When will African scholars Decolonize Their Minds?
“It is the final triumph of a system of domination when the dominated start singing its virtues.” Ngugi wa Thiongo. I borrowed the title of this article from Professor Wa Thiongo.
After I left Facebook because of their stupid warnings about “community standards,” I also paired down my activities on WhatsApp. My problem with WhatsApp was not the warnings but the sophomoric stuff I read on some of the groups I used to belong to.
Reading what some supposedly educated Africans write sometimes makes me feel like vomiting or crying.
I see a special kind of tragedy whenever I watch and read highly educated African men and women—professors, Ph. Ds, and intellectuals—carry themselves with an air of wisdom while spewing nothing but the intellectual equivalent of colonial catechism. These fellas collect their facts from CNN, the BBC, and dead European scholars, and they are prepared to battle when their emotional shallowness and intellectual inadequacies are pointed out to them.
Abuse, insults, and mockery are staples for them, and they liberally deploy them instead of superior counterarguments.
The only way to deal with them is to listen to the maestro himself: “Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” - Mark Twain
Another tactic is to brandish their experiences in Europe and the USA as though that conferred some validation for their sterile, bogus, and puerile arguments.
I am referring primarily to our so-called African political scientists and scholars of what they call the humanities.
These are the men and women who, many of whom, have spent years in the best universities in Africa, Europe, and America, only to return home and pontificate about “democracy,” “separation of powers,” and “constitutionalism” as though these concepts first arrived on the African continent inside the boots of British, French, and Portuguese colonial invaders.
How true that new converts make the worst zealots!
If one were to listen to these scholars long enough, one would be forced to conclude that Africa, before European colonialism, was a vast wasteland of political confusion - a continent of anarchic tribes who had never stumbled upon the concept of governance. According to their learned wisdom, that is why we must cling to the political structures and ideologies of our colonial masters, for to depart from them is to return to barbarism. The fact that democracy is failing in both the US and Europe is not enough reason for these African mimicries to stray from the orthodoxy. And, please do not tell these learned intellectuals that Africans ran sophisticated societies and built Kingdoms and Empires before colonialism. It is doubtful if they are interested.
The question that constantly nagged my mind is: Are these people daft, or do they enjoy living a lie?
For the sake of my sanity, I left most of the groups. Unfortunately, the future of Africa is committed to the hands of these misinformed ladies and gentlemen. They are in charge of running our educational and informational systems.
Of course, the irony lost on these scholars is that African civilizations had built complex, well-functioning political systems long before anyone in Europe could even spell “constitution.” The Yoruba, Akan, and Benin Kingdoms, among others, had governance structures that rivaled - if not surpassed - anything Europe could boast of at the time.
Let’s take the Yoruba system, for example. The Oyo Empire had a sophisticated checks-and-balances mechanism built into its governance structure that was superior to any in Europe. Although he bears very high-sounding and intimidating Titles, the Alaafin (king) of Oyo was not an absolute ruler; his power was counterbalanced by the Oyomesi, a council of elders, and the Ogboni, a secret society of respected elders who ensured that the king ruled by justice and tradition. If a ruler became tyrannical, he was asked to commit suicide - a form of impeachment that was far more effective than the useless “vote of no confidence” charades we see today in African parliaments. One of the most powerful Alaafins, Sango, was dispatched in this manner. The governance system of Ibadan, another Yoruba kingdom, is even more intriguing. Those interested should invest some time to look it up.
Similarly, the Akan governance system in what is today Ghana was highly sophisticated and democratic. The Asante king, or Asantehene, was elected from the royal family by the queen's mother and could be removed if he failed the people. The selection of a new king is solely based on Merit. Akan Chiefs ruled not by divine right but through consensus, with the people having a say in governance through elaborate consultation mechanisms.
And then there is the Benin Kingdom, with its world-renowned Brass culture sophistication. The Oba of Benin was guided by a council of chiefs, guilds, and community groups that ensured the people had representation.
Tragically, our African scholars pretend not to notice that in traditional African governance systems, especially in judicial matters, decisions were made not by fiat but through consultation, and justice was not dispensed with European-style punitive measures but with an emphasis on reconciliation.
Our African intellectuals looked flummoxed when asked to explain why the imposed foreign systems failed to work in Africa.
No part of European political history contains the type of embedded democratic accountability before the so-called “Enlightenment” era. Our ancestors developed these without a PhD or an education at an Ivy League university. They used their common sense.
One would think that African political scientists, with their bookshelves filled with Western political theory, would at some point pause and ask themselves:
1. How did pre-colonial Africa govern itself for thousands of years before Europe became politically literate?
2. How did African societies function without the need for police forces, prisons, standing armies, and other appurtenances of the state’s violence and cohesion of the kind colonialism introduced?
3. Why have our so-called modern political systems, imported wholesale from Europe and America, failed so disastrously?
Unfortunately, our well-credentialed African scholars never bothered to ask these questions. Instead, they busy themselves writing long-winded essays about “electoral reforms” and “constitutional amendments,” as though tweaking the colonial blueprint would somehow fix what is fundamentally broken.
They speak of democracy as though it is alien to African soil, something we must learn like children from our Western tutors. Nigerians are currently arguing over whether the president can lawfully sack the governor of a state in the federal setup.
Our dear scholars in Africa remember everything about the 100-year colonial interregnum - the laws, the governance structures, the institutions - and promote them with religious zeal. Yet they forget the thousands of years of African state-building that preceded colonialism, as though those centuries of political sophistication never happened.
Political independence from colonialism inflicted on our scholars in Africa a form of historical amnesia.
That, precisely, is our tragedy in Africa. Chinese intellectuals did not forget or abandon their traditional roots like their African colleagues. The difference is clear— China is blooming and blossoming at every level while Africa stagnates!
We can contrast our pathetic case in Africa with what the Chinese have done.
China, like Africa, was once carved up by foreign powers, humiliated, and subjected to colonial rule. But did Chinese intellectuals dedicate themselves to preserving their colonial masters’ institutions and political ideologies? Of course not. They studied Western systems but reconnected with their governance traditions - Confucianism, Legalism, and Taoism - and built a modern state rooted in Chinese civilizational thought.
Today, China is a global powerhouse, not because it blindly copied Western democracy but because it had the self-respect to develop a system that worked for its people based on its historical and cultural foundations.
Meanwhile, our brightest minds in Africa are still debating how to make the Westminster parliamentary model or the American presidential system work in Lagos, Accra, and Nairobi.
The core problem is that Africa’s intellectual elite—particularly its political scientists—is afflicted with a deep-seated schizophrenia. On the one hand, they recognize that the current African political systems are disastrous and riddled with corruption, instability, inefficiency, and unsolvable contradictions. On the other hand, they refuse to break away from the colonial political frameworks that produce these failures.
This intellectual cowardice and inexplicable cognitive dissonance is why Africa remains politically and economically stagnant. You cannot build anything original when foreign paradigms shape your entire worldview. People who lack the confidence to govern themselves according to their historical traditions will forever be enslaved - if not to colonial masters, then to their mental chains.
We can make this Femi’s first Principle of Economic Development: Any economic model that lacks a cultural base is bound to fail.
The solution to Africa’s governance crisis will not come from another constitutional review committee or another set of electoral reforms dictated by Western-funded NGOs. The only solution is a radical decolonization of the African mind.
Professor Ngugi wa Thiongo advocated this for African cultural creators. I think it should be extended to all facets of African life.
Our political scientists must stop being mouthpieces for dead European philosophers and start studying African governance systems with the seriousness they deserve. They must stop treating the precolonial era as a footnote in history and start seeing it for what it is - the foundation upon which a genuinely independent African political system must be built. This is the essence of what the Akan people of Ghana called Sankofa.
Until this happens, Africa will continue to lurch from one failed government to another, from one botched election to the next, like a ship that has lost its rudder, with self-seeking political jobbers playing the people for fools and messing up the destiny of our continent.
No psychiatrist can evaluate us and not conclude that most of us in Africa are Schizophroid. We cannot achieve much in Africa until we rid ourselves of our colonial mentality and become authentic and unapologetic Africans. In short, we need to reclaim our African identity.
Schizophrenic people do not build civilizations; they only inherit the ruins of others.
It is time for Africa to remember who it was before it was told who it should be.
Only then can the journey toward genuine self-governance begin.
Sankofa, anyone?
PS: I addressed these issues at length in various chapters of my book: “Africa: A Continent on Bended Knees,” which is available on:
• Amazon
©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀làfẹ̀
(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Polemicist, Satirist, and Social Commentator.)
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I was surprised to learn that in past Ghana kings were selected by the matriarch and could be removed by the people and the newly selected king is appointed based on merit. That certainly is an improvement over modern so-called democracies (e.g., USA). Thank you for the education, Femi.