By Peter Olorunnisomo, London:
I had attended a day of seminar papers organized by the Royal African Society recently and I must confess that the papers were well themed and the focus being the role of religion in the developmental scheme in Africa couldn’t have been any less significant. But what would have pleased me the most was to get the ears of the agents of development in public service to be stung by the opinions of stake-holders who thronged the venue for a piece of instrumental take-away.
For reasons of time at the event, opinions suffered limited airing rather than for the lack of it. But it was, indeed, for such a rousing prognosis of the situation that I walked away knowing I had something, possibly, at variance with other opinions to say.
As experiences were re-canted, I wondered if we were talking, indeed, about Africa where the notion of religion was more than a matter of choice. In the west, you could do or think as you liked, and you were yet comfortable as the State had infrastructure to enable you, such that if you were even lazy, it was budgeted for. Africa presented a façade to those that looked at her strictly from the map. There was absolute need to visit her many crowns and crannies. One needed to understand the thinking, the philosophy of the peoples, and the socio-political terrain that each nation-state and state-nation was built on.
An ideal country would be the plural societies of a country like Nigeria where the battle ground for belief is still fresh with tragic stories for over a hundred years, to say the least, in the face of westernization thrown at her. People have gone the way of education to escape, aspire, and re-incarnate themselves only to be lost somewhere on the bridge of ‘development’ if they ever stop. They find that they have left a lot of others behind and it has now become late to carry them along. The immediate consequence is a shift in value judgments and priorities. Like the Malthusian, development to one is arithmentic and to the other geometric.
Development in the west was founded on philosophies which were tested; and shaped not only the peoples’ thinking but also what has become a way of life. Whether it serves morality, truth, order, technology, politics, ethics, and social structures positively or negatively is rendered inconsequential by the constitutional recognition and pronouncements of individual and governmental responsibilities.
For the African, the perennial presence of poverty, political irresponsibility, and the confusion occasioned the clash of western and cultural philosophies leaves most people at dagger point. For instance, some cultures believe that a gift is a gift merited or unmerited and does not require to be accounted for. Therefore what kind of help can the London or Paris Club offer as loan when you need to pay first the interest rates before the principal? What kind of good- natured support do you give when grants are given instalmentally and you make a condition of accounting for the last one before you give another? Whereas this philosophy is akin to western cultures, it is not understood in the same perspective in Africa. A simple principle allowing you to state claim as your brother’s keeper prevails on any one to take on say a single child or two at most for care-taking rather than converging them in a motherless babies home. The parameters of care and adoption at this level are almost the same because one will not be allowed to take on a child if he or she is not seen to be financial able to give support. While the African support has a cultural mechanism in social class stratification and hierarchy, the western condenses authority in a few whose job will be to probe an evaluation of competence.
In essence, religion in Africa is primordial and explains virtually everything and informs on them as well. But because culture supports the African religions, people are torn between which to comply with or rather settle for a admixture that supports one’s goal(s). It is thus a tool to compel, reason, induce, command, explain, and plan one’s individual or corporate future. Culture therefore recommends expectation and role definition. It is in the face of this that we find that a number of African office holders in the democratic enterprise yet seek the acquiescence and fellowship of religious leaders of whatever strata and play on belief mechanisms to influence core issues like elections.
Because of the social inadequacies, the people are easily mobilized psychologically into compliance because of the cultural structures on the ground. Thus you find reverence significantly displayed to persons with cultural offices more than their westernized counterparts. Significantly therefore, if you were to attempt to empower religious leaders to aid development in a typical city, you would be contesting against the different religious principles, followerships, religious identities, and there relationship with your system of social values and therefore what you will term development.
Development therefore finds realization in many shades, all preponderant in the levels of socio-political realities of the governed. The principles of developmental stimulation and support often times negate the reality of societal pluralities such that allow for an inter-play of sectarianism, tribalism, regionalism, nepotism, and favouritism. Meritocracy is thus under-valued. Politicians and technocrats who should establish objective standards of development often fall far short of expectation for so many obvious reasons. By complication therefore, development does not have the same cloak and appearance but only become relevant and achieved given the circumstance of execution whether as a policy or provision.
Rather unfortunately, the only standard measurement for positive development rests in the hands of those who are able to hold both the ‘bread and knife’. And these must meet the governmental structures at their various points of role responsibility. Otherwise, as the assembly pointed out, ‘we in the diaspora must do what we can and be seen to be doing if we are to be supported’. But do the people in Africa believe in you?
