Revisiting Amilcar Cabral’s legacies ,by Issa Aremu

Amilcar Cabral ‘s legacies came into sharp focus last Wednesday, 15th of July as Amilcar Cabral Ideological School, (ACIS) in Lagos observed its 10th Anniversary. Cabral was born on 12 September 1924 in Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, to Cape Verdean parents. He was assassinated in 1973 by colonial Portuguese agent learnt the historic struggle for independence of Guinea Bissau. Living for 49 years, Cabral’s lives and times show that it’s not how long but how well. He was a student activist. Essential legacy of Cabral was nationalism and pan-Africanism. He was a nationalist and pan Africanist. From 1963 to his assassination in 1973, Cabral led the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, PAIGC’s guerrilla movement (in Portuguese Guinea) against the Portuguese government, which evolved into one of the most successful wars of independence in modern African history. The goal was for independence for both Portuguese Guinea and Cape Verde.
At a time it was unpopular to return to Africa after his studies in agronomy in Portugal he returned to Africa in the 1950s, promoting the independence causes of the then Portuguese colonies. President Barack Obama of United States in July 2009, was attributed with the quotable quote;; Africa needs strong institutions, not strong men! Obama’s remark came almost 40 years, Africa had commendably thrown up great strong men and women such as Cabral building strong institutions such as the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, PAIGC. Amilcar Cabral’s legacy exposes the fallacy of received wisdom from Obama. Africa like any other parts of the world needs both strong men and women and institutions. A philosopher-pan-Africanist, Amilcar Cabral once observed that; “The colonists usually say that it was they who brought us into history: today we show that this is not so. They made us leave history, our history, to follow them, right at the back, to follow the progress of their history”. To honour his memory, we must make history a compulsory subject in our schools. Africa is failing because of lack of knowledge of the past.
Last year under President Goodluck Jonathan Nigeria rolled out drums to celebrate 100 years of the so-called amalgamation of the Northern and Southern protectorate by the Colonialist administrator called Lord Lugard. Dubbed centenary Celebration Jonathan government romanticized colonialism with billions of Naira better channeled into development. The false impression, was that there was no Nigeria before 1914. Some even claimed that 100 years after Nigeria being a colonial invention would end to exist. Cabral strongly condemned this type of distortion of the history of the colonized peoples of Africa.
In a speech he delivered in Havana Cuba in January 1966 entitled THE WEAPON OF THEORY he showed that contrary to received wisdom, African “…peoples have their own history regardless of the stage of their economic development” notwithstanding the acknowledged the violence that colonialism and imperialism did to African history. Multi-Billion Naira centenary celebration was conceptually flawed and economically wasteful. The late Dr Bala Usman empirically demonstrated that Modern-day Nigeria did not start with the formal amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates of the former British colony. Colonial fiery tale had it that one Scottish adventurer called Mungo Park discovered River Niger. Does it mean that the great Nigerians who lived and still live by River Niger before the adventurer never knew the River Niger was there? Cabral enjoined us to decolonize our national narrative. Modern Nigeria was not a creation of amalgamation no less than Europe was created by the Treaty of Rome of 1973. There was certainly a modern Nigeria before Lord Lugard and his so-called amalgamation of 1914, just as there was modern Europe before the treaty of Rome 1973 that established the Europen Union. Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe of the great NCNC was born on November 16, 1904 in Zungeru, Nigeria, 10 years before Lugard’s so-called amalgamation. This means Lugard met a functioning Nigeria in which Zik’s parents who were Igbo; (“his father Obed-Edom Chukwuemeka Azikiwe (1879–1958), a clerk in the British Administration of Nigeria and his mother was Rachel Ogbenyeanu Azikiwe”) had long settled in the Northern town of Zungeru, present day Niger state. Indeed the first officially recognized Nigerian trade union was established in 1912, Nigeria civil service Union, two years before amalgamation. Again that was a modern trade union in a modern Nigeria.
Cabral belongs to the generation of selfless African leaders who gave all to the continent. Africa is in need of great pan Africanist leaders like Cabral. The best way to Honour Cabral is to call on African leaders to selflessly serve their peoples. The 8th National Assembly was inaugurated on June 9 by both the Senate and the House of Representatives. So far they only sat for four days in the last six weeks. Even now in the face of heightened terror mayhems legislators are not in hungry to resume. Meanwhile they have collected all the prohibitive allowances that shamelessly include wardrobe allowances for work not done in a country in which many workers are not paid for months for work done. If legislators are not in a hurry to give their time for jobs they are handsomely paid to do, how can they sacrifice their lives for Africa, the way Amilcal Cabral, Murtala Muhammed, Patrice Lumuba and Nelson Mandela once did?
Issa Aremu, mni