West Africa Review (2001)

ISSN: 1525-4488

TO OUR READERS

Tejumola Olaniyan

Ahistoricism is a charge that would snugly fit much of the current scholarship on West Africa. Yet a deep and discerning historical dimension is what interpretations of the region need most at this crucial juncture of ambiguous social and political transformations. In this regard, Olufemi Taiwo’s piece, “Prophets without Honour: African Apostles of Modernity in the Nineteenth Century,” hits several relevant targets with one shot. Apart from his critical revisionist reading of three distinguished nineteenth-century West African theorists and advocates of modernity, Taiwo simultaneously pulls the rug under much of the current discussion of West African modernity conducted as if it were a new subject in the region, and programmatically reminds us what we should never have forgotten in the first place. Part of the lesson here for the field at large is that those who don’t do history will be condemned to the needless enervation of energy reinventing the wheel, rather than the much-needed continuous refinement and extension.

A much-needed critique, refinement and extension are certainly what Kola Abimbola provides in his article, “Spirituality and Applied Ethics: An African Perspective.” In his reading of the ethical paradigms implicit in the theory and practice of Yoruba medicine, Abimbola does not, as is still frequently the practice in much of African philosophy, impose external categories borrowed from elsewhere. Instead, he takes and listens to what is “on the ground” seriously and allows it to speak to, against, and beyond given dominant approaches. The goal here is not simply an assertion of difference, but, more importantly, a demonstration of how taking African cultural practices seriously—a task very often precluded by the triumphalist certainty of ruling Euro-American approaches—can enrich and broaden both the methodologies and substances of our quest for knowledge about human cultural formations anywhere and generally.

Michael Lundblad’s “Malignant and Beneficent Fictions: Constructing Nature in Ecocriticism and Achebe’s Arrow of God,” one of the few readings of Achebe from the ecocritical point of view available anywhere, will surely broaden our understanding of the distinguished writer’s classic text. Achebe is well-known for his inimitably vivid evocation of human and natural worlds and the volatility of the space in-between where the two entities meet. He has used this skill deftly to subvert absolutisms of both colonial and indigenous kinds. But there are queries to be raised and investigations to be conducted about the tenor of Achebe’s representation of nature in the light of his quest for egalitarianism in human relations. Lundblad stages a critical conversation between the discourse of nature in Achebe and ecocriticism, showing the strengths and limitations of each, and how both can borrow illuminating perspectives from one another.

There are democratic experiments going on in several West African countries at the moment. There is no better time to revisit that old issue that just won’t die: where to place the region’s chiefs in a democratic dispensation. Since formal colonialism, the chieftaincy institution has ceased being what it used to be. Here is the paradox today: the institution is more hegemonic than any other—that is, it commands the moral regard of the populace – but it does not rule. It cannot represent its constituency to the outside world nor maintain law and order or engage in the exploitation and management of resources. On the other hand, the “modern” state systems that are ruling and have all the resources of coercion are not hegemonic. Kwame Boafo-Arthur’s piece, “Chieftaincy and Politics in Ghana Since 1982” shows the myriad dizzying permutations designed to exclude or include the chieftaincy institution in postcolonial Ghana since independence, though with more specific reference to post-1982. To consolidate the expansion of democratic structures now re-emerging again in West Africa, there is a challenge here to our political theorists for original thinking based, as I have said elsewhere in this introduction, on the realities on the ground.

If the inability of West African states to conceptually and practically integrate the chieftaincy institution meaningfully into the process of democratic governance is one sign of their wobbly foundations, the recent emergence of ethnic militias in countries like Nigeria more graphically underscores the states’ lack of hegemony. When ethnic militias emerge and begin to arrogate to themselves tasks normally expected of the state such as defense of group rights, maintenance of law and order and protection of commercial activities, and when the state itself begins to go in the direction of legitimizing the activities of ethnic militias, then we have a conundrum. Tunde Babawale meticulously follows the militias in his carefully researched essay, “The Rise of Ethnic Militias, De-Legitimisation of the State, and the Threat to Nigerian Federalism,” one of the very few pieces of critical attention to the subject to date. He traces their origins, paints a large historical canvas of their conditions of emergence, makes a tally of their activities positive and negative, and directs a critical searchlight at the composition and character of a state that provides such fertile soil for a nearly always violent politicization of ethnicity.

In continuation of one of WAR’s goals as a journal of record, re-presenting to our readers special thoughtful exertions of African intellectuals past and present, we present the works of two thinkers: Nwabufo Uwechia and Michael J. Echeruo. The essays of Uwechia—”Why Can’t the Jews and the Arabs Live Together?,” “In Defence of the Great African, Kwame Nkruma,” The Great Rift Between Russia and the West,” and “Attitude of the Church on National Progress”—all appeared in West African Pilot in 1948 and 1949.

In a series of brilliant essays Uwechia, once on the editorial board of the New African, a monthly paper published by the West African National Secretariat in London, engages the political events of his time. He deconstructs the great game of power politics then going on between and among Britain, the United States and Soviet Russia in the Near and Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean. For those unfamiliar with the politics of the region, he lays bare the reasons for the antagonism between the Jews and the Arabs. In these fashionable times of the United States “War Against Terrorism” and the Israeli government’s punishing bombardment of the Palestinians, very few can remember the historical roots of the crisis and that Palestinians were literally forced to give up their territories. Uwechia evaluates the legal merits of the Israeli claim that Palestine was once their spiritual homeland and dismisses it as spurious. In another essay, he mounts a vigorous defence of Kwame Nkrumah following the publication of a report of the Commission of Inquiry into the February 1947 disturbances in the Gold Coast, now Ghana. The focus of the essay is the colonial government inspired charge that Mr. Kwame Nkrumah “has never abandoned his aims for a Union of West African Soviet Socialist Republics.” What is interesting in this defence is that it paints a picture of open political and intellectual and of regional cooperation that the Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) should strive for. There is much to learn from the essays of intellectuals of the time as they sought to make sense of their reality and define their lives.

By contrast, Echeruo’s essay is a chapter from his remarkable book Victorian Lagos (London: Macmillan Education Limited, 1977) that highlights the patterns and life of thought reflected in the Lagos Press during the second half of the nineteenth century. From 1881, readers were engaged in extensive discussions on the quality of education in Lagos schools. What education meant and what could be achieved with it was of premium importance to opinion leaders. The NGOs today may be touting the benefits of educating the “girl child”, but they are a hundred years late and without a sense of tradition. The opinion leaders of nineteenth-century Lagos robustly debated and affirmed the education of girls. The Eagle of June 30 1881 “was full of praise for this recognition among Lagosians of the advantages of educating their daughters” (50). If girls are not being educated today, it cannot be attributed simply to ignorance; we need to research and think harder. In fact, Henry Carr, the leading African educationalist of the period was advocating that “the education of girls will run on parallel lines with that of boys, and…will ensure security against that want of sympathy in family life, that entire separation in everything, which is a great evil.” While we may disagree with the content of education for girls, we cannot but appreciate that schooling was not ruled out for women. It is interesting to realize that as far back as 1887 educational institutions in London were advertising their services in Lagos papers, a clear indication that sending sons and daughter to England for training was not uncommon among a segment of the population. The down side of this practice as Echeruo noted was the slow pace of growth of Lagos-based grammar schools at the time.

In the “In Focus” section, we present the OMEGA PLAN FOR AFRICA and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), both of which were conceived as economic recovery plans for Africa. The OMEGA was the initiative of the President of Senegal, Mr. Abdoulaye Wade while the NEPAD, which replaced the OMEGA plan was touted as an initiative developed by African leaders; it is basically a South African initiative. It is interesting that the NEPAD document was presented as having been widely disseminated and subjected to critical debates by different constituencies, community groups, and individuals in Africa, yet very few people are aware of the existence of the document, and even fewer have closely studied the provisions contained therein. It was illuminating to study this sloppily written document. It is equally shocking to discover that though the NEPAD initiative is supposedly based on a common vision and shared conviction and to provide different approaches to advancing Africa’s full participation in the global community, the people-centred element found in the Omega Plan is lost. Additionally, as the review conducted by MATCH International Centre, Canada indicates, “the document is neither gender blind nor gender neutral, the critical issue of gender was addressed sporadically at best.” (One of our coeditors, Nkiru Nzegwu, was part of a group of African women that reviewed the document on the request and sponsorship of MATCH International Centre). Of critical importance is that most people do not realize that the NEPAD document has already been presented to the G8 and there is a very strong likelihood that it would be formally adopted by the G8 in July. In this section, we present the OMEGA Plan, the NEPAD document, and the MATCH-initiated review.

It has been our declared goal and entrenched practice in West Africa Review to serve our readers only that which is always a challenge to thought. We boldly dance where angels fear to tread, if pushing the boundaries of current thought on West Africa and general intellectual stimulation are what are at stake. This issue of West Africa Review, in the articles, reviews, re-publications and documents, continues the tradition.

Thank you.

Citation Format

Olaniyan, Tejumola (2001). TO OUR READERS. West Africa Review: 3, 1.