BY EMMANUEL ONWUBIKO
A key aspect of the general scope of African cultural value system is
the obligation on Africans under their respective customs and
traditions to be charitable to the less privilege even as hardwork and
resilience by all are encouraged.
In the days of yore, going by recorded accounts in many great African
philosophical texts, the ordinary African in his native land is made
to imbibe the cultural value of giving. Typically, hunger, starvation
and extreme poverty aren’t notorious in ancient African communities.
Indeed, different African traditional communities thrived on
productivity in agricultural practices. In Igbo cultural or
traditional society, the wealth of a man used to be rated by the
accumulation of yams in the family barns.
Fast forward to these days when due to mismanagement of resources and
widespread corruption by a lot of central government officials and
sub-national officials in the 36 states and the federal capital
territory, poverty, hunger and deprivations practically walk with four
legs on the streets of virtually all cities and towns all across
Nigeria. Majority of Nigerians have migrated away from their rural
communities to urban areas in search of greener pastures away from the
farms. The effects of social media and the bridging of communication
brought about by the World Wide Web has broyght a new kind of
lifestyle whereby most youths have embraced the quest for white collar
jobs and have substantially abandoned traditional African careers in
the Agro-allied sector. Absence of social amenities encourages
rural-urban drifts and these migrations erode the African attachment
to the cultural value of GIVING. Due to widespread poverty, Nigeria
has become like a basket case thereby compelling rich and generous
nation’s in the Western Societies to initiate actions to fund
charities in Africa and Nigeria as the nation with the largest black
population in the World, also receive some of the largest part of the
largesse from the West.
The unprecedented scope of poverty is the reason such externally
funded interventions are carried out in major flashpoints by such
qualitatively governed and administered bodies like the European
union, the British funded DFID and the other components (USAID)
implemented yearly by the government of the United States of America.
Not long ago, an official of the United States embassy in Nigeria was
quoted in the local press as stating that the United States of America
provided $89 million in 2018 to fund some poverty alleviation
programmes in Nigeria.
Looking at how many developed economies prioritize giving of aids to
African nations shattered by poor economy and corruption, it can be
safely said that the West has more cultural attachment to giving than
Africa for instance whose history is replete with documentary evidence
that most African communities were built around the ideology of
generosity.
It would seem that the so-called Western civilization has exchanged
our generosity amongst ourselves for mass poverty, hunger, starvation
and collapsing economy. The new trends of mass poverty and the lack of
the spirit of giving by rich Africans has also contributed to the
decline in the well-known traditional value system of giving. However
the Western societies still values and carry out the task of giving.
President Bill Clinton, who governed the United States of America for
two terms did a great book about giving in which he made a call to
action, as it were.
A review of the book seen online says that “Giving is an inspiring
look at how each of us can change the world. First, it reveals the
extraordinary and innovative efforts now being made by companies and
organizations—and by individuals—to solve problems and save lives
both “down the street and around the world.” Then it urges us to
seek out what each of us, “regardless of income, available time,
age, and skills,” can do to help, to give people a chance to live
out their dreams.
Bill Clinton shares his own experiences and those of other givers,
representing a global flood tide of nongovernmental, nonprofit
activity. These remarkable stories demonstrate that gifts of time,
skills, things, and ideas are as important and effective as
contributions of money. From Bill and Melinda Gates to a six-year-old
California girl named McKenzie Steiner, who organized and supervised
drives to clean up the beach in her community, Clinton introduces us
to both well-known and unknown heroes of giving. Among them:
Dr. Paul Farmer, who grew up living in the family bus in a trailer
park, vowed to devote his life to giving high-quality medical care to
the poor and has built innovative public health-care clinics first in
Haiti and then in Rwanda; a New York couple, in Africa for a wedding,
who visited several schools in Zimbabwe and were appalled by the
absence of textbooks and school supplies. They founded their own
organization to gather and ship materials to thirty-five schools.
After three years, the percentage of seventh-graders who pass reading
tests increased from 5 percent to 60 percent;’
Osceola McCarty, who after seventy-five years of eking out a living by
washing and ironing, gave $150,000 to the University of Southern
Mississippi to endow a scholarship fund for African-American
students.”
This fascinating copy from Bill Clinton confirms the high premium that
modern Western societies place on giving although it is not a blanket
statement that poverty, homelessness have completely disappeared but
the remarkable contributions of rich people in the United States of
America and Europe have helped to drastically globalize the essence
and prime place of the humane value system of giving.
However, this piece is motivated by the emerging trends of few wealthy
Nigerians who have individually decided to dedicate some percentage of
their wealth towards giving to those who lack.
By some estimates, the combined estimates of the wealth of only less
than two percent of the richest Nigerians dwarf the entire assets and
wealth of the rest of the nearly 200 million people in Nigeria.
Although what these few rich people give to charities cannot be said
to be significant when compared to the presence of the largest poor
people in the world congregating in Nigeria, the change of attitudes
by these few rich Nigerians has reinvented the old African cultural
value of giving.
These rich but generous class of modern day Nigerians are less than
half a dozen but the quantum of their giving may be small in
proportion to their total assets but the shift from the stiff necked
greedy attitudes of most rich Nigerians by those few numbers of
wealthy Nigerians should be celebrated.
These rich and generous Nigerians are also not keen for fame but are
guided to be generous by some inherent principles they may have picked
up from their ancestral genes.
These are Aliko Dangote, rated as the richest black person on earth;
Femi Otedola who is a son of a well brought up Lagos born Roman
Catholic adherent and erstwhile governor of Lagos chief Michael
Otedola and lastly the owner of Air Peace Airline who is from Anambra
Mr. Allens Oneyema.
A country such as Nigeria with at least 100 billionaires but only
three have demonstrated the uncommon virtue for giving, one can then
imagine how good Nigeria will be if all the rich people can have a
change of heart or Metanoia, which is a Greek word for change of
heart, and begin today to embrace the attitude of giving like their
fellow billionaires aforementioned whose generosity are not done for
fame but purely out of good will, then Nigeria will be good.
The Guardian of Nigeria tells us that the Kano state born Alhaji Aliko
Dangote has been rated as the sixth most charitable person in the
world. Aliko Dangote’s charitable works seem to be limited to the
Northern region which is his native home. That notwithstanding is a
commendable feat giving that due to corruption by the political class
the north obviously harbours the largest numbers of poor people in the
Country. There is over 10 million out of school children in the North
alone even as child malnutrition is at an alarming rate in the North.
Femi Otedola who has been seen giving lifesaving reliefs to some sick
national legends in the fields of sports and music (Christian Chukwu
and Majek Fashek), was reported by a journalist to have donated $6
million building to the Augustine University in Epe, Lagos state.
The structure, which is currently under construction, will be the
premises of the Faculty of Engineering at the University.
Speaking during the foundation laying ceremony of the new building,
Otedola said, like his father, he was passionate about education and
development of the country.
“My father was very passionate about a university being built in Epe
because he was very passionate about education. Rather than spend my
money on building more houses or buying a jet for myself, I decided to
spend the money to support this laudable cause by the Lagos Catholic
archdiocese through the Augustine University,” the businessman told
journalists.
Augustine University is a private Catholic-owned University located in
Ilara, a town in Epe local government area of Lagos State Southwestern
Nigeria.
Femi Otedola is the controlling shareholder of publicly traded Forte
Oil, an oil marketing and power generation company. Originally a
Nigerian subsidiary of British Petroleum (BP), Forte Oil has more than
500 gas stations across the country. It owns oil storage depots and
manufactures its own line of engine oils. Femi Otedola is also one of
Nigeria’s most popular philanthropists and over the years has given
millions of dollars to causes in education, health and the arts. He
featured in the 2016 ranking of Forbes billionaires with a net worth
of $1.8 billion at the time.
Lastly, apart from individuals, religious organisations need to
embrace the virtue of giving to alleviate poverty in Nigeria. How do
you tell a hungry man to stand up and praise God? With which strength?
Even God will prefer that those who will worship Him should be happy.
*Emmanuel Onwubiko heads Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria
(HURIWA) and blogs @www.emmanuelonwubiko.com [1];
www.huriwa@blogspot.com [2]; www.thenigerianinsidernews.com [3]
Links:
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[1] http://www.emmanuelonwubiko.com/
[2] http://www.huriwa@blogspot.com/
[3] http://www.thenigerianinsidernews.com/