Guardian

Continued from yesterday

CHINA is the second leading economy in the world now and China will overtake the U.S. in the 2020s. Besides the legacy of communist discipline and work ethics, the Chinese economic miracle rests on government-supported industrialisation in which the armed forces provide core leadership in management. A second axle of the Chinese rapid growth is erected on village/community owned corporations and industries. Every village/community is made a focal point of industrial and economic production/enterprise. The commercial, political, and professional elite from the villages have shares in these enterprises and participate in their management. The Chinese government makes guarantees for a mandatory soft loan system by the banks. In this way, China has minimised the disease of idle elites and unemployed gangster youth because there is healthy rivalry amongst communities and provinces over production quantum of exportable goods and products. Nigeria needs this progressive, anti-imperialist approach to development in order to leapfrog from an import-dependent handicap to self-reliance and job-creating transformation.

The African Diaspora as reliable investment partners

There is an imperative need to design a sustainable development plan for the entire Niger Delta region in general and Bayelsa State in particular. The structures of unequal exchange and exploitation outlined in the preceding sections are responsible for the underdevelopment of the region. The time has come to subvert those structures in favour of growth-enhancing alternatives. The abolition of anti-federalist policies indicated above is the first necessary step to be taken. President Jonathan must take advantage of his tenure to free Bayelsa State and the Niger Delta from the stranglehold of the avaricious ruling classes in Nigeria that have kept the Niger Delta people in bondage for decades.

It is commendable that Governor Seriake Dickson is taking bold measures to facilitate the development of physical infrastructure and investments in Bayelsa. What he is doing now should be complemented by BRACED, the trans-regional economic consortium floated by Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa-Ibom, Cross River, Edo and Delta States. Governor Dickson has embarked on an aggressive drive to attract offshore investors. He recently led a mission to South Africa in pursuit of this goal. During the visit of President Jonathan to Southern Africa in early May this year, Governor Dickson had fruitful interactions with investors in South Africa.

South Africa is certainly the richest and strongest capitalist economy in Africa. She has the most advanced technology to support economic development. Yet South Africa, in my view, is handicapped by the ideology of racism that governed her regime of apartheid (1948-1994), which completely disabled and marginalised the black African population from involvement in the economy. Nearly two decades after the formal end of apartheid, the black segment of the population has not been integrated into the white-dominated economic grid. The rich bourgeoisie who have investible funds are still predominantly the white minority in the country. I am afraid that it is unrealistic to expect that the South African white capitalists will be devoted to helping Nigeria to become a rival economic giant in Africa. South African investors are active in the communications, transport, hospitality, tourism, and “software” sectors of the Nigerian economy because they generate quick and robust profits. South Africa has the most developed mining technology in the continent but she is yet to make substantial investment in the diverse mineral economy in Nigeria.

The best strategy to adopt to drive the economic transformation of Bayelsa State and the Niger Delta is to seek investment partners in the African Diaspora in the Americas. The population of this Diaspora is dominated by descendants of African slaves who were kidnapped and shipped to the Americas during the 400-year-long Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (1450-1850). Over 12.5 million African slaves were victims of this holocaust in human trafficking. The bulk of the victims were from the Niger Delta nations, Yoruba country, and other West African territories. For four centuries, the free labour of the African human capital worked in the plantations and mines of white European slavers and exploiters. The wealth and services created by the slaves provided the surplus money European nations used to develop the capitalist economy that later colonised the entire world. The more slaves the kidnappers took away, the more wealth was created and more Africa became impoverished and economically retarded. As Walter Rodney showed in his book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, the transportation of African people to Europe and the Americas is the prime cause of Africa’s socio-economic backwardness today.

Reverend Jesse Jackson is a splendid example of the tenacity of African slave families who survived the 400 years of servitude and slavocracy. African slaves first arrived in Brazil and the Caribbean islands in the 1550s. In 1619, the first cargo of slaves got to Jamestown in Virginia in what is now the United States of America. In 1776, thirteen colonies revolted against their English owners and the event is known in history as the American Revolution. But the freedom and liberty the revolution brought about were not enjoyed by African Americans for nearly 200 years. They had to wage fierce struggles for decades to win their basic democratic rights. Jesse Jackson and President Obama are symbols of the triumph of the African American revolution.

There are now about 35 million African-Americans in the United States of America. This population of dynamic and resourceful African descendants are our most strategic partners in our drive for economic prosperity and democratic good governance. In Brazil there are about 100 million African descendants, nearly half the Brazilian population. Over 50 per cent of Cuba is Afro-Cuban; Haiti is 98 per cent black; so is Jamaica. Brazil, for example, is leading the world in the development of alternative energy in form of biofuels from sugarcane and cassava. The cassava plant was introduced from Brazil to the Niger Delta in 1516 and this root crop is the backbone of the food industry in Nigeria and West Africa. Bayelsa and the entire Niger Delta are endowed with non-oil forest resources to support an industrial revolution as is happening in Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, and Cuba.

The population of the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean is more than 150 million people. This is about the same population as Nigeria’s. There are huge potentials in the African American constituency of investors to be exploited to transform the economic fortunes of the Niger Delta. Unlike the capitalist investors in white Europe, the Americas, and South Africa, the African American Diaspora is culturally, psychologically, and ideological attuned to be partners with their homeland communities in the Niger Delta. The Yoruba-speaking sections of Nigeria and countries like Ghana and Senegal are already connected to this corridor of economic and technological advancement. We in the Niger Delta must join this train of progress and solidarity. This is the sense in which we identify with Jesse Jackson’s clarion call: “Our Time Has Come”.

The committees and think-tanks to be set up should comprise of local investors, venture capitalists, patriotic politicians, diplomats, radical scholars, historians, researchers, cultural entrepreneurs, writers and artistes guilds, event promoters, communicators and journalists, experts in peace-building and conflict management, etc. They are to work under the directive of the Governor through the Bayelsa Investment and Development Corporation. In the Americas, the coordination will be handled by associations of Niger Delta activists, investors, and pro-democracy advocates. I am thinking of groups such as the Ijaw National Congress (INC), Ijaw National Alliance of North America (INAA), Ijaw Foundation, the Urhobo National Association of North America (UNANA), Urhobo Historical Society (UHS), and similar bodies that are involved in politics and social work for the emancipation of the Niger Delta.

There are many active African American organisations, donor agencies, and individual philanthropists that come to Africa regularly to make contribution to the continent’s redemption efforts. For instance, the Opral Winfrey Foundation has an international school in South Africa. In order to encourage these Afrocentric investors and charity groups to patronise the Niger Delta, the Seriake Dickson government should take the initiative of building a Bayelsa Diaspora City (BDC) near the international airport being constructed. The basic urban infrastructure should be developed and lands for residential and industrial purposes should be allocated free to all African Diasporans, including Bayelsan and Niger Delta immigrants in the Americas, Europe and Africa.

The modest proposals outlined above will position Bayelsa State and the Niger Delta to undertake the urgent task of historical reconstruction of the relations between Africa and her Diasporas. The participation of Reverend Jesse Jackson and several Ijaw Diaspora associations from overseas in this year’s Adaka Boro Day has redefined the political and international profile of the annual event. Surely, the revolutionary currents of Boroism are flowing across the luminous Atlantic Ocean, the habitat of the world’s richest economies and democracies. For inspiring this global movement of change and justice, Adaka Boro’s memory will live forever in the hearts of millions.

• Concluded

• Darah is a Professor of Oral Literature, Folklore, and African American Literature, Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria.