by Feyi Fawehinmi

Constitutional Monarchies

Think of 5 peaceful well governed countries you'd like to live in around the world. How many of them are constitutional monarchies?

— tyro (@DoubleEph) January 23, 2017

So I ran a poll on twitter recently. As you can see, a clear majority of respondents fancy constitutional monarchies — Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Sweden, Netherlands, United Kingdom — the list goes on and on. Some of the nicest places to live in the world fall in this category. You can even make the argument that one of the best-governed countries in Africa — Morocco — is one too.

I’m not too familiar with other monarchies and how they came to be but I know a bit about the UK. It took several battles for Alfred The Great to finally unite several towns into what is now known as England in 886AD.

Several Kings and Queens later, from French (William The Conqueror) to Germans (George I) to Dutch (William III) and a civil war plus a beheading along the way, we get to Queen Elizabeth II today who is about as loved by British people as it is possible for a public figure to be loved.

People like to complain that colonialism damaged Africa by introducing corruption and all sorts of other things which continue to plague the continent today. I don’t buy this argument for simple reasons of arithmetic — colonialism went on for around 100 years and has been over for at least 50 years. But even before colonialism, there is at least 400 years of documented African history available. Could those 100 years have so changed the continent that much when you consider that the British ‘colonised’ Uganda with 25 officials? Maybe. But I don’t buy it.

But there’s another argument I am more open to. The colonialists stopped us from killing ourselves to glory. Yes. If constitutional monarchies are nice things today, they were not always so. As I said earlier, it took a bit of fighting and bloodshed, to put it mildly, to get here. One can argue that Africans were on their way to brutalising each other till dominant kingdoms — Darwinian style — emerged. The Ashantis in Ghana were fierce and terrifying warriors.

Here’s from Wikipedia:

The Ashanti (also spelled Asante) Empire (1701–1957) was an Akan empire and kingdom in what is now modern-day Ghana. The Ashanti Empire expanded from Ashanti to include the Brong-Ahafo, Central region, Eastern region, Greater Accra region, and Western region, of present-day Ghana. The Ashanti benefited from early firearm adoption. Combined with effective strategy, they fashioned an empire that stretched from central Ghana to the present-day Ivory Coast. Due to the empire’s military prowess, wealth, architecture, sophisticated hierarchy and culture, Ashanti has been extensively studied and has more historiographies by European, primarily British, authors than almost any other indigenous culture of Sub-Saharan Africa.

The ‘problem’ is that when the British turned up, the people who had been on the receiving end of Ashanti terror called for help and the British obliged them. This is just one example of several where the British intervened and stopped one powerful group from terrorising another one to submission.

Here’s from the Battle of Bida in Nigeria in 1897:

The troops of the Niger Company, some five hundred drilled negroes of the Houssa tribe, with twenty-three white men among them, accompanied by Sir George Taubman Goldie, for- merly an officer in the Engineers, now Governor of the Company, and quite as remarkable a person as Mr. Rhodes, advanced. on January 25th to the occupation of Bida. This place is the stronghold and capital of the Foula.hs, he dominant negro race of the Niger, and is at least four hundred miles distant from the coast. The Foulahs were from twenty thousand to thirty thousand strong, they had clouds of cavalry, and they occupied a strong position on the ridge between the invaders and the town. Having, moreover, some military skill, they had sent out heavy flanking parties to attack the British guns, which, being , hampered by the swamps, were still in the rear of the advancing force. Major Arnold, the officer in direct com- mand of the advance, decided to attack the ridge, cleared , it of the enemy, and then, finding himself enveloped by the ‘ flanking parties, retired, formed square, and successfully defied the charges which the enemy, though mowed down by the Maxims, repeatedly made, apparently with all the daring of Zulus or Matabeles. The fighting lasted for four hours, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. ; but by that time the heavy guns, With their ammunition-waggons, had fought their way up, and the enemy, unable to bear the fresh slaughter among their masses from great guns at point-blank range, retreated in confusion, so that the town was stormed with little loss on January 29th. That was a really grand feat of arms, a victory at odds of one to forty, accomplished with the loss of only one European, Lieutenant Thomson ;

As you can see, if the British had not intervened there (with the support of those who had previously been terrorised), the ‘Foulahs’ would have made suya with the ‘Houssas’. By now, the ‘Foulahs’ would be completely dominant and have stable government or they too might have been overrun by the expansionist Ashanti at some point. Who knows?

If only we had been left alone to kill ourselves till a clear winner emerged, maybe Africa would be on the clear path to development today. If only the Yorubas had been left alone to battle it out in the Kiriji War without British intervention, maybe some smaller tribes would have been wiped out and ‘unity’ would be more evident along with making governance easier.

I find it odd and interesting that, perhaps as a result of all that, constitutional monarchies are as rare as hen’s teeth in Africa today.

Sad!

Universal Suffrage

When oyinbos gave us democracy, they left out a crucial part of the story — how they arrived at the final result.

Sometimes, when I’m reading something about British history, I will stumble on a speech by an MP in the 17th century or something and I am always baffled at the quality. How could they have had such high-quality politicians centuries ago when we have Dino Melaye in 2017?

The answer is not too complicated — when democracy started, it was restricted to the elite. Only the rich and elite could vote and be voted for. So as they figured their way through parliamentary democracy, the country was in the best hands available. Gradually the hold of the elite was loosened and more and more people were brought into the process.

When people made a bit of noise, the elite would loosen their grip a bit to pacify them. One of my favourite examples is the Potwalloper borough where the male head of any house with a very big pot was allowed to vote. It was a very messy system and some of them were quite literally rotten. But from allowing only landowners to vote, tenants who paid a certain amount of rent were given the franchise all the way to women and universal suffrage.

But this had an unquantifiable benefit, in my view. By restricting the franchise and governance to the elite, it allowed the smartest brains available figure out a workable system before everyone was allowed a say in the system. By the time everyone got the vote, a lot of conventions, norms, institutions and practices were deeply ingrained and cultural that they could not be overturned easily. These days a politician can gain votes by promising distracted voters he won’t raise their taxes. But if he then runs into trouble, the joke is often on him. He will be forced to raise the taxes because he can’t simply print money (that’s been tried and it failed) or just pretend like the problem doesn’t exist. The same voters will kick him out in annoyance.

But countries like Nigeria picked things up from the final result. It’s like entering a cinema just as the movie is about to finish and then stepping out to write a test on it immediately. This is why we have Dino Melaye. And even Buhari.

One thing that tends to happen as elections approach is that people like me who like to write in English on the internet are made to understand our powerlessness. We are told we don’t understand ‘street politics’ (very true) or that ‘stomach infrastructure’ is what wins votes (also true) or that you have to have some level of thuggery because ‘speaking English’ won’t get you very far in Nigerian politics (again, true).

But the reasons why these things are true is not because the politicians who occupy the commanding heights of Nigerian politics today are very smart or born with some natural talent or have paid their dues in a way that no one else can.

If we started off with elite rule and expanded the franchise slowly, people like Dino will only enter the fray at the very end — like how they throw open the doors of the party at 3am and allow the people outside to come in for free when the big boys have finished having fun.<

Alternative Fact About West Africa

So to summarise the 2 points above into a counterfactual.

West Africa would have been dominated by the Sokoto And Ashanti Empires. After several small scale skirmishes, they finally arm themselves and go to war (over a woman) in 1823 somewhere around present-day Gambia. After a series of brutal battles over 8 years, the Ashanti finally prevail in 1831. They then proceed on a killing spree of anyone who disobeys their rule and also to enforce their authority. The whole of West Africa becomes Ashanti. Their men impregnate women all over the place to increase their race and some small stubborn groups are simply wiped out.

 

King Otumfuo Nana Opoku Fofie III becomes the King of West Africa. But to govern such a vast territory, he needs very sharp members of the intelligentsia to do his bidding. Over his long reign, he releases more and more powers to them when they demand it. These guys are very sharp and know that it is not really possible to administer such a massive territory with force alone. So they focus on development and allow as much economic freedom as possible. The battle of Gambia is also very fresh in everyone’s memory. Since it claimed about 1 million lives, no one really wants to fight again.

When people in say present day Borno grumble, the elite give them 50% of what they want and transfer some funds to them. Gradually this system of giving more and more freedom (instead of sending in the army) becomes established. Everything is debated openly so people in other parts of the Kingdom start to look for representatives who are smart and can help them put their case for more funding and representation to the King’s court.

Along the line, people figure out an established way of picking their emissaries to the King’s court and the King writes it down as law and recognises it. The poor in societies accept this arrangement knowing that the elite who represent them are the best hands available and they are not too corrupt to the point of being totally unreliable. Win-win, mostly. This (mostly) happy arrangement becomes ‘democracy’. But sometimes the elite mess things up and this annoys the poor people who then demand to have a bigger say. The elite finds a way to appease them and keep them quiet for another 9 years or so.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, this peaceful system (only occasional small violence in present day Ekiti flares up now and again, but nothing major), has managed to produce a fast train that takes you from today’s Lagos to Abidjan in about 6 hours. The whole of West Africa is connected by train, air, sea and broadband.

And that’s when I woke up

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Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija