Failure to teach the history of Nigeria in schools is not for lack high quality books and monographs written by her most brilliant generation of post-independence scholars. The triumph of ‘’Social Studies’’ over History in school syllabuses is linked to America’s war against the ten volumes of ‘’HISTORY OF AFRICA’’ sponsored by UNESCO under its Senegalese Director General 1974 to 1987, Mokhtar Mbow. The war warned of problems that would be fuelled by histories across Africa. The warning is plausible and easy to illustrate.
Kenya’s Ngugi wa Thiongo is accused of being a Gikuyu tribalist because his novels, including: ‘’Petals of Blood’’ and ‘’A Grain of Wheat’’ are grounded in the war by British colonial troops against Kikuyu liberation war fighters – the ‘’Mau- Mau’’. He violated Jomo Kenyatta’s call for ‘’suffering without bitterness’’ to avoid frightening former oppressive ‘’European Settlers’’. Ngugi’s historical literature earned him a harsh detention.
In Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Rwanda and Sudan groups privileged at the expense of ‘’primitive upcountry’’ or ‘’bush people’’ suffered brutal attacks after independence. Jonas Savimbi’s theory of ‘’two colonialisms’’ – one by the Portugal and another by ‘’mulatos’’- fuelled a long civil war against the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). Peoples in upland areas saw poisoned histories.
In Sudan, as educated politicians in the Muslim North demanded freedom, Southerners recalled histories of wars against Turks and Egyptians looting human resources, ivory and gold, and took to war against a shared independent Sudan.
In Uganda, a combined war against British invasion by rulers of Bunyoro-Kitara and Buganda kingdoms was manipulated into a permanent conflict over sections of Bunyoro-Kitara transferred to Buganda. Beneficiaries of Frederick Lugard’s political engineering incited a 1965 military fracas and the entry of Colonel Idi Amin’s guns into Uganda’s politics. Milton Obote, Kabaka Mutesa and Idi Amin – as main contenders – would each die in exile. History laughed last.
King Leopold of Belgium destroyed the Kingdom of the Bakongo and cut off hands of over 5 million peoples upcountry who had not tapped rubber latex. Belgian farmers lashed millions on slave -labour. Patrice Lumumba’s fiery nationalism; Mobutu Sese Seko’s nationalisation of foreign businesses and thirty years of kleptocracy, and Laurent Kabila’s armed overthrow of Mobutu – all came out of memories of upcountry peoples to colonial dictatorship and exploitation. As multi- national corporations hire militias to loot Congo’s mineral resources; while preferring a Congo without a patriotic government, the Bakongo remain bitter with history.
At a youth level, during an election campaign for the president of the Student Union at Ahmadu Bello University, a team behind a student from Katsina State depicted their opponents as descendants of a Kanuri culture of ready use of the knife to chop off heads of enemies. The other team retorted by demanding respect for descendants of Kanuri people who brought Islam and clothes to Hausa land. History had displaced the politician’s promises of welfare to voters.
In South Africa, Boers administered barbaric dehumanisation of black Africans; exploited labour and collected rent from gold and diamonds to build the most industrialised economy in Africa. Nelson Mandela preached: ‘freedom without vindictiveness’, yet, statutes of Afrikaans heroes have been toppled by angry blacks. History remains a hot pot to carry.
Pain may fired a passion for history by the late Dr. Yusuf Bala Usman. Once while waiting for a trip by train to London to attend for a weekend party by African students, he bought a book by Franz Fanon titled: ‘’BLACK SKIN WHITE MASKS’’. He spent the whole night in that train station reading the book. Anger welled up in him over how British colonial officials had lied to ruling classes in Northern Nigeria by pretending that they treated them as equals. He would vigorously promote academic research on histories of pre-colonial polities and societies.
These sediments of engineered conflicts can be re-engineered. President Paul Kagame is following in Nyerere’s measures; including holding back Chaga’s head start to favour Muslim communities in Dar es Salaam and ethnic groups in Southern Tanzania.
Israel creatively exploits tragedies in Jewish history to build her power under the motto of ‘’NEVER AGAIN!’’ must Jews be refugees. Warfare; taxing the Jewish Diaspora; and using educated brains for undertaking extraordinary scientific research.
Professor Cheik Anta Diop, a nuclear scientist and Egyptologist, chose to demonstrate that founders of European civilization were students in Ancient Egypt ruled by black African Pharaohs.
Africa should reverse this debt by investing intensive and sustained research to harvest sunlight from ancient histories of China, Japan, India and other Asian countries; the Americas; Russia and Western Europe. That route may give hints for turning history from being a silent terrorist to a redeemer of creativity for Africa’s development.