Love in the Time of Global Cholera

Armistice Day with Mama Igosun

 

 Tatalo Alamu

 

 

State capitalism and Keynesian economics are back. Lord John Maynard Keynes has become the toast of civilized economic discourse all over again. What was pooh-poohed by right-wing economic theorists as sheer economic illiteracy has returned as the cornerstone of fundamental economic wisdom.

With human civilization crouching under the hammer of a vicious pandemic, massive state intervention has become the order of the day.

A western Nigeria proverb holds that it is the wintry Harmattan weather that will teach a scantily dressed woman some memorable sense.

It has taken a truly lethal virus originating from China to reset the human brain. You cannot abandon primal state responsibility to the cruelty and brutal vagaries of market forces.

That amounts to a denial of the fundamental raison d’etre of the state. The state exists to protect the weakest from the strongest and to forcefully adjudicate among contending classes in order to arrive at what is best for human society.

Otherwise, it is headlong rush back to the state of nature. With their subways littered with human fiascos, with urban ghettoes and squalid slums dotting the landscape and with the homeless roaming the streets in search of food, some metropolitan cities were already beginning to evoke the memories of a hell on earth or Dante’s inferno even before Covid-19 struck.

Anarchy and lawless chaos beckon where the state retreats and abandons its responsibility in the name of liberty and human freedom. If human beings were divine specimens, there would have been no need for the state in the first instance.

A society is ultimately judged not by its wealth and immense riches but by how conducive it is to human development and refined civilization.

It is a rebuke to humanity for so much wealth to sit side by side with so much squalor and excruciating poverty.

Many conspiracy theorists have fingered China in the current global meltdown. If this were to be so, China will get its own comeuppance very soon.

However that may be, there is a lot to be said in favour of the current Chinese model of state capitalism. It rewards its disciplined people with compassion and empathy.

The paradox of the enlightened authoritarian state is that it often treats its people with the indulgence of an ancient patriarch.

The problem of post-colonial Africa is discipline and order. African political elite cannot impose discipline from above because they lack discipline themselves.

You cannot give what you don’t have. In Nigeria it has been noticed that it is when economic nationalists are in charge of the economic engine room, no matter the political colouration of the regime, that the nation experiences economic stability and relative prosperity: Awolowo/ Adedeji under Gowon and Ani/ Aluko under Abacha.

But while we are at it and however harsh and uncaring it may often appear, we cannot afford to throw away the baby with the bath water of monetarist economics. We must never forget what brought the old Welfarist state into disrepute in the first instance.

The state cannot return to the old Father Christmas patent; a huge economic alms house doling out largesse to everybody including those who have refused to work and those who have refused to find work.

Nothing stifles human creativity and ingenuity more than the thought that there is no reward for those who go the extra mile and those who are gifted with the unusual ability to solve civilizational problems.

The passion for social justice must not be equated with the thirst for vengeance or the equalization of poverty.

The most successful instance of state capitalism recognises and rewards the talented ten-percentile without abdicating its primary responsibility to the less endowed.

The economics of disaffection as a dire consequence of a lack of national consensus is militating against any fundamental economic progress in Nigeria.

Twenty one years after the formal cessation of military plunder, there is still a run on the national treasury because everybody believes that something must eventually give.

Unfortunately, the stolen monies stashed away in foreign and local bank vaults are savings that are not worth the name in the long run. It will not save anybody.

It certainly takes a ruling elite gifted with transcendental wisdom and self-enlightened kindness to know that the rich cannot enjoy their wealth if the poor and less endowed do not have the purchasing power to obtain elementary comfort.

While some people made this discovery almost a century ago, the feudal barons holding Nigeria hostage have not, despite the world-historic tragedy gradually enveloping them and the nation.

When what you are about to read was published here about thirteen years ago in 2007, nobody could have thought of a pandemic that will devastate the global economy.

After 9/11, America was preparing for the wrong kind of war. Now, it has been upended by a mere virus which has laid bare for the world to see its great racial and economic divide.

If the United States had spent one tenth of what it had expended on munitions on boosting infrastructure and improving health care facilities the outcome might have been different.

Now the greatest country the world has seen lay prostrate and in terribly piteous condition. Like a polar bear at bay, a clearly distressed Donald Trump brays in distemper while the Chinese chuckle with sinister relish.

This time around, an older civilization seems to have the full measure of America.

This article is republished this morning after thirteen years so that the debate about the economic and political wellbeing of the post-Covid-19 world can commence in earnest.

 

 

Love in the Time of Global Cholera

 

Our heart is warmed by the news that about a hundred freshly trained Nigerian medical doctors are returning to the country courtesy of Cuba. This, no doubt, is going to be a great boost to the failing national health programme and a windfall for our drying pool of human capital.

Snooper salutes Fidel Castro and the good people of Cuba for this act of generosity and munificence, particularly at a time when their own economy is not in the best of shape. Just as there are noble people, there are also noble nations.

Readers who are familiar with Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ wonderful epic, Love in the Time of Cholera will agree that raging epidemics do not prevent human beings from falling in love.

If anything, the stress of affliction often predisposes certain people to premature romance. But the world changes and so does humanity.

In our own age, the idea of love among nations may seem like a gospel from a quaint and distant era, erased forever from human memory.

Despite the pretences of globalisation at turning the world into a global village, what it has actually turned the world into is a global cage with a polar cat set among frightened pigeons.

There is nothing strange or unusual about this. Only those who read their history wrongly are wrong-footed by historical developments.

When the early Europeans, in the first wave of globalisation, set out from their city-states to explore the rest of the world, it was not to bring peace or mutual cooperation.

It was a mission of unequal exchange, conquest and colonisation. As it was in the beginning, so shall it be at the end.

It is noteworthy, then, that at a time when the forces of globalisation have unleashed a brutal competitiveness among nations and an unhealthy polarisation of the world into an affluent and politically stable west and the rest of us, we find glimpses of the old paradigm of cooperation among nations irrespective of dominant ideologies.

Like the two aging former lovers in Marquez’s classic who renewed their vow after half a century of separation, the path of Nigeria and Cuba has crossed before in happier circumstances and a fruitful liason, too.

When the tempestuous General Murtala Mohammed famously erupted at the 1976 OAU conference against western meddling in Angola, it was Cuba that provided the military teeth.

There is a consensus that this was probably Nigeria’s golden moment as a nation. With the help of Cuba and under Nigeria’s vociferous watch, the MPLA triumphed. Holden Roberto was sent scampering across the border to his Zairian in law while Jonas Savimbi retreated southwards to his Ovimbudu tribal enclave.

Thereafter before the biblical cock could crow thrice, Nigeria had betrayed its former ally serially. As the nation fell under the iron grips of a string of right-wing IMF-compliant dictators, the idea of radical and revolutionary fraternity also receded into the shadow.

As the rhetoric of African liberation faltered, it was replaced by the rhetoric of market forces and the end of ideology.

As the ogre of dictatorship matured, Nigeria also came under the spell of the intellectual clones of the neo-con, a strange African hybrid evolved from the American militarisation of the entire globe, the militarisation of post-colonial Nigeria and a corresponding militarisation of the thinking faculty.

These are hard men and women mouthing empty platitudes like military recruits drilled into senseless obeisance. If ever one can have the daring oxymoron of intellectual zombies, here they were.

As apostles of mindless economic and political violence, they were to receive their official canonisation as the Obasanjo regime drifted farther and farther to the right in a fruitless and futile search for relevance and western endorsement.

This is not Castro or Cuba’s turf, and both have given us a wide berth. Despite the declining national revenues, despite the economic blockade, despite the massive propaganda and the seeming unpopularity of rigid centralization, Cuba has refused to go under.

Bloodied, battered and brutalised, this heroic nation, in fifty years of revolutionary turbulence, has achieved full literacy and comprehensive medical service for all, a feat still in the realm of an impossible dream for many western nations.

Whatever may come after him, Castro has changed Cuba forever for the better. He has laid the foundation of a great nation from the marsh bog of corruption and sleaze.

His gift to Nigeria at this time could not have been more symbolic and damning. A nation can continue to ape western ideologies until the kingdom comes, as long as the political elite do not get their act together, the country will be marooned in the limbo of underdevelopment.

After fifty years of oil revenues, Nigeria has to rely on a small island off the American coast to boost its supply of doctors, no thanks to a string of maniacally corrupt rulers.

Being a gifted ironist, Fidel Castro would understand that there are leaders and there are leaders.  Here is thanking the old man of Havana once more for his thoughtful medical assistance to a diseased nation.

( First published in June, 2007)

 

Armistice Day with Mama Igosun

 

It felt like Europe on Armistice Day exactly seventy five years ago. As dawn broke last Monday and government’s relaxation of some of the restrictions occasioned by Covid-19 came into effect, all hell broke loose in Lagos, the greatest megalopolis of the Black person in contemporary epoch.

It was like watching a human volcano erupt as the outlying slums and suburbs emptied their contents on the besieged city.

Only God knew what had roused the crowd to this early morning animation. But there were people everywhere heading in no particular direction and often at apparent cross purpose.

Very soon, the banks, hospitals and government offices filled up to their capacity with the unruly conurbation spilling to adjacent streets as tempers flared and hot arguments about right of way and other priorities settled for fistic adjudication.

Watching the human maelstrom from the veranda, Mama Igosun exploded in mirth and wicked humour: “ even when dem Ibadan army come drive dem Owu people comot and dem come scatter everywhere, the crowd no reach this one oo”, the ancient damsel noted still confining her point of reference to ancient Yoruba feuds.

The old woman was clad in snow-white apparel, like a priestess of some dreaded orisa deity. Thinking that an apparition had stolen into the house, a dozy Okon was about to scream for help before realising it was Mama Igosun.

“If you like, make una appear like Angel Gabriel. No be you go drive me comot for Lagos, since I no come Lagos becos of una, you hear?” Okon swore at the old woman.

“Yeye boy, na mariwo (palm fronds) you see, you never see dem egungun”, she shot back having comfortably ensconced herself in a ringside seat outside the house. By now the crowd was becoming even more unruly with people running helter-skelter in all directions without any reason or rhyme.

“Abi dis dem Shaina (China) people don poison dem water supply for dem Iju sef? Dis one come dey pass Kurunmi and dem Ijaye war”, the old woman mused to herself with a mischievous twinkle.

Suddenly Mama Igosun sighted her favourite police buddy in mufti trudging rather desultorily among the crowd with horror written all over his face.

“Ha officer, policeman, how market?” Mama Igosun sneered at him.

“Ha mama, ilu (town) don burn you still dey ask for market? Market don scatter”, the distraught cop rumbled as he elbowed his way forward.

By this time, the old woman noticed the undersized police fellow often in oversized uniform who doubled as the orderly to the older one, struggling with the crowd to keep up pace with his boss.

Despite his puny size, he was quite a handful with his colourful turn of phrase and funny northern Yoruba accent.

“Ha, ha, kunduke, kunduke !! ( ancient Yoruba word for miniscule or kindergarten masquerade) You don thief finish  today?” the old woman snorted at his heels.

“Ha mama, town don scatter. Dem say drum don tear and you dey ask for Ayantoyinbo? Even if you call Ayanleke he no fit. Armed robber come rob armed robber today. Manamana (Thunder pronounced with Oke Ogun accent) come descend. Dem Awawa boys finis baba police for bank today.

Dem take all him money from him pocket and him ATM card. Oga just dey look dem him no fit talk. Dem even ask him to write him ATM number, and oga come dey paranpitate as he write am”, the rogue cop chanted with barely suppressed malice.

“Wetin happen?” the ancient lady asked in mock concern.

“Mama, sebi you be ogbologbo? Dem masquerade without mask na him be the master of masquerade with mask. Without uniform and rifle policeman na ordinary Idumota omolanke man.

He don dey reach time make man leave dis yeye job jeje. Dem boys I see today even Inspector General go pick race”, the old boy sniggered.

“Yekinni, stop releasing state secrets or I will put you on guardroom trial as soon as we get to the station, you stinking idiot”, the older cop finally exploded without any conviction which elicited a girlish laughter of derision from the old woman.

“ Kai, dem don finish dem police. Dis one no be police force of Oluokun of Amunigun, Areoye of Beiyerunka and Elekuru of Agbadagbudu”, the old woman lamented.

“Mama if dem like make dem go bring Alalubosa and leave Elekuru na the same thing. When  Abiku dey fight Ayorunbo something must to give”, the younger cop drawled.

It was at this point that the noise of heavy duty military grade shooting panicked the already disorderly crowd. Amidst the din and confusion, the old woman of Igosun vanished into thin air.