poverty line, political instability, corruption and fundamental social insanity is a reflection of poverty of philosophy inherited as a contraption of colonial mentality and arcane displacement from the historical evolutionary ladder of Charles Darwin. It is high time Africa knew that mana does not fall from the blues but the outcome of critical thinking that precedes food on the table. Trade war and diplomacy are the handmaids of the war of survival of the fittest, which are predicated on intelligence, historicity and instrumental rationality. As we battle COVID-19 in Nigeria, the state has received Chinese medical personal protective equipment, President of US, Mr. Donald Trump, has donated medical facilities, IMF has doled out $3.4b to the country.
As events unfold, we should suffer to ask question: why are these mutual enemies, China and U.S, severally and collectively interested in the economy of Nigeria? What are their interests? Both countries had lost thousands of their citizens to COVID-19, yet both are struggling to outsmart the other in the game of the survival of the fittest. Why would China and U.S tear themselves apart in trade war? Why would they suspect each other over Wuhan explosion? Why would Africa be a melting point of their interests? WHO had questioned Madagascar anti-COVID-19 drug and Nigeria, in solidarity, is skeptical, even as it welcomes the drug into the country subject to another round of validation. This is poverty of philosophy.
The masters of the converse, second to none including God, the monarchs of the deadly global chase game, those infidels of Islamic religion and the Egyptians or Babylonians of Christian religion, those atheists and illuminaticsgeneration of the Caucasians and mongoloids have no value – premium on the African. For them the Africans are disposable objects and a means to ends. Philosophers, David Hume, Immanuel Kart and Charles Darwin had drum-beated this in their racist outrage against the Africans (negroids). Today China led Asia is in their battle of life and death to assert themselves in the evolutionary ladder using instrumental thinking and technology but Africa seems to be only mindful of the food on the table, banana for the republic.
In this deadly game between the West, so to say and the Asian, so to say, if 90 percent of the Africans die, that would be extra lands for sharing between the West and Asia and more economic resources and solid minerals for their franchises and frontiers reminiscent of Berlin conference in 1885 which harmonized European interests in Africa in terms of trade and land minerals explorations. The black race is a vulnerable race, the poorest of the poor races without philosophy, presumptively without thinking capacity, eating from the droplets from the table of the advanced races and therefore can be made extinct for the wellbeing of the most valuable humanity, so they would think.
The droplets from the tables of the masters of the universe are killer-aids and donations, efficient in killing like the droplets of COVID-19 from the nose and mouth of a patient. The image of the droplets infesting the other is a metaphor of how Africa is to be deceased. Yet, African social distance from the masters of the universe is in her philosophy, hence what should have been the case is African philosophical distance from the west by means of African philosophy and not individual physical distance of the West.
Dukor is Professor and Head of Department of Philosophy, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria. President/editor-in-chief ESSENCE LIBRARY (Cultural and Scientific Development Center www.essencelibrary.org)