By Dr. Charles Ikedikwa Soeze
It is crystal and abundantly clear that different colonial powers brought different ways to colonization, and this showed how the colonies gained freedom, and the preparation of those under colonial tutelage for democracy and development. However, all colonial powers believed that the white men’s values and civilization were superior, furthermore, that the white man had a moral responsibility to impose at least some of the values on Africa. It is however, contentious whether western moral values can claim any superiority to African moral values.
No doubt, all colonial powers pretended to be paternalistic but were in fact suppressive and exploitative, but the British Paternalism took the form of pressures to preserve customs, to maintain the social distance between the British and the Africans. It is a truism to say that French paternalism was more in a Jacobin tradition. This is because it granted full rights of citizenship to the inhabitants of Senegal including the right to send deputies to French parliament. The African was assimilated into the French culture.
However, in the Belgian Congo, Congo became a model colony in its elementary naivete. They built hospitals, and had many primary schools. They were not allowed to attend any secondary school, and none was built. Belgium did not train nationalist agitators, or to groom any opposition. There was no university, and university education was not considered necessary for the Congo people.
Furthermore, Portuguese ideology was paternalistic but tight fisted, and gave the African no freedom. In Canada, Australia and New Zealand Colonies, the British adopted a different approach due to the fact that they were white people. As a result, they introduced local government and made decolonization painless, and created enabling environment for democracy and development. Immediately, they allowed the colonies to have legislative bodies. In South Africa, power went to the white settlers against the much popularized freedom and quality. The Africans were denied the right to vote and be voted for. The Boers were given equal rights with the English. However, the Africans had to fight to win suffrage rights and parliamentary representation. The dominant white systematically eliminated the Africans and excluded them from political roles.
Coming to Zimbabwe, the white settlers received substantial autonomy. This was because for a long time, the white controlled political power in Kenya to African nationalism in West Africa, they allowed white settler nationalism in the East, central and South Africa until African nationalism overtook the white settlers.
It is a truism to say that the French concept of constitutional advancement was to draw the colonies closer to France. Under General Charles de Gaul, there was more African participation in France legislature and the executive. To this end therefore, petty development in French African colonies meant attachment to parties in France. Following the experience of Ghana and Indo China, French African colonies began asking for devolution of power and independence. When it resolved to grant independence to the colonies, there was not enough time to prepare them for true democracy and development. They have no time to teach them party organisation or prepare them for the experience required for democratic governance.
Unfortunately, economic development in British and French Colonies was geared to the needs of the colonial powers. Colonies were expected to absorb European manufactured goods and produce raw materials. Consequently, agriculture production of export crops was encouraged and little or no thought was given to the development of industries, except for mining industries which were financed by British and French companies.
By the time Europeans contacted Africa prior to the period of slave trade, African civilization compared favourably with any western civilization (refer to Sykes, Frobenus, and Herbert Wendt). As a result, 300 years of slave trade ravaged Africa and destroyed African civilization. In view of this, slave trade carried Africans to work for European and other western countries, during the colonial period, African treasure, wealth and mineral resources were carried away to develop Europe and other western countries.
Happily, the French had a centralized administration that included Africans. As a result, the African chief was treated as a staff of government. Be that as it may, the Africans learnt and spoke perfect French, and looked forward for a transfer to work in France. In agriculture, Africans perfectly produced cash crops for export. Despite our oil boom, planners look forward to agriculture to produce export produce.
It is therefore flabbergasting why the French could not have trained Africans to embrace industrialization especially with the abundant cheap labour available in Africa. In recent times, Americans have availed themselves of the cheap labour in Asia, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, to mention but a few who supplied cheap labour that boosted industrialization in Asia.
It is manifestly clear that the British policy was different. The system of indirect rule which the British colonial policy popularized was not new or original. This is because it was a familiar system in Africa before the arrival of British rule. No doubt, important and famous African leaders like Mansa Musa, Sunni Ali used the system to govern the vast territories that came under them. One can boldly and proudly say that the British colonial policy was unimaginative. While the French drew the colonies closer to Paris, in the arts of politics, the British did not. Some African territories sent deputies to French parliament in Paris. The British could never have envisaged Dr. Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe, or Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo or Dr. Kwame Nkrumah sitting in the British parliament in London. The British were only interested in developing the Native Authority (N.A) system of administration, they did not realize that the Native Authority Administration favored sectionalism, nepotism, tribalism and inhibited the emergence of national spirit. This, I think and believe was a more modern type of local government as was exemplified in the British reaction to the western commission on the Gold coast.
Furthermore, the British failed to introduce the type of education that could have encouraged technological consciousness. In fact, when Mr. A.J Freser of Achimota visited Nigeria in 1927, he lamented that at the rate education was progressing in Nigeria, it would take 300 years before all Nigerian could have primary education. The British could not spend her funds to develop the colonies (unlike the French). It is this British reluctance to develop the colonies and treat Africans as partners that fired the anger of the few educated people and led to nationalist series of protest. The British were more interested in settlements for the British. This was evident in the Kenya crown lands ordinance of 1902, and he Gold coast lands bill of 1897. In reaction to the land bills, the aborigine’s society was formed to protest against the Bill. Thanks for the mosquitoes that made the area unhealthy for the Whiteman was only after the colonial development and welfare acts of 1945 that plans were made to expand education in West Africa to university level. Hospitals, schools, roads, airfields and geological surveys were planned. The British were not in a hurry to develop Africa until they experienced the Gold coast riots of 1948.
For education, Nigeria has to adopt progressivism as another term of pragmatism being used by John Dewey has a far-reaching application in American society. The type of influence or application it has in America is not yet seen in Nigeria. The reason could be that Nigeria has not yet seriously adopted pragmatic approach to education. This pragmatic approach simply put is “learning a situation where after theorizing, much room will be given for testing out; and any theory or knowledge that is not workable in concrete terms will be jettisoned”. This is the American pragmatism which for many years has helped put Americans in the foremost among the great nations of the world.
However, Nigerian system of education on the contrary is seen as educational technique aimed primarily at inculcating a mass of factual information to students, without giving them any means of utilizing it. Students are therefore crammed with the experience of the past rather than being prepared to face the challenges of the future. This type of education is the order of the day in Nigeria, the collapsing and if not the collapsed 6-3-3-4 system notwithstanding. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that education in Nigeria is very much based on the grammar type of education brought to us by the colonialist, the type of education given to less privileged in Britain in the early 19th century. Hence, Onwuka in Elim and Alaeze (1988) quoted by Onuoha (2001:262) stated that the curriculum for Nigerian education is not relevant. According to him, Nigeria has thousands of so – called educated men and women who among them possess every imaginable certificate or degree in the world; yet Nigeria continues to run here and there looking for experts to solve some of the problems besetting the country. The curriculum also is not relevant to the needs of the Nigerian society in the sense that the content was based on what those who introduced western type of education knew and accepted as worthy of being mastered by any educated person. Hence, Nigerians were drilled in materials too foreign to have any meaning to them. Memorization is about the only effective way of passing examinations. This probably may be the reason for Nigerian society rejecting our graduates even before they finish from various institutions of learning.
One of the basic reasons why educational programmes have failed in Nigeria is that this nation do not have a clearly defined philosophy of education. This fact can be corroborated when one reviews the statements of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1981) National Policy on Education (NPE) in this regard. In this said policy document, it was specifically stated that Nigeria’s philosophy of education is based on the integration of the individuals into a sound and effective citizen as well as equal educational opportunities for all citizens of the nation irrespective of sex, rule, creed and religion. This philosophy does not appear to have a pragmatic or functional basis. There is therefore the need for a sound educational policy in Nigeria such as pragmatism. If the student learned how to solve problems, presumably, he would be better fitted for living in our ever-changing world with its manifold perplexities and ever-new problems. Dewey (1956) again reemphasized that rather than being trained in various disciplines, the child should be exposed and trained by being confronted with various situations in which he would have to develop methods for overcoming the difficulties that beset him. Let all of us embrace the change policy of APC led federal government as it will impact in education. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that the colonial powers did not provide Africa with the foundations for democratic systems similar to their own. The real task of the colonial states was to promote colonial interests. The task of the colonial rulers was survival and the measure of their success was the maintenance of control into the 1950s and the 1960s. That they did not in the process ensure conditions for sustained capital accumulation or preparation for democratic experience is not surprising and can be readily explained by the make-shift character of colonial policies which were there reactions to African resistance.
Finally, a critical analysis of the effects of colonialism, under-development theory seems to retain considerable validity. The peculiar combination of capitalist penetration without capitalist and political development is unquestionably the feature of the ex-colonized world. Colonialism discouraged the formation of African working class. There was uneven regional development in African towns and there was a corrupt capitalist group that made its living on the state. These blocked any development of capitalist class and political formation. Under development theory notes that achievement of independence was formal rather than real and has not in fact brought development on any criteria. Under development theory focuses on the unilinear growth in importation of business relation, in the importation of finished products and indigestible ideologies including democracy, and the Whiteman’s concept of development. Therefore, colonialism impoverished agriculture and created unemployment. Common to colonialism is exploitation which has left the ugly experience of poverty, famine, repression and gross income inequalities; these hardly conduce to any note on development. What was developed was the foundation of West Africa commodity production.
