Nigeria And The Curse Of Slavery

By Akin Osuntokun

“The fraught debate on slavery is largely absent in Africa, even though Africans were deeply involved in the slave trade. Africans raided for slaves often in connivance with local chiefs and then acted as middlemen with European and Arab purchasers”. 

In sheer exasperation at the tragic enormity of it all, this subject matter grew out of a conversation I recently had with some friends. We wondered aloud why Nigeria and Africa appear stuck in the mud of underdevelopment with no discernable prospects of a silver lining in the dark horizon. Yet it is not the case that Nigeria has never experienced capacity for sustained development. The trio of Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Ahmadu Bello were, without any equivocation, an advertisement for development oriented and utilitarian leadership. 

To put it in the horse’s mouth, here was Awolowo at his frank and assertive best (in 1955) “the British did not have the true interests of the country at heart. In fourteen months, under the present government, we have done more for Nigeria than the British did in 120 years.” In the defunct Eastern region, “after the implementation of Arthur D Little’s recommended growth plan, the East’s economy grew at more than 9.2%, starting from 1958 till 1967 when the war tragically interrupted the sterling momentum…At over 9%, the Eastern Region in this period, had the fastest growing economy on earth consistently for 9 years”.

Yet, here we are, several decades along, wondering whether the Hamitic hypothesis of the congenital servitude of the black race was true after all. How do we account for the prevalent vicious cycle of the comprehensive development failure of Nigeria and Africa from which there seems to be no way out?. What follows (essentially speculative) is an attempt to reexamine the nexus between this failure and the phenomenon of slavery from an entirely new perspective.

It is a metatheoretical  perspective that borrows from the philosophy of post modernism which rejects ‘concepts of rationality, objectivity, and universal truth and emphasizes the diversity of human experience and multiplicity of perspectives’. At the convocation ceremony of the University of Lagos Professor Toyin Falola demonstrated an aptitude for this tradition with his advocacy ‘that the Yoruba knowledge and divination system, Ifa, as well as witchcraft be more vigorously studied in Nigerian universities, taking better advantage of systems of knowledge developed by Africans’.

Integral to the unholy trinity of slavery, imperialism and racism, it is trite to restate the truism that the injury dealt to Africa by slavery is monumental, colossal and unparalleled. To bring back the subject matter to focus, we will do well to refresh our memory with the recall of a number of apt iconic recollections. 

In a recent review of Walter Rodney’s classic “how Europe Underdeveloped Africa”, George Apata restated Rodney’s position on slavery: “Slavery was not only one of the greatest forced migrations of people in human history, but it was also possibly the greatest evacuation of manpower from one part of the world to another. The estimated 10-12 million Africans that were removed from the continent over a period of five centuries had a great impact on African underdevelopment. The consequence of this forced migration not only depleted but deprived Africa of its ablest young men and women, the very manpower that was required for development”. 

Peter Ekeh had this to say “African states in the pre-slave trade era decidedly attained greater cultural heights than the states operating  under the aegis of the violence of the slave trade. In this respect, a condition of cultural creativity .. . is most unlikely to belong to the kind of state that owes its existence or its greatness to slavery or the slave trade. [It is remarkable] that the acknowledged masterpieces of the Benin and Ife artists were produced before the end of the seventeenth century and that aesthetic decadence set in precisely when the slave trade was becoming the dominant mode of economic and social life”

Less said is the culpability of Africans in this historic injury. Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani pointedly drew attention to this lapse in the observation that “the fraught debate on slavery is largely absent in Africa, even though Africans were deeply involved in the slave trade. Africans raided for slaves often in connivance with local chiefs and then acted as middlemen with European and Arab purchasers. She recounts stories of the ambivalence of at least some Africans about the role of their ancestors in the slave trade. She reports that Donald Duke, former governor of Cross river state and a good-government presidential candidate in the 2019 Nigerian elections, acknowledges that his ancestors participated in the slave trade. However, Duke says “I’m not ashamed of it because I personally wasn’t directly involved.”

In the rise and fall of transatlantic slave trade, no figure looms larger than the celebrated American president, Abraham Lincoln. Highly reputed for his eloquence and deep insight into the dilemma of mankind, he adjudged slavery as a sin that inherently invites retribution. Noted Lincoln “One eighth of the whole population (of the United States) were coloured slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localised in the Southern part of it. 

These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the civil war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it”. 

“Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces;  Fondly do we hope–fervently do we pray–that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether”

The related theme of the”Hamitic hypothesis”, originally referred to the peoples said to be descended from Ham, one of the sons of Noah. According to the Book of Genesis, after Noah became drunk and Ham dishonoured his father, upon awakening Noah pronounced a curse on Ham’s youngest son, Canaan, stating that his offspring would be the “servants of servants”. Of Ham’s four sons, Canaan fathered the Canaanites, while Mizraim fathered the Egyptians, Cush the Cushites, and Phut the Libyans. According to the Hamitic theory, this “Hamitic race” was superior to or more advanced than the “Negroid” populations of Sub-Saharan Africa”.

Beyond being totally discredited, my difficulties with the Hamitic theory centre on the fact that it is scriptural rather than factual. We have no way of finding out whether indeed there was a Noah who begot the children attributed as his progeny. Second is that, if indeed there was such a parentage and bloodline, the sin of stealing a glance at a father’s nakedness is incomparable to selling off a sibling. If we accept the Hamitic hypothesis, then there will be no further need to seek explanation for slavery. 

My speculation is that beyond the manifest, material and historic devastation and arrested development wrought on Africa by slavery, there is the sin of the spiritual culpability of Africans themselves in enslaving and casting away their own into the cauldron and oblivion of sub-human existence. Quite reminiscent of the wickedness of the older children of Jacob, who sold their junior brother, Joseph, into slavery. We were similarly informed in Genesis, that ‘Abel, a shepherd, offered the Lord the firstborn of his flock. The Lord respected Abel’s sacrifice but did not respect that offered by Cain. In a jealous rage, Cain murdered Abel. Cain then became a fugitive because his brother’s innocent blood put a curse on him’. 

In my imagination, so, likewise, has Africa invited a curse on itself for its unforgivable dealership in the beastly market of the slave trade. Of great consequence were the silent invocation of damnation of those condemned to eternal servitude by their kit and kin- as they were herded onto the decks of the evil carriers taking them on a voyage of no return.. Between the African partakers and their Euro/American counterparts, the balance of sinning more than being sinned against falls on the former. It may amount to double jeopardy, yet if there should be a divine retribution, it should fall more heavily on those who connived with foreigners to dehumanise their brethren. 

But what about the other party to the tragedy?. It appears that a specific and adequate retribution was provided by the American civil war in which brothers spilled one another’s blood over the institution of slavery. As eloquently stated by Lincoln “if God wills that the civil war should continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether”. 

Why, then, for instance, was the United Kingdom, UK, spared a similar slavery- specific retributive justice? I do not have an answer to this poser beyond being granted a providential reprieve on account of the proactive role of the British in the abolition of slave trade. And Europe as a whole? Again, I cannot stretch my imagination beyond the tenuous interpretation of the visitation of the two world wars as retribution. . 

What about Donald Duke and the scriptural penalty of visiting the sin of the fathers on the offspring? Well, God asked me to tell him to set his mind at rest. In the book of Romans: “The apostle Paul argues that, from a certain point of view, human sin and death are a corporate problem rather than an individual one.