Opinion
God Abeg!
Published
1 year agoon

By Toyin Falola
The sociolinguistic property of God Abeg became bare after Oludare Alaba’s hilarious video hovered around social media platforms and raised continuous conversations. Alaba, a graduate of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, returned to the school languishing that his “certificate is worthless.” According to his story, Alaba is not a lazy Nigerian young man; he has no one to support him. He has searched for a job and farmed, yet, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel has remained elusive. Alaba’s travail was worsened by the destruction of his farmland by unchecked nomads whose cattle saunter and feed on cultivated farms. Only God knows how many God Abegs Alaba would have cried out before giving up hope and returning his certificate to retrieve the school fees he had paid. Alaba, you cannot return your certificate for a refund!
God Abeg means “God please” and depicts a cliché prayer to God for help in difficult situations, especially those beyond one’s ability or control. In many instances, it is not that one has decided to shift the onus of responsibility to the Almighty or that one has not attempted to make efforts that would resolve the situation. No, it is that after all these, nothing changes and one remains trapped in the labyrinths of hopelessness. Afterwards, people resort to chanting soft but resonating God Abeg. Oludare Alaba’s experience captures this situation, and he is not the only one in this misery. About 89 million Nigerians who live below the poverty line and the millions of underemployed and unemployed Nigerians who strive to succeed and fail all chant God Abeg!
Nigerians are characterized by their will to survive against all odds. From the Mai Gida who cultivates farms and rears cattle, to the young Aboki scavengers who scour garbage and refuse dumps from street to street, to the Nna who goes across regions to sell bales of clothes, to the unrelenting traders in Katangora and Alaba markets of Lagos, to Iya Risi who runs a small food Buka from dawn to dusk, to the hustlers who hawk in traffic and the brilliant innovators who are blazing the trails towards securing the future of Nigeria, one would be convinced that the country has enough energetic human resources that could change the economy of any nation. However, despite these attributes and the people’s honest toils, their situations do not reflect their diligence.
People like Alaba are living evidence that working and making efforts are not Nigeria’s problems, but whether those efforts can pay their bills. After spending donkey years in school with a high possibility of falling into the ambush of ASUU strikes or several of those years in the apprenticeship of a trade or vocation, one might come to a saddening realization that those time investments may be flushed down the drain by the country and its murderous systems. Dejected, the people go down rambling softly, God abeg!
The country has a terrific labour market capable of killing any charted career path. For those who have been able to acquire educational qualifications, job opportunities have become a luxury for the rich and connected. The National Bureau of Statistics currently puts the rate of unemployment in Nigeria at 33.3%, one of the highest in the world. The rate is quite worse among the youth; 42.5% of the youth, who form about 60% of the population, are unemployed.
It is one thing to be employed and another to be gainfully employed. About 22.8% of the Nigerian population are underemployed, which means that where there is work, there is a chance that they are below the qualification of job searchers. The World Bank stated that only 17% of Nigerians hold wage jobs. Juxtaposing the average salary and living wage of about N43,200 to the nation’s cost of living, the cost of living is 5.3 times higher. God Abeg!
READ ALSO: Japa
For those who have decided to have their start-ups, especially after seeing the saturated labour market, the country’s economy and the business atmosphere is suffocating enough to send them out of business. A study by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation’s Investment and Technology Promotion Office in 2017 revealed that only 40% of those who aspire to have a start-up eventually launch it, and only 20% of Small and Medium Enterprises in Nigeria survive in Nigeria. This is due to the spartan conditions of Nigeria’s commercial and business arenas and stringent economic austerity. An inflation rate of 20.52% and other societal factors are demons that torment these honest hustlers. After each failed effort, it seems they are not fighting against “principality and powers,” but against some forces that require the supernatural intervention of the Almighty, so they say, God Abeg!
Nigeria is in trouble, and its systems are cankerworms eating away at the people’s possible potential and hope. If there is no decisive developmental fumigation of those cankerworms, the nation may beckon to its damning mayday. When physical efforts fail to solve physical problems, it is only logical to seek metaphysical means, which explains the muttering of God Abeg for God to come through for one. But despite these prayers, has God forsaken Nigeria that even God Abeg is coming with similar possibilities of placing a bet? Nigeria is on edge, and the nation is the architect of its undoing, not God. God saves and punishes, but God is not punishing us; Nigerians are punishing themselves. Perhaps we might need to beg Nigerians, some factors, individuals, and institutions before saying the slow-soft God Abeg.
Today, the son of nobody is often nobody, with nepotism and favouritism beating him down the pecking order. Recruiters would rather hire based on familiarity and ethnic sentiments than expertise. A 2019 survey established that about 50% of positions in public institutions and sectors in Nigeria were secured either by bribery or nepotism, or both. Police officers recruit their sons to the police, just as professors recruit their wives and children to fill vacant positions on campus. This is also the situation in private sectors with unnecessary requirements like a camel that must go through the eye of the needle. Hence, one Akpan may waste his educational and training age to be rewarded with secured employment, while others finish with nothing to show. There are very few people who are saints from nepotism, and to say God Abeg without begging ourselves first is to fiddle around. God will not stop nepotism; only you and I can.
READ ALSO: Youths’re Energised To Choose Right Leaders In 2023 – Kukah
After we have reserved a begging session to change the nepotism orientation among government officials and citizens, one must reserve another to end corrupt practices. According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, Nigeria ranked 154th least corrupt country out of 180 at the end of 2021. With the $2 billion Dasuki Gate scandal, million dollars Alison Madueke’s corruption allegations, General Abacha, our generous father in heaven who keeps sending money to us at intervals, and other colossal bribery and corruption cases, it is only reasonable that the economy and the society would be sapped of anything that would allow the citizens to flourish. Corruption has deeply penetrated all sectors and systems and stifled the nation’s progress. As the country’s major problem, it waters down any effort government and individuals make to turn the nation’s situation around. Hence, if we do not beg for a solution to corruption, God abeg may only be a psychological comfort without striving to make changes.
Where one does not see the direct effects of nepotism and corruption that lead to the God-abeg-worthy situations, the lack of infrastructure and facilities are evidential problems that build garrisons against the efforts of Nigerians and their businesses. Lack of adequate infrastructure affects the production chain and threatens the longevity of any business. It also increases the cost of living, as the aggregate effects tell on the economy and the standard of living. As a result, society seems to be in tune with reviving Sapa rather than resolving it.
At this point, God Abeg has multi-dimensional applicability, and the people’s living condition is just one of them. However, the more frightening applicability is the face of terror that many Nigerians experience almost daily. When you live in a society where the people are tossed between terrorist attacks, herdsmen and farmers’ brutal confrontations, common banditry and kidnapping, dangerous separatist agitation, oil militancy, ritual killing, and other life-threatening situation, begging God for food will become less important to begging God to survive every day. Nigeria has lost hundreds of thousands of lives to these security challenges; unfortunately, there is no end. God abeg!
Before we beg God again, three entities must be begged to resolve the nation’s problems. First is the government, which is not doing enough to alleviate the conditions of the people, has been ineffective in its duty and refused to take decisive actions against corruption and insecurity that are ruining the nation every day. The government, our Satan, God abeg, accept my sacrifices on behalf of millions of Nigerians. I slaughter for you a live goat. I just remember that you eat dollars, not goat meat. God Abeg!
Second is the enemies of Nigeria’s progress who, through their perpetrations, embezzlement, nepotism, criminal tendencies, and negative discordancy, reduce the little the government does, suspend peace, and make lives harsh for their compatriots. Our agbako wahala, wahala agbako, I offer prayers. I forgot that you attend the Sinners’ Cathederal, and my prayers cannot reach you. God Abeg!
The third is the citizens who grow political dementia every four years to vote for those who have put them in their present condition, thereby restructuring the circle of anguish and refusing to uphold the tenets of citizenship and patriotism. Sons and daughters of magicians, remember that salvation is not for free. God Abeg!
There is a solution in sight, but Nigerians have refused to clear the path to explore and nurture it into fruition. In January 2012, Nigerians came together to say an emphatic NO to the increase in PMS pump price from N65 to N140, and the government was made to succumb to this demand. In October 2020, Nigerians again united in opposing police brutality and demanded the disbandment of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, which was alleged to cause the same havoc it was supposed to fight against, and the government bent on these demands. With these incidents and the obvious increasing agitations on social media and physical, one can say that society can collectively demand good governance when they are committed to doing so.
READ ALSO: Adamu Adamu: What Manner Of Education Minister?
Fortunately, there is an approaching opportunity for the nation to come together again to demand a better Nigeria where God thank you will be more than God abeg. The 2023 elections are approaching, and since leadership is paramount to the development and the first step towards resolving the country’s problems, Nigerians must Gbera the same way they did in 2012 and 2020 to redefine Nigeria through their votes. They must sing songs of the problems of Nigeria, so strong that those who have been hypnotized into forgetting their suffering will receive a rousing push to do the right thing. The citizens must resist vote buying, election violence, and electoral disorientations. The nation will be one step closer to its restoration if these are championed as a course with the same intensity as the #OccupyNigeria and #EndSARS agitations. The 2023 election is Nigerians’ next shot at the Nigerian dream. But not this kind of democracy, just to pre-warn you. As to this democracy, God Abeg!
Can the citizens begin to shout Government Abeg, Perpetrators Abeg, Nigerians Abeg? In that case, God will probably take a good look at the resources He has given to this green land and how we have been the architect of our undoing, and then HE will revert the pleadings, saying, “Man, Abegi!”
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Opinion
Reading Professor Olu Obafemi’s Melodies Of Inclement Climes
Published
2 days agoon
September 22, 2023
By Tony Afejuku
“Happiness is a crime in Nigeria.” This is a line – a line of distinction – I am lifting from a message sent to me as a response to my last Friday’s column on ‘“Professor Mabel Evwierhoma on Rubiales and “Wetin women want.”’ The owner of the lifted line is a positively dangerous poet, radical scholar and critic Professor Owojecho Omoha of the University of Abuja. I will at a later date revisit the full message of this literary scholar who is one of the distinguished boosters of this column.
Why is his quoted line meaningful or relevant to me today? For good reason, I have been trying to reinvigorate the idea or thought of happiness in Nigeria – your country my country our country – despite our common concerns concerning our dissatisfaction with our ungrateful leaders who significantly are our demonic consumers consuming this land, our land centuries and more than centuries ago. On my way to Warri last Friday I was thinking deeply about this when I was caught in the Benin-Ologbo obstacle on that cruel stretch of the Benin-Sapele-Warri Road of urbanized or almost urbanized jungle. I was clutching Professor Olu Obafemi’s very new book of poems, his fresh new volume of poetry which he quite properly entitles Melodies of Inclement Climes. I was looking at the moving poems in my desire to erase temporarily from my mind the vicious, tedious, muddy, degraded watery road which is evidently and steadily now the road of the unhappy people of the Niger Delta, and it was at this moment that Owojecho Omoha’s line found me. But I was already engrossed in the first offering, the first poem, in which the Niger Delta malaise stares at me – even though Professor Olu Obafemi is not from the Niger Delta, your Niger Delta my Niger Delta our Niger Delta. Ologbo where conservatively above three thousand trucks (trailers) and other uncountable vehicles – commercial and private – were practically at a stand-still, moving without moving because of the motorable-less motor-way, is one of the unfortunate or tragic by-products of urbanization that is no urbanization in the Niger Delta. Ologbo is a border town, a border community that links Edo State and Delta State. It is the most significant place that links Itsekiri, Urhobo and Edo (Benin) communities. It is the place where the work of cooperation and mutual help among the communities and travellers through the communities can find significantly honest expression that should capture our cultural and patriotic ethos that should give us good health and happiness. This is what Olu Obafemi seems to tell us, among other things, in “Those who gaze beyond today:”
While others like us
Bleed our land to death
Greedily erecting mansions
In other people’s lands,
Laundering filthy coins
Stolen from the sweaty brows
Of the poor and the deprived
In our own un-honed beaches and sandy shores!
Lay to ruin and waste and wreck
The black Gold!
As I read Professor Olu Obafemi’s Melodies at the shores of Ologbo two things emerged to me and rose to my dense imagination in a more than realistic way and manner. The first is that Olu Obafemi is a patriot and a national poet. His imagination extends beyond his Kiri-land (North Eastern Yoruba-land in Northern Nigeria) streams to dwell on national problems that depict our respective inclement climes – or, to put it differently, in his “Streams of Kiriland” (I am not alluding specifically to his poem that bears this title) we have a glimpse of our respective communal malaise that shows us our respective inclement land in our untamed beaches in Ologbo of the Niger Delta and elsewhere outside Ologbo or Kiriland. As beautiful and as nostalgic Kiriland is or may be it is strange that urbanization and civilization have not befriended it. It is this perspective that throws up to me the second vital aspect of Melodies of Inclement Climes. Olu Obafemi conservers what is best from his (and our) past in order for the merciless problems and inclementness of today can be properly addressed. So I am not reading Professor Olu Obafemi as an entire nostalgic poet after all! Our lives’ test is not and cannot be the past or the future. It is now. It is today. It is the present. It is the here and now. Are we happy today in our country – economically, commercially, politically, educationally, medically, technologically, hygiene-wise and otherwise? Without endorsing the present that is before us we cannot honestly face tomorrow. We live in an economy and in a political clime ruled and propelled by ingratitude, disaffection and dissatisfaction and exploitation and oppression. Let me quote our poet of melodies dwelling on our inglorious climes: “Let our earth be replenished again/As scavengers and scoundrels are rid of our land.” (39).This must be so if we must eliminate “Death [that] clings to our throats/As mortal Anopheles, King of Death –/Husband of malaria, swarm/And corpses hold parades on our shores” (44). What our country needs now is a renewed vision, a full insight into our shortcomings, limits and possibilities informed by our awareness and knowledge of our place in the comity of nations. This is an absolute necessity if we must live an adequately and properly human life.
Professor Olu Obafemi is a super ambidextrous writer and scholar of more than numerous parts. He is best known as a play-wright, dramatist and theatre personage, theorist and critic of a profoundly profound mind. But he is without question a poet of distinction as well – which the present volume superbly makes evident. Melodies of Inclement Climes appeals to me exceedingly from the perspectives of the rhetoric of poetic drama, phenomenology, biography, memory, wrap of childhood, autobiography, history, activism, politics, geography, social exploration, revolutionary revolution, psychology, public health, progressive variation in language and feeling. I am on purpose not dwelling on all these perspectives in this briefly appealing enterprise to engender every reader’s interest in Melodies. (I am thinking of something adventurous and enchantingly enchanting outside here). With respect to the last named subject, let me titillate my readers thus: I wish you to join me to think of Professor Olu Obafemi as a magnificent poet who concentrates everything feelingly into a sentence –“Melodies of Inclement Climes;” “And hardened villains of misrule;” “And love shall visit these shores again;” “This is the story of our nation now; Debtor-elephant.”
The beauty of Professor Olu Obafemi’s new volume of poetry is the trick of its language. The emotions or feelings the poet generates are significant enough to ensure full daylight in our inclement climes. It is thus not for nothing that Professor Olu Obafemi has been a recipient of the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) and wearer of other laurels. His rhetoric is not any adornment or inflation of words done for the reader’s unquestionable insight or for a particular effect but for a general creative power that has an intensity and concision of indubitably great poetry.
Melodies of Inclement Climes will leap in my arms, hands, and mind for a pretty long time of creative reading and critical happiness. This is not an ostentatious praise, but the true judgment of a reader and critic – this reader and critic – of esthetic and moral sensibility. I duly bow and salute the poet for this fresh volume. Join me in my bow and salutation.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.

By Toyin Falola
Western deception has been with Africa forever:
1493: Pope Alexander VI issued a papal bull, “Inter Caetera,” proclaiming the right of Spain and Portugal to enslave Africans and own the land. They were subjects. They stole your people and your land.
1885: Africa was a Dark Continent. It required colonization to become civilized. Europe would bring change and civilize them. They stole your raw materials and truncated your self-development.
1940: When over a million Africans fought in Europe, North Africa and the Far East during the Second World War, the West convinced them they were dying for freedom and democracy. But where in Africa do they receive freedom and democracy? Indeed, Apartheid was inaugurated in 1948 in South Africa.
When will this deception come to an end? So, Gabon and Niger were democracies before the 2023 coups? You must be using the wrong dictionary to define democracy. Cameroon under the invalid Paul Biya is a democracy? You must be confusing the Mali Empire with the modern country of Cameroon. And the presidents who rule for as long as they want practising democracy?
You need a little education.
Recent developments in Africa’s political space, particularly the growing number of military takeovers, have informed fresh queries around the expressions of neo-colonialism in Africa and the commitment to liberal democracy as the ideal political model for the region. The point of reference for these queries is the ceremonial reactions from the acclaimed “champions of democracy” in the West, who waste no time issuing condemnations at every instance of “democratic failure” on the continent without any actual commitment to ensuring that power indeed lies with the people. Not only have these champions of African interests—the United States (US), Britain and France—touted democracy as the best system of political organization to achieve political stability and economic prosperity in Africa, but they have also prosecuted wars, allegedly in its defence, which cost millions of lives and destabilized entire regions. However, it is not enough to accuse our benevolent friends in the West of hypocrisy without providing compelling proof of double-dealing in delivering their duties as democratic crusaders. After all, in a democratic setting, all are innocent until proven guilty.
As a philosophy of government, democracy has existed since the Greco-Roman times. However, its foray into Africa can be traced to the eve of independence when Britain and France introduced forms of local representation as concessions to indigenous demands for independence. Thus, from 1959, parliamentary elections and other democratic institutions started to become commonplace on the continent. But, as it would turn out, this democratic experiment, which formed part of the third (global) wave of democracy, was to be short-lived—derailed as it was by fluctuating Western interests on the continent.
Guiding Western interest in Africa from the 1950s was the ideological war between the West (mainly the USA) and the Soviet Union. The “Cold War,” as it came to be known, was the first incident to unmask the real intentions of the West for post-colonial Africa. In their quest to emerge as the world’s sole superpower, the US and the Soviet Union, who actively strove to undermine each other’s influence by, among other things, advancing their political ideologies around the world, turned to Africa as another important frontier of conquest. While the Soviet Union armed African revolutionary movements against their Western colonial overlords and provided support to openly communist governments, Washington concluded that, to effectively check the spread of Soviet influence on the continent, it was more expedient to enthrone biddable leaders in African states than it was to woo them with any ideological arguments or economic incentives.
Anxious to ensure power was handed over to reliable politicians, Britain and France became eager participants in the US policy in Africa. Together, the US and its allies targeted venal local strongmen, preferably with military backgrounds and authoritarian tendencies, who, in collaboration with its intelligence agencies, ousted legitimate/democratic governments. Notable victims and beneficiaries of this plot included (in the former category) Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Patrice Lumumba of Congo DRC, Sylvio Olympio of Togo and (in the latter category) Idi Amin of Uganda, Mobutu Sese Seko of Congo DRC and Gnassingbé Eyadema of Togo, to mention a few. Consequently, thirty-three African countries that achieved independence between 1956-1970 became authoritarian immediately or not long after.
Another demonstration of the complete disregard that the West has for democracy, peace/stability and human rights in Africa is its willingness to engulf the entire region in conflict so that it can achieve its “strategic interests.” Once again, we begin from the Cold War era where, having recently come out of a highly destructive war in Europe (in 1945) and being cautious of engaging in another, the West and the Eastern Bloc turned Africa into the site of their proxy wars. In southern Africa, where the US considered both Angola and Mozambique as areas of “strategic interests,” Washington armed the 200,000 Portuguese conscripts, who went on to fight a protracted war against local nationalist revolutionaries, with imported weapons, which included defoliants and napalm. In Angola, the US, in cooperation with Apartheid South Africa, backed the National Union for Total Independence (UNITA) against the country’s (Soviet-backed) leading national liberation front, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). There were also similar cases in northern Africa where Sudan was funded and armed by the US against Egypt and Ethiopia, who had also pitched their tents with Moscow. These conflicts and the resultant proliferation of arms saw the loss of millions of African lives from war and famine and a general destabilization of the region.
While the West cannot be said to have been directly involved in all the occasions of transition from democratic to authoritarian rule, in more than a few instances, the leaders of newly independent democratic/multi-party African states seized the opportunity of Western patronage to quickly switch to one-party/despotic rule. In other cases, it was the corruption, resource mismanagement, “tribalism,” patrimonialism, clientelism and imperialism perpetrated by a Western-backed ruling political class which formed the basis of military takeovers (coups). Nevertheless, in this atmosphere of quasi-democratic rule, full-fledged despotism, military rule and Apartheid—where national resources were siphoned by kleptocratic regimes and millions of Africans either became refugees or died as a result of civil wars, hunger, and human rights abuses—our western “friends” were content to look the other way if the government in place proved itself an ally of Washington.
Perhaps the most glaring example of the West’s democratic hypocrisy in Africa was its age-long support for the highly racist and politically repressive Apartheid regime in South Africa. Like the French, who were able to cajole Washington into believing that they were fighting communist-backed insurgents in Algeria, the South African Apartheid regime, for forty years, posed as the last bastion against communists in Africa—an attitude that was able to secure a steady flow of western arms. This, alongside the West’s tacit approval, allowed for one of Africa’s most despicable shows of human debasement, carried out in the name of imperialism and racial superiority. After all, as President Ronald Regan remarked in 1981, South Africa was “essential to the free world in its production of minerals we all must have.”
The end of the Cold War changed Western attitudes towards Africa. Without the Soviet threat, the West leaned more towards development diplomacy and foreign aid regimes as the main thrust of its foreign policy in Africa. Foreign aid to Africa, however, turned out to be a Trojan horse. Already saddled with the task of building vibrant economies whilst also harmonizing the aspirations of the different ethnic nationalities which characterized them, African countries, especially in Francophone Africa, also had to grapple with the undermining economic and political agreements they had been coerced into signing with their erstwhile colonial overlord as a condition for independence and continued patronage. To make matters worse, some African countries were, at the end of the Cold War, either fighting or had just come out of civil war. This, combined with the widespread corruption and mismanagement of national resources which characterized Africa’s tyrannical governments, put many Af5rican countries at the mercy of international monetary agencies (the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank) and their financiers whose aid they were now heavily dependent on.
At first, these Bretton Woods institutions were content to grant loans/aid, at debilitating interest rates no less, to authoritarian leaders who used them to perpetuate themselves in power and, in return, provided the former with mineral and other economic concessions. However, without the Cold War pressures, more emphasis was placed on the liberalization and capitalist/free-market aspects of US foreign policy to guarantee return on investments. Soon enough, Structural Adjustments Programmes (SAPs) were introduced as a precondition for further loans/aid. Said adjustments, which demanded limited government intervention in the public sector, i.e., removing government subsidies in energy (fuel/gas), education and health care, brought untold hardships to already suffering populations. And as research has shown, poverty and non-tax revenue make for the ideal democratic environment. In other words, “when the government is not beholden to citizens for its funding, there is less accountability and less reason to democratize” (Tilly 1990). Instead, leaders simply use the “free” funding from natural resources (oil) and foreign loans/aid to buy enough support to remain in power.
Judging from the various expressions of Western interests in Africa over decades, it goes without saying that the West simply pays lip service to ideologies when convenient. Although many Africans might not object to the cynical pragmatism that has always guided Western foreign policy in Africa, I dare say they will not stand for the continued lies and hypocrisy that have characterized Western reactions to African developments. Even if the above-described instances of Western hypocrisy in Africa were to be argued to be in the past, it is a living past for Africa.
Africa, today, still has authoritarian governments in place whose political repression and human rights abuses go on unchecked by our democracy and rule of law-loving friends in the West. After being siphoned by kleptocratic governments, our commonwealth still finds its way to Western banks, where it sits and improves the local economy. Western interests continue to impoverish Africans and destabilize their regions. So, Africans are today saying to the West, its diplomats, presidents, and the other agents of its propaganda: “Your gambit in Africa is up. Our people are awakened!”
The West has sold you a fake product called democracy. Africans, your vote is not a sign of democracy. It is no more than a deception. There is no democracy without accountability. You are just voting thieves to power. There is no democracy without transparency. You are just using your votes in support of crooks and thugs. There is no democracy without good governance. Your vote is facilitating theft. Maybe you are waiting for your turn to steal. There is no democracy without development. Your vote is moving you back to the Stone Age. Even early humans knew when to replace stones with iron during the Stone Age. Africa, you don’t have a democracy. Anyone you have not appointed cannot disappoint you! Citizens are being deceived, and they are deceiving themselves. Organize yourselves at various levels and think of alternatives to democracy or, at the minimum, how accountability and transparency will form the core of your democratic practices. Your lifetime president is not a Democrat. He is an authoritarian kleptocrat far worse than the combination of Doris Payne, Stephane Breitwieser, Simon Leviev, Veerappan, Derek Smalls, Vincenzo Peruggia, Bonnie and Clyde, Natwarlal, Carl Gugasian, Frank Abagnale, Anna Sorokin, Albert Spaggiari, Jesse James, Anthony Strangis, and Bill Mason. Do you know these names?
Opinion
Informaction: Theory Of Change And Witch Persecution In Africa
Published
4 days agoon
September 19, 2023
By Leo Igwe
A theory of change explains how activities, measures, and steps undertaken to address a problem could facilitate or help realize certain changes or outcomes. It articulates how an impact would be achieved and some progress made. In this case, the expected outcome is an end to witch-hunting in Africa. Unlike in Western countries, the persecution of supposed witches persists in the region. Witch bloodletting takes place in many parts of Africa. The persecution of people accused of witchcraft leads to horrific abuses and death. Alleged witches are attacked, tortured, lynched, imprisoned, or banished. They are subjected to jungle justice, trial by ordeal, forced disappearance, and internal displacement. Simply put, those who are accused of perpetrating occult harm are treated without mercy or compassion. Incidentally, the impression is that nothing could be done to combat or neutralize this dark and destructive phenomenon, that witch hunting is cultural to Africans. The impression is that seeking to eradicate witch-hunting in African societies is a futile effort. This notion is gravely mistaken and needs to be corrected. The Advocacy for Alleged Witches was launched in 2020 to correct these misconceptions and facilitate effective actions. It works to fill the missing link in the activism against witch persecution in the region. The AfAW is a protest initiative, and exists to challenge and dispel allegations of witchcraft.
The main goal is to end witch-hunting in Africa by 2030. This objective sounds like an ambitious goal or some pipe dream, but it can be achieved. And AfAW aims to end witch hunting based on an informactional theory of change. This theory rests on two pillars: information and action because witch hunting persists in the region due to lack of information, or misinformation, and due to lack of action, inaction, or infraction. The Advocacy for Alleged Witches uses this two-pronged approach to combat witch-hunting in Africa.
At the global level, there is a lack of information about witch-hunting in Africa. Although a lot has been written and published on witchcraft in African societies, many people in Europe and America claim do not know about raging witch hunts in the region. Part of the problem is that these publications are filled with misinformation and misinterpretation of witchcraft accusations and witch persecution in the region. Scholars have presented witchcraft accusations as benign and useful to African societies. Meanwhile these accusations are not in any way gentle or pleasant. Studies have portrayed witchcraft allegations as stabilizing and harmonizing mechanisms. They have overlooked the critical and skeptical perspective of witchcraft beliefs. Scholars have largely ignored the accused side of the story, the harmful and destructive consequences of witchcraft imputations. At the Advocacy for Alleged Witches, we work to correct the misrepresentation of witchcraft accusations in Africa. We campaign to draw attention to this imbalance in the perception of the phenomenon. But correct information is not enough. Balanced interpretation does not suffice. To combat witch persecution, information needs to be turned into action, into effective policies and interventions.
On the action side, the Advocacy for Alleged Witches takes measures to address the problem because lack of adequate information has occasioned inaction or infractions. Wrong information has resulted in apathy and indifference towards witch hunting in Africa. Many international agencies are reluctant to act; they have refused to take action or to treat the issue with the urgency it deserves. With adequate and balanced information, international organizations would take appropriate actions.
At the local level, the Advocacy for Alleged Witches works to fill the information and action gaps. Many people accuse and engage in witch hunts due to a lack of information or misinformation. Accusers act based on a lack of information about the cause of illnesses, deaths, and other misfortune. Many people persecute witches because they have incorrect information about who or what is responsible for their problems, because they are not informed about what to do and where to go, who or what to blame for their misfortunes. Many people do not know what constitutes sufficient reason and causal explanations for their problems. As part of the efforts to end witch-hunting, the AfAW highlights misinformation and disinformation about causes of misfortune, illness, death, accidents, poverty, and infertility, including the misinformation that charlatans and con artists, god men and women such as traditional priests, pastors, mallam and marabouts use to exploit poor ignorant folks. The AfAW provides evidence-based knowledge, explanation, and interpretation of misfortunes. It informs the public about the law and other existing mechanisms to address allegations of witchcraft. The AfAW sensitizes the public and public institutions, including schools, colleges, and universities. It sponsors media programs, issues press releases, makes social media posts, and publishes articles and blogs on witch-hunting in the region.
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