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PROFILE
Volume 1 Number 5
Heirs of Free Africa
01 January 1988
A lively and determined group, born since independence, they presented a quite different picture of Africa to the stereotype of despair often portrayed.
What I most want to do is to deal with the corruption in my country. Look at the papers any day and you will see how bad it is.'
Emmanuel Odiachi, a biology graduate from Lagos, is not a man who beats about the bush. He and his fiancee, Christiana Okonkwo, have been touring Nigeria with The Next Phase, a play about corruption, tribalism and family division. It was described by a Federal Director of Information as the `practical application of the War Against Indiscipline', a programme advocating responsible citizenship, launched by the government in 1984.
The work with the play was part of their National Youth Service - compulsory for all graduates - which they were assigned to do with Moral Re-Armament. They were recently visiting Europe with three others of the play's company, fashion designer Amina Dikedi, teachers Paul Agbih and Ahunna Eziakonwa, and also Richard Zesooli, a biology graduate from Uganda. They were joined for a short while by Tata Mbugwa, a sprinter in Kenya's national team. A lively and determined group, born since independence, they presented a quite different picture of Africa to the stereotype of despair often portrayed.
In his book , The Trouble With Nigeria,, the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe does exactly what Odiachi suggests and looks at the newspapers on a day picked at random - 15 May 1983. A story in the , Daily Times,, `The Fake Importers', spotlights the businessmen who apply for valuable foreign exchange to pay for imports, leave the money in their overseas accounts and import containers of mud and sand. Another story exposes the loss of 600 million Naira (then US$600 million) through forged payrolls.
Nigeria is potentially a giant, with the largest population and the biggest economy in black Africa. So Odiachi's dismay at the corruption in his country isn't surprising. Like many others he used to signal his disgust by taking part in student demonstrations. His encounter with Moral Re-Armament led him to examine his motives in the light of standards of absolute honesty, purity, unselfishness and love. The result, he said, was that `I actually began to see myself as part of the corruption in Nigeria'. He had been asking his guardian for more money than he needed for his university education and was spending the rest on girlfriends. Odiachi decided to admit this and apologize to his guardian-his older sister-who had previously thought him `a saint'.
Battle with the bank
`Corruption is so prevalent,' he told me, `that most people take the attitude "if you can't beat them, join them."' But there are exceptions. He gives the example of two college lecturers he knows. One was wrongly credited by his bank with the equivalent of his monthly salary. He decided to own up to this and pay the money back - and had to fight a battle with the bank who didn't want to re-do their accounts. Another lecturer used to cheat on his tax returns. He too decided to own up and pay what was due.
Paul Agbih talked to me about nepotism: a by-product of the strong family life in Africa. In the absence of any other welfare structures, the family looks after its own. If one member of the family does well for himself then it is not long before he is approached to help the others, either directly by paying for their education or living expenses, or indirectly by finding them a good job in the same company. The result is that many appointments are made on the basis of having the right connections, and wholly unsuitable people can end up in important posts.
I asked Agbih if he could trace the history of his tribe, the Isoko. `Of course,' he retorted, `I have to know at least seven generations of my ancestors.' Like everyone in his village he can be called on at any time to sing a song giving the village, the quarter and the clan of each of his forebears. Thinking hard, I was forced to admit that I could only go back four generations. He smiled. `That's not too bad,' he said. He told me that his brother had sacrificed everything to send him to university. Now Agbih is expected to look after some of the others in the family.
Standing up to family pressure is not easy, especially in a country where it is so ingrained. Fortunately his family understand his conviction that moral change in individuals is the most effective basis for development, and that loyalty to God, while not a conflicting loyalty to the family, is nevertheless a prior loyalty. They began to see that his commitment to this process was real when he apologized to his brother's wife for quarrelling with her.
Two incidents that happened as Agbih was touring with, The Next Phase, served to strengthen this commitment. After visiting a school, he and his friends were approached by some of the pupils. Dissatisfied because neither teachers of religion nor economics had ever been appointed, they had been planning a riot. Now, because of what they had seen, they felt they should adopt more imaginative methods. The riot never took place and some of their demands were met. They had a similar experience at another school where a pupil had been barred from attending classes.
He feels that a vital component in both episodes was the group's search for God's will when planning what to do, where to go and what to say. `If you pray to God for him to do things, ask as much what you can do for him,' he explained.
Ahunna Eziakonwa, from the Ibo tribe of Nigeria, has found that this works in surprising ways. When training to be a teacher in Abraka she felt led to do her six-week teaching practice at a particular girls' school. Some of the girls turned out to be especially difficult.
She eventually summoned up enough courage to talk to a few of the girls about herself, her failings as a student and her commitment to bringing change in people and in society. She found, to her surprise, that she had their attention. Soon they were meeting regularly and the girls were starting each day with a time of searching for God's guidance. The spirit of the school started to change. They organized sanitation days for cleaning the school, they decided to be punctual for meals and they began to look at areas of school life which could be improved. Then, two weeks before her teaching practice was to end, a thought came to her in a time of prayer that they should write a play out of their experiences.
The day before she left, the first performance was given. Set in a girls' secondary school the play showed the backgrounds of broken homes and drunken fathers behind a tough gang within the school. In the play one of the gang has a spiritual transformation. The idea spreads through the school and into the families of the girls. The play was invited to several other schools in different towns and seen by the Bendel state commissioners for
information, agriculture, police and education. The latter said that it tackled some of the recurrent problems in schools and recommended it for all schools of his state.
The point, according to Eziakonwa, was not to put on a play with a moral, but to demonstrate what God could do through people. `In the schools we are dealing with future politicians and industrialists. And at this stage everything affects their future decisions.'
Amina Dikedi comes from Lagos and enjoys the pace of life in the city. After her national service she started a small fashion studio, using her training in design. She gave it up, just as the business was breaking through, in order to join this group. Smartly and colourfully dressed, she is a career woman in a maledominated society. But for her, the important issue is not so much equal rights for women as equal responsibility - which leads to respect.
Christiana Okonkwo comes from a three-parent family - she has a mother and a 'stepmother'. When she came across the ideas of Moral Re-Armament she saw the possibility of bringing reconciliation to her family. Now, reconciled with her father, she wants, as a southerner, to work in the north of Nigeria to build friendship and teamwork between the tribes. Lack of trust between north and south has plagued the country since independence. Her fiance, Odiachi, shares her concern and looks forward to the day when tribalism is eradicated and loyalty to the country comes first.
Agbih, who spent some years in the north, was impressed by the generosity of people he met. `It was there that I learnt to give just for the sake of giving,' he says, `not out of a sense of duty.'
In Uganda, where the group plan to travel after leaving Europe, the divisions are fresher. The slaughter of thousands in all parts of the country has created deep scars in the Ugandan psyche. In the lawless times of recent years corruption has become almost a means of survival, inherent divisions between north and south have been exacerbated and respect for human life has diminished.
For Zesooli, a southerner, a turning point in his attitude came when a visiting northerner shared his room in Kampala. It seems to have broken some barrier in him. Now, he told me, he wants to apologize to the northerners for his bitterness.
Moved, I tried to think how I would feel if people of another language had massacred thousands of my countrymen. And then I remembered what an ex-colonial administrator had told me was one of the great qualities of Africa - the ability to forgive.
Pearl of Africa
`No single tribe can develop Uganda without the cooperation of the others,' Zesooli explained. But how to get it? Calls for people to love each other do not help. `But,' he says quietly, `if they can open their hearts to God, they will be able to forgive.'
Characteristically, Zesooli is positive. He comes from a large family of 30 brothers, sisters, half-brothers and half-sisters and enjoys the informality of Ugandan life - the way he can call on anyone at any time and feel in the thick of everything. At Makerere University he used drink to escape from his country's horrors. Now he has found the strength to give up alcohol. He links the problem of selfishness in his country with his refusal to share with his family toothpaste and shoe-polish - scarce commodities. It is an attitude he has decided to change. Shortly before coming to Europe he was tempted to take part in a currency deal that would almost have paid for his trip. He refused, knowing that it was crooked.
`On the whole I am optimistic about Uganda,' he told me. `I am not just sitting on the sidelines but I have decided to be part of the cure. That is what gives me hope. Uganda can again become the pearl of Africa. It was spoilt over many years, it will take many years to rebuild. And it will only come if people accept God.'
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