The African and Conscientization: A Critical Approach to African Social and Political Thought with Particular Reference to Nigeria

Contents

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

DEDICATION

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

REFERENCES

PREFACE

The withdrawal of imperial colonizers from Africa in the second half of the 20th century precipitated the need for newly independent African nations to establish political, economic, and social structures that would ensure the development of cohesive, stable, and functional nations. While Africans yearned for independence, once granted, the challenges of nation-building became apparent immediately. Nigeria, like many African nations, has stumbled through the early postcolonial period with no clear post-colonial direction, dashing the hopes of its people and undermining confidence in its future. This book makes the case that the protracted decades of underdevelopment in Africa, and especially Nigeria, is traceable to a crisis of leadership that has crystallized in the institutionalization of organized corruption as part of its professional ethos. It argues that as a direct consequence of such practices over several decades, the population has been dehumanized. The situation of Africa in general, and Nigeria in particular, has been deemed so inimical and colossal that Justice Oputa’s panel advised a program of moral action from kindergarten right through to the entire polity (Report of the Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission, 2002). This is an indictment on the Nigerian population, and rightly so because for more than 40 years after independence, the country has been through a spiraling crisis in leadership and corruption such that massive looting of the national treasure is unprecedented in the history of developing countries. So many attempts have been made in search of national ideology that might spur development. This writer is proposing, in this vein, the implementation of a Conscientization philosophy similar to Paulo Freire’s as a viable ideology that would arrest and reverse the deteriorating situation. Freire’s thought was influenced largely by socio-economic and political situations in Brazil. These same ugly and dehumanizing conditions are now generally characteristic of Nigeria. Hence, Freire’s education as practice of freedom is very relevant to the Nigerian situation. This work elaborates how to develop and implement the Conscientization philosophy and shows why it would be extraordinarily appropriate in Nigeria in such a way as to contribute to the good society.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The successful completion of this book would not have been possible without the commitment and dedication of a host of people. First, I must thank my wife, Olivia for her selfless sacrifices. Then all my children Christie Adanna, Christian Nnamdi, Kacie Chukwuemeka, and Kelsie Ngozika Anyanwu for granting me some quiet time. I am deeply indebted to Dr. Venetia Somerset for her graciousness and superb editorial efforts, Thanks to Dr. Jon Ukaegbu, a champion of the Igbo Cause and a genuine advocate of a hermeneutical exegesis of the African (Igbo) Thought and Culture, for remaining an anchor for me when needed insights seemed to elude me. My thanks also go to the former Provost and colleague Dr. Dominic Nwasike for innumerable support in my professional development. In the same vein, I salute in a special way, my mentor the prolific Rev.Fr (Dr)Oliver Onwubiko, who made sure that I was well grounded in African Thought and Culture for all his contributions to my intellectual development. Last but not the least is my elder brother, Dr. Emma. Anyanwu, Medical Director/Owner of Immanuel Clinic Portharcourt Nigeria for remaining my biggest fan and supporter for all these years.

Christian. C. Anyanwu, Ph.D.

DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to all Conscientized persons whose hearts ache for the speedy economic, political, and social Risorgimento of Africa.

INTRODUCTION

There have remained a growing number of African intellectuals who are of the opinion that since the much-celebrated colonial extrinsic withdrawal from the administration of most African states, there still exists in almost all these states colonial intrinsic domination. Hence, after independence, it dawned on African political thinkers that independence in Africa was merely juridical. There were, as Kwame Nkrumah would say, Clients states with political independence minus economic independence (1981, p. 10). Meanwhile, this apparent retreat of colonialism had resulted in a loosening up of the bonds of racial solidarity. Then, the primordial flames of ethnicity struck out to burn and devour even further those ties of social cohesion.

It is a glaring phenomenon that the mode of leadership succession in Africa, which is characterized by coup d’état, has exposed unequivocally the close links between the neo-colonialists on the one hand and the native bourgeoisie on the other, and has consistently marked the course of its nationalistic evolution.

Whilst not intended to exonerate the imperialist leaders and neo-colonialists for the damage caused to many African economies and the resulting adverse impact on development over many decades, this work is focused on providing a comprehensive analysis of the weaknesses in local leadership that, it has elsewhere been argued, "not only allowed African [sic] to be exploited as a chessboard of global geopolitical wolves, but also collaborated in the enterprise of wrecking Africa" (Ogbunwezeh, 2006, para. 1).

A number of Western authors such as Stiglitz (2002) and Sachs (2005) have recently highlighted the ways in which apparent hypocrisy on the part of the West, in addition to Western collaboration with native elites, has contributed to the ongoing crisis in Africa. According to Sachs:

The outside world has pat answers for Africa’s prolonged crisis. Everything comes back, again and again, to corruption and misrule. Western officials, including the countless missions of IMF and World Bank to African countries, argue that Africa simply needs to behave itself better, to allow market forces to operate without interference by corrupt rulers. (Sachs, 2005, pp. 188-189)

Sachs goes on to document some of the actions taken by this outside, Western world which have been instrumental in bringing about, or at least contributed to, Africa’s regression in developmental terms:

Western governments enforced draconian budget policies on Africa during the 1980s and 1990s. The IMF and World Bank virtually ran the economic policies of the debt-ridden continent, recommending regimens of budgetary belt tightening known technically as structural adjustment programs. These programs had little scientific merit and produced even fewer results. By the start of the twenty-first century, Africa was poorer than during the 1960s, when the IMF and World Bank arrived on the African scene, with disease, population growth, and environmental degradation spiraling out of control. (p. 189)

The irony of Western accusations about poor governance on the part of African leaders is pointed out by Sachs, who highlights the devastating effects of several centuries of brutality and cruelty in the form of the slave trade, followed by colonial rule: Far from lifting Africa economically, the colonial era left Africa bereft of educated citizens and leaders, basic infrastructure, and public health facilities (Sachs, 2005, p. 189). Sachs attributes these effects, at least in part, to the arbitrary setting of borders for the new independent African states. These were based on imperial divisions but made little sense in terms of ethnic cohesion or natural resource allocation. What further hindered economic development in the post-colonial era, Sachs argues, is that Africa became a pawn in the cold war. Western cold warriors and operatives in the CIA and counterpart agencies in Europe opposed African leaders who preached nationalism, sought aid from the Western union, or demanded better terms on Western investments in African minerals and energy deposits (Sachs, 2005, p. 189). A valid question regarding the state of development of Africa, however, has been posed by Ogbunwezeh (2006): Why does Africa recycle underdevelopment and Africanize global poverty? (Section 1). This author cites evidence of this from the 2005 World Development Indicators (World Bank, 2005), which demonstrated a southward drift of global poverty, with a growing concentration in sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, Ogbunwezeh observed, while other regions are experiencing growth in their GDPs, and other development indicators, Africa seems to be plunging into the nether-region of underdevelopment and despair (Ogbunwezeh, 2006, Section 1).

Ogbunwezeh notes the apparent intractability of Africa’s problems despite immense intellectual efforts to resolve them: Even though the African predicament has attended so many ideological debates of an economic, socio-political, philosophical, and sociological nature, the situation is still deplorable without an end in sight… the African predicament seems to have defied solution (Ogbunwezeh, 2006, para. 4).Within these intellectual fields of debate, many reasons have been put forward for the ongoing African crisis:

From the arrant and dialectical racism of Hegelian Afro-phobic anthropology through to Chinweizu’s historical disquisition of the imperialistic and neo-colonial power subterfuge; From Joseph Stiglitz’s discontent with the engines of modern globalization, through to Jeffrey Sachs’ economics of poverty elimination; From John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, to Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom; From the bio-geographical slant of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, as well as Collapse to other numerous corporatocratic, geo-strategic analysis issuing from the Washington econo-technocrats, Africa has always been on the surgical table of disquisition. (Ogbunwezeh, 2006, para. 4)

Ogbunwezeh (2006) asks whether Africa’s backward state of development can still be attributed to its colonial history, after more than four decades of independence, and highlights the possible role that bad leadership may have also played:

Granted that colonial exploitation made many African nations a conglomeration of federated grievances; and that neo-colonial exploitative power-play propped up Kleptocratic dictators and underwrote their oppressive indiscretions against their own peoples; how could a country like Nigeria, that has earned over $400 billion from her oil resources since its discovery in 1956, [and] fritter[ed away] this wealth in conspicuous thievery, squander mania, etc., justifiably turn around to accuse colonialism for her poverty? How could Mugabe’s Zimbabwe validly accuse colonialism for the self-inflicted ruin he has brought to Zimbabwe due to his sit-tight leadership? Could Mr. Mobutu Sesse Seko accuse colonialism for his thievery, or could Idi Amin accuse colonialism for his vampiric butchery of his own people? (Ogbunwezeh, 2006, para. 5)

Ogbunwezeh’s own conclusion is that one of the greatest plagues that have sabotaged Africa’s hopes and rendered her future a fractured fairy dream, is the blight of Kleptocratic and incompetent leadership (2006, para. 5). Although he acknowledges that good political leadership cannot alone bring about development, he also argues that the role of good leadership in coordinating other contributing factors is a crucial one. The evidence for this can be found, according to this author, in the many examples of devastated countries which have experienced failed leadership in recent years: Somalia has finally imploded as a failed State. The scars of leadership orchestrated devastation still litter Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Congo, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire, Northern Uganda and other African forgotten frontiers of conflict (Ogbunwezeh, 2006, para. 6).

It is against the backdrop of these hydra-headed aspects of the African problem that there is need for a philosophical program that could fit into the framework of the traditional search for the fundamentum inconcussum, representing perhaps a new strategic approach to the existing problem. It is pertinent, at this juncture, to make clear my philosophical orientation, which is traceable to a rigorous social reformation and political affirmation. The desire for reformation emanates from my ardent wish to see future Africans extricating themselves from the shackles of vampire cultural alienation, political immaturity, social degeneration, and economic impotence.

African society is doomed to perpetual underdevelopment if we do not challenge this gross social injustice and give our people a sense of direction. Someone has to rouse us from our lethargy. Kwame Nkrumah has rightly noted that this is the epoch of social revolution in Africa, but any social revolution must therefore have, standing behind it, an intellectual revolution, a revolution in which our thinking and philosophy must find its weapon in the environment and living condition of the African people (Nkrumah, 1980, p. 2). Hence it is imperative to develop what I have called Conscientization philosophy, which is the self-perfective philosophy that seeks to give a sense of self-worth and mental equilibrium and to assist especially the African individual to acquire a psychosocial renewal. It seeks to do so in the face of an existing cultural alienation, social injustice on a colossal scale, and an unbearable vegetable existence that is due to poverty and hardship.

Hence, the perceived crisis of leadership in Africa, especially in Nigeria, has necessitated the need for a philosophy of Conscientization. The word Conscientization is derived from the Latin word conscientia, meaning conscience, an internal principle within an individual that is responsible for the moral/ethical decision-making process. Wherever this principle is inactive or clouded in a people or their leader/s, that society will be reduced to moral/ethical decrepitude, social fragmentation, and bankruptcy of character. This has been the situation in Nigeria the last 35 years at least and has elevated organized or institutionalized corruption to be part of its professional ethos. Conscientization is quite a new phenomenon, a child of the 20th century’s revolutionary impulse. It is a way of bringing self-awareness, which of necessity carries with it a strong desire for an objective change in the African’s situation. Steve Biko systematically referred to this Conscientization as:

A process whereby individuals or groups, living within a given social, and political setting are made aware of their situation. The operative attitude here is not so much awareness of the physical sense of their situation, but much more their ability to assess and improve their own influences over themselves and their environment. (Biko, 1979, pp. 140-141)

Evidence abounds that for some forty years after independence from the Europeans, the degree of political instability, economic impotence, and social degeneration in Africa has been colossal. There is no question that African leaders and the African elite or indigenous bourgeoisie are dehumanizing the African poor. This situation has called for a program of a philosophical nature akin to Paolo Freire’s Conscientizaco, a process whereby the oppressed person is led to understand his or her depressed condition and make efforts to change it. However, this thesis advocates a modified form of the Freirean model which is limited to empowering illiterates only in order to make them conscious of their own destructive fatalism and to encouraging them to take control of their own lives. The thesis also recommends an appeal to the social conscience of oppressors so as to loosen their grip on the instruments of dehumanization, and in so doing, to quicken the liberation process.

Following Freire (1998), the method of Conscientization advocated in this work, therefore, follows the action-reflection-action trajectory. In this model, an oppressed population goes through a process in which they learn and reflect on the reasons for their oppression and take action to change this situation. The more common form of change which is characteristic of social upheaval and violent revolution is not being advocated.

Structure of the book

The research strategies used in this book are qualitative and reflective analysis. The purpose of this research is to highlight the endemic and perennial problems currently besieging Africa nations, especially Nigeria, because of leadership problems. In the introduction, a strategy has been laid out for the development of a remedy through the process of Conscientization propagated through critical pedagogy and liberal education. The Introduction further cites arguments from previous authors who have emphasized the apparent intractability of Africa’s problems despite many intellectual, multidisciplinary debates about its situation.

The remainder of the book is divided into 12 chapters. Chapter 1, The African Today: The Need for Conscientization will analyze and provide justification for this project. The argument presented here is that since the various ideologies have not remedied the situation, Conscientization is the only viable option. In light of the fact that the book is predicated on leadership crisis and institutionalization of corruption as being responsible for African woes, a historical context is provided for such bold claims.

In Chapter 2, The Colonial Era: Practical Consequences, the efforts of some prominent African leaders/thinkers confronting the European challenge are detailed. In this regard, Nkrumah’s revolutionary stance is exploited; Frantz Fanon’s efforts at overcoming colonial alienation, as well as Amilcar Cabral’s engagement in mastering our natural historicity are treated as forms of revolutionary struggle.

Chapter 3, Post-colonial African Political Discourse analyzes the efforts made by African political leaders to address African development in the wake of political emancipation from colonial rule. African socialism became the viable option perceived by African political leaders to address the prevailing condition of underdevelopment.

Chapter 4, African Underdevelopment as a Direct Consequence of Leadership Failure and Institutionalized Corruption is the crux of the work and the reason d’être of the advocacy of Conscientization philosophy. It is pointed out that while the roles of western imperialism and neo-colonialism have played in Africa’s underdevelopment cannot be excused; the weak leadership of many African countries has not only allowed this to happen but has collaborated with the colonists in this process. The chapter also examines key questions about Africa’s state of economic development, its history of conflicts and wars, and the rampant poverty of its populations.

Chapter 5, Background to the Crisis of Conscience in Nigeria, details the level of moral decrepitude and social fragmentation that arises from individual alienation, the result of which is a lethargic state of mind on the part of the citizenry. People need to be galvanized into positive action, it is argued, and this should involve both the leaders and the led. This chapter looks at Nigeria as a paradigm in African by portraying its endemic leadership failures/problems as symptomatic of the African situation.

Chapter 6, Effects of Consciousness in Africa, discusses how far African masses are aware of their deprived condition. It is argued that years of visionless leadership have put the masses in a lethargic state of mind, showing signs of dehumanization. This chapter further analyzes the various effects and processes of democracy in Africa.

Chapter 7, Approaches and Goals for Our Liberation, analyzes liberation as regards not only armed struggles but also what will take us to the re-establishment of authentic African humanism. This chapter deals with the exploration and implementation of the Freirean model of Conscientization. Here, the success and challenges experienced in applying this model in Brazil are discussed. Also discussed is the Nyererian educational model for liberation, which had great success in Tanzania. This chapter also explores the condition of man, state, and capitalism in Africa, examining economic factors and development.

Chapter 8, Towards a Synthesis, looks at the questions of self-realization as the core of the whole exercise. It recommends dynamic leadership in Africa as a sine qua non for this process of self-realization. It finally considers democracy as a suitable instrument for the sustaining of dynamic leadership.

Chapter 9, Conscientization: Its method and implication in Africa, points to the method and implication of Conscientization in Africa using critical pedagogy as a tool which can help to usher in the good society. Here, critical pedagogy, in its attention to social justice, the empowerment of disadvantaged groups, and the social and political context of learning, is factored in because it often involves a critique of tradition and the consideration of new social arrangements.

Chapter 10, Conscientization: Its Praxis and Implementation in Nigeria, explores the implications of Conscientization in Nigeria and the role of literacy education in the cultivation and dissemination of Conscientization. Additionally, the factors that make this possible are articulated.

Chapter 11, Conscientization and Human Solidarity, deals with the issue of racial superiority and opens the avenue for a progressive human solidarity. It further details another important aspect of Conscientization and the method to its achievement. A series of personality transformations beginning with the self, the realized, the actualized, and finally the highest abstraction of human consciousness, the Conscientized, are outlined. Chapter 12, Conclusion, The Challenge of Our Time: From Conscientization to Inter Being examines the higher moral purpose associated with Conscientization, according to Freire (1998). In this sense, Conscientization is concerned not just with the liberation and humanization of the oppressed people themselves, but their role in liberating and humanizing the parties responsible for oppressing them.

CHAPTER 1

THE AFRICAN TODAY:

THE NEED FOR CONSCIENTIZATION

It is a truism that there has been an ongoing movement, especially in Black Africa, where human beings are in a desperate struggle to fulfill their ontological calling to be fully human, something that the facts of history have distorted. Thus the understanding of African cultural traditions and their contact with Western Europe, and a fortiori European cultural ideals, is a condition for the proper understanding of the African today. For the truth is that Africans of today are creatures of unusual heredity and environment.

Nevertheless, it must be recalled that before their contact with Western Europeans, Africans lived and maintained the spirit of communalism, strong moral codes, and an enviable sense of human relations in all its degrees and ramifications: economy, religious beliefs, family, and so forth.

In about 1444 AD, Western Europe blazed the trail on the African continent after the navigational explorations carried out by Mungo Park and others. Motivated by a mixture of curiosity, greed, and domination, they initiated a long history of subjugation of the Black race to wholesale savagery, brutalization, and dehumanization of unsurpassed magnitude. The African became mentally befogged, psychologically debased, humanly degraded, culturally raped, politically oppressed, and economically strangled.

Currently, the African is in a dilemma whether to embrace traditional African cultural ideals in toto and reject Western ideals, or to accept the West totally as the highest good and reject traditional African values. Considering the pressures on each side, the unconscientized African, just like any other, slides into alienation and consequent inauthenticity. Eventually, he/she realizes that this inauthentic polarity will never suit the march towards genuine freedom, which every rational being anxiously seeks. In the bid to free the African from this dilemma, I have thus considered the need for Conscientization, which carries with it a program of selective judicious integration of Western cultural ideals as a desideratum.

Paulo Freire popularized the word Conscientization in the 1970s. Even though literacy occupies a central role in his work, it does not only refer to a simple set of techniques to teach people to read and write. Freire’s work is an instrument through which people can be politically sensitized, thus abandoning the usual acceptance of their underprivileged condition as resulting from fate or divine will, and can start to perceive their situation as a consequence of an economical-political-ideological society of which they are the product as well as the producers. Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed encompasses the expansion of the subjectivity of human beings and rejects the idea of humans as objects. With this subjectivity comes an understanding of education as a process by and with the oppressed, as opposed to education of, for, or to them. The practice of Conscientization, the hub of Freire’s hermeneutic, is the move to let the oppressed be clear about their oppression and then to demonstrate how a liberating praxis can help them transform their life experience of oppression.

Our brand of Conscientization is much more than this. It is more or less a journey of personality transformation, which begins with transcending the vestiges of the ‘self’, with its egocentric and individualistic tendencies, to a level of realization and actualization, and eventually to the highest level of spiritual abstraction—Conscientization. This is the level where the individual becomes consumed with efforts to resolve the socio-economic and political problems and conflicts that are to the detriment of human life. Hence, our Conscientization is meant for both the oppressed and the oppressor. It is meant for the oppressed to fight for freedom even if it entails losing one’s life in the process. It is also for the oppressor to be predisposed to have a metanoia (change of heart), and begin the process of alleviating the pains of the oppressed.

Conscientization of the