As you read this, the president of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, has been in the UK seeking medical aid for about 43 days, and that isn’t the first in the 18 months of his government.
For Africa, such trips by leaders of countries have become old tradition to an extent that what would have been a shameful engagement is rather status symbol.
We are accustomed to hearing government or past public officers coming before courts asking they be granted bail or have their passports released because they need to travel abroad for medical attention.
What created and animates the shameful tradition is fraud that in turn gave birth to a shameless attitude to living the beggar. While many African culture groups see begging as means of livelihood debasing, that is not for African leaders who take pride in that.
In my recent book published some three weeks ago, I vehemently argued against Africa living on stipends and even against wealthy countries sustaining the tradition of extending handouts to Africa. They have been the worst trends that sustain Africa’s poverty culture. In the beginning, nature over-endowed Africa with goodies and that made her very poor because she became very lazy. Later, the lethargy created by this complacence made us dumb that exploiters took on us as easily as picking up a snail in the bush. Their domination of Africa has moved from the stage of direct economic exploitation to the indirect that targets and conquers the mind and imposes on it further laziness, with another tardy tradition of using Africa as the guinea pig for tainted do-gooder diplomacy. These come in form of foreign aids from advanced countries. From UN records, in the past 60 years, Africa has got at least US$1tr in foreign aid, or an average of US$50b per year that have amounted to picking a beggar from the street and giving him N50m to start a business he never heard the name. What happens to the money? It vanishes as fast as it came and the beggar’s conditions worsen. That worse situation is the reason our leaders lack the sense of shame that stops them from providing medicare in their countries and rather prefer to travel to countries where fellow humans made such provisions possible, thereby admitting inferiority and also that the people that provide what they enjoy abroad are super humans.
Way back in Beijing last year during my fellowship, almost all 28 African journalists from 27 African countries in the programme took sides in the US presidential campaign. I was a fan of Hilary Clinton, and also hated Donald Trump’s brashness and crude words. But I still told my friends and colleagues that if Trump becoming the president of US, the world’s largest foreign aid donour, would cut short the spoon feeding of Africa as he dared that I was all for him. He promised to send most immigrants away to their countries, and I loved him for that.
Now, the times are really getting interesting for Africa at the world sphere. This week, Trump addressed the congress and announced budgetary allocation cuts to some ministries and the alarm rang loud for foreign aid allocation slashed down to about US$18b which is the least in recent years compared with an annual average of $23b in the past five years.
In addition, when Trump’s campaign centered on America for Americans during his presidency, I guessed that would tell on the amount the country contributes to the UN for the assistance of the poorer countries, which is a way of cutting Africa’s lame dependence to size.
Without waiting for long, it is here so soon.
Read this piece from an online news source that: “Alarm bells are also likely to be ringing at the UN, where officials were already on alert after reports that a draft order would usher in 40% cuts to US voluntary contributions to international bodies. US legislators have long complained that the US contribution, at 22% of the main UN budget and nearly 29% of peacekeeping operation costs, is disproportionate.”
Right now, countries, especially after the Brexit last year, think more of self and that is the waning of the globalization spree and windfall that brought its gains and pains of laziness on the receiver nations. The capital exporting OECD countries don’t care about the criteria of per capita GDP of about US$12,000 anymore. The index doesn’t mean anything to them now. All they want is self protection and that is the order today.
Last year October, I was African journalists’ representative at the Communist Party of China (CPC) Dialogue with the World in the South West China city of Chongqing and the issue of discussion was the future of globalization and what I deduced from the various experts drawn from about 78 countries that gathered in hundreds was that the future of globalization was bleak. I guess the typhoon that caught world’s attention and tradition in the late 1970s and raged like wildfire has made several landfalls and whittled down in strength to mere whistling breeze. The energy in it has ebbed and the management or mismanagement that attended it made people think twice and seek an alternative. Protectionism is fast becoming the new normal, and there at the event that hosted about 78 political party leaders from all continents of the world, the political leaders bandied the palpable fear that the worst might happen if Trump emerges winner in the US contest. Just some weeks after, the much feared Trump victory left the realm of speculation and stepped into the theatre of reality.
The fire-spitting candidate that stood against everything open USA has not hesitated in acting his dare and made the whole world know in less than two months that he wasn’t mouthing platitude or sloganeering. Trump means the business of locking in US. From his immigration, economic, diplomatic, military, environmental and other policies, he has lived up to his bidding.
How happy I feel about this. Since Africa has been lazing about, expecting manna from heaven, it’s time to tell Africa that the manna store has run thin. Now is the time for everyone to answer his father’s name, as my world would say.
I was thought as student that there are only two options open to anybody for survival – adaptation or migration. As per migration, it’s too late even when Trump has raised the red flag so high, pushing back everyone from his country. Syria and the neighbours have overloaded Europe with migrants that they don’t want more, even with protectionist campaigns threatening the receptive open minded governments. So, there is just one option for Africa – adapt and survive. If this new order would shake slumber off the eyes of Africa, I wish such a day had come earlier.
The continent is a pitiable world where self-styled leaders of low self esteem and worth dominate and compete on who destroys his country worst. They don’t shy away from beggarly lifestyle. I saw through them for close to a year of interaction with African diplomats in China.