Toyin Falola is a Professor of History, a University Distinguished Teaching Professor, and the Jacob and Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, the University of Texas at Austin. He is an Honorary Professor, University of Cape Town, and President of Pan-African University Press. He has received three Yoruba chieftaincy titles, over thirty life-time career awards, and fourteen honorary doctorates. His two memoirs, A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt and Counting the Tiger's Teeth capture changing Yoruba societies in the 1950s and 1960s. In this interview by KEHINDE OYETIMI, he addresses issues of both national and global importance.
Nigeria is at a major point in its political history as October 2020 makes it 60 years since Nigeria's independence. How would you say the country has fared so far, given its present sociopolitical realities?
There have been changes since 1960, no doubt. However, there are disappointments with virtually all the sectors and institutions, including the houses of Gods where pastors wear Satanic uniforms. The current mood is that of hopelessness. The current group of politicians is not the set of leaders any country should pray for. Nigeria, like every other African country, sought first the political kingdom, as widely promoted by Kwame Nkrumah, only to find out that the socioeconomic component of the state is a ready-to-launch torpedo above every other thing to be added unto it. Although every other thing was added to the political kingdom, none was as envisaged by the people. Independence, to the people of Nigeria, like their brothers elsewhere in Africa, suggests a period of total liberation from foreign oppression, economic prosperity by default, responsive governance, and a just society. Instead, what the people got close to this vision of an independent country was indigenous representation at the highest level of government and societal formation. But then, racism was replaced with ethnicism and foreign oppression with indigenous oppression. These two restricted the hope of independence as they created divisions within the polity; division along ethnic lines and between the led and the leaders. Religion also began to feature prominently in the divisions since each ethnic group is dominated by either Islam or Christianity. All sorts of favoritism and corruption soared within this structure, thereby increasing the inequality in the polity and limiting the hope of a just society.
None of the events in the post-colonial era came as a surprise or in a vacuum of events in the previous epochs; both the colonial and pre-colonial. The colonial history of Nigeria was founded on the history of divisions, rivalry, and competition for domination by one cultural group over the other. Colonialism emerged on the scene of Nigerian history in the twentieth century. A century before this time— the nineteenth century— the peoples and cultures of the area that were declared the British colony of Nigeria in 1914 were going through fundamental changes. From the movement of the Jihadists in the north to the Yoruba internecine wars in the west, and pockets of other revolutions and changes taking place at other locations, all happening almost simultaneously, nineteenth-century events in different parts of Nigeria promised to change the sociopolitical landscape of the society. Among other things, larger city-states and empires were expected to emerge from events of this period and the twentieth century was meant to usher in a new era of major sociopolitical changes. It was this process that was hijacked by the British colonial powers in that century. The history of the sociopolitical changes in Nigeria in the twentieth century would now be written not just as a project cast by indigenous actors, but by greedy leaders and foreign players from across the Atlantic. This has been very disastrous for Nigeria in that the country is no more than an entity to be continually conquered by local buccaneers and external profit seekers. And that is the current reality we are now facing as a "nation."
In a recent article, you talked about the "need for Africa to look inwards and, in the process, to redirect its energies," especially with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. What would you suggest in concrete terms as a solution to the problem of underdevelopment in African countries?
If there is anything I've learned over the years from experience and in books, it is that development is perpetually cultural. Japan, China, Taiwan, Singapore, the United States, Germany, and other developed nations developed differently according to the pattern of their cultures and historical antecedents. These are the two beds that lay the concrete structure of society: there is nothing wrong with a square peg until you start putting it in a round hole. The colonial state-operated an exploitative enterprise, it wasn't in its dealings to create the right context within which the society could flourish independently. European taxonomic modernity was to perform this miracle. It did, and everything African became devilish, archaic, and unworthy of study. Post-independence governments followed suit and even went as far as ejecting history from the school curriculum. Tell me how a child that knew nothing about history as a core part of the curriculum at elementary up to senior secondary school level, would be so determined to study history as course at the higher education level. That decision killed the study of history in Nigeria as the departments of history in universities began to turn to accidental- students-centers. Many wondered what they were doing in the department, others asked about the relevance of history to the nation building process. History was on the defensive, telling the nation how relevant it is; so also, were the traditional medicine and traditional heritages. And this is only a microcosm of the anti-intellectual culture of African states. Development cannot take place on this template.
As it is, the present structure needs a systemic change. But the problem is that it is the one presently clogged-on to by the vast majority of the population in each African state; from the elites to the common men. The connection between these two is the naked wire that political scientists refer to as patron-client ties. The patrons will fight to keep the dangerous structure. How the minority few intends to break this jinx is, to me, a question of the extent to which alliance could be formed across strategic communities of stakeholders in the states' polities, especially the Civil Society Organizations, Labor Unions, NGOs, and professional bodies.
You're also of the view that Western influences have contributed in no small measure to driving African countries further aground beyond the grasp of true development. Do you think our indigenous capabilities are enough to provide the needed platform for all-round development? If yes, why has it become almost impossible for us as a continent to transcend our pressing shortcomings?
Our people will say, Igikanki n da'gbo se (a tree cannot make a forest). It is the clusters of trees and birds that we call a forest. A culture is nothing more than various clusters. What we refer to as culture includes a structured dynamism of ideas. This is why they are malleable to ideas from the outside. Africa has all it takes to develop, but this can only be done through the technologies that we do not produce at the moment. Those with these technologies are the ones still exploring the riches of Africa.
Our indigenous capacities are rich and useful. But we have not fully explored its vast richness. However, all countries do borrow and adapt. The USA relies on millions of foreign workers, both skilled and unskilled. So also, are the Chinese and Japanese. We have to borrow external ideas that are useful to us while maximising the promises of our indigenous capabilities.
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