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 brought 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 classes 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 harbors
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 organizations
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; www
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