Murtala Freed Africa From the World. Falola Says Africa Must Now Free Itself From Itself

Fifty years after Nigeria’s historic challenge to foreign domination, Prof Toyin Falola says Africa’s next liberation must be from the systems and habits that keep reproducing its underdevelopment.

On January 11, 1976, General Murtala Ramat Muhammed stood before African leaders in Addis Ababa and said something that still echoes across the continent.

“Africa has come of age.”

He was not making a birthday announcement.He was making a declaration of political adulthood.

Africa, Murtala told the extraordinary summit of the Organisation of African Unity, should no longer live under the orbit of any extra-continental power.

It should no longer take instructions from powerful countries about what was good for Africans.

The fortunes of Africa, he insisted, were in African hands.

Fifty years later, another Nigerian historian has picked up the conversation.

Prof. Toyin Falola did not repeat Murtala’s words. He went somewhere more uncomfortable.

If Africa has come of age, what has it done with its adulthood?

That was the question beneath Falola’s powerful intervention at the 47th edition of Boiling Point Arena, where the renowned historian challenged Africans to confront the internal systems, values and failed development formulas that continue to hold the continent back.

“No world power can kill Africa,” Falola declared.

The statement sounded like an echo of Murtala.

But it carried a different burden. Murtala was confronting the world.

Falola was confronting Africa.

And perhaps that is where the African conversation has moved.

From political liberation to the liberation of the mind

Murtala spoke at a moment when the struggle against colonialism, apartheid and foreign interference remained central to African politics.

His speech was delivered against the background of the Angolan crisis and disagreement with the United States over the continent’s political direction.

He rejected the idea that powerful countries could decide Africa’s interests for Africans.His message was uncompromising.

Africa had to think for itself.Africa had to decide for itself.

Africa had to defend its own interests.

That was 1976.Falola’s intervention comes from a different Africa.

The flags have changed.

Most African countries have been independent for decades.

Colonial governments have disappeared.

African presidents sit in African capitals.African parliaments make African laws.

And yet, in many countries, the old question of dependence remains.

Only the form has changed.

The foreign administrator may have disappeared.

The dependence on imported goods, imported ideas, foreign capital, foreign technology and external validation has not.

This is where Falola’s argument becomes uncomfortable.

Because after blaming history for decades, Africa must eventually ask what it has done with the freedom history gave it.

Africa survived.

But has Africa transformed?

Falola’s optimism about Africa is not naïve.

He knows what the continent has endured.

The trans-Atlantic slave trade stripped African societies of millions of people.

Colonialism reorganised economies around extraction.

Post-independence instability, military coups, civil wars, corruption and economic dependency complicated the work of nation-building.

Yet Africa survived.It continues to produce doctors, engineers, academics, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and professionals whose talents are eagerly absorbed by richer societies.

That is the paradox.

Africa has human beings capable of competing with the world.

What it often lacks are systems capable of keeping those human beings, rewarding their abilities and converting their talents into institutions and wealth.

The problem, therefore, is not simply that Africa has too little.

It is that Africa too often fails to organise what it already has.

We cannot keep exporting the future

This is where Falola’s argument moves from history to economics.

Africa has become remarkably good at extracting wealth from the ground.

It has been much less successful at transforming that wealth before it leaves the continent.

Cocoa leaves. Chocolate returns.

Crude leaves. Refined products return.

Minerals leave. Manufactured goods return.

Agricultural commodities leave. Processed products return at several times the original value.

The result is an economy that can be rich in resources and poor in the things those resources should produce.

“We must move from economy of extraction to that of production,” Falola said.

His examples were deliberately simple.

“Convert your yam into product, convert the cocoa into value.”

That is not merely an agricultural argument.

It is a philosophy of development.

Africa must stop measuring prosperity by what it possesses underground and begin measuring it by what it can produce above ground.

Education must become an engine of production

Falola also challenged another African habit.

Our obsession with certificates. A certificate can prove that somebody passed through a system.

It does not automatically prove that the system has produced somebody capable of solving the problems around him.

Africa needs scientists. It needs engineers. It needs teachers. It needs researchers.

But it also needs electricians, welders, mechanics, machinists, technicians, builders, farmers, software developers and skilled artisans.

There is no dignity in producing graduates who cannot find productive work while importing the skills required to maintain the economy.

Education must therefore become productive infrastructure.

The purpose is not simply to produce graduates.

It is to produce capacity.

Nigeria’s most dangerous export may be its values

Falola’s warning about Nigeria went beyond corruption. He was worried about what young Nigerians are learning from society.

If a young person grows up believing that education is a waste of time while political office is the fastest route to wealth, the country is not merely producing unemployed graduates.

It is producing the political culture of tomorrow.

That is why the question of corruption is larger than stealing.It is about what society rewards.

What does Nigeria admire?

Who does it celebrate?

Who does it call successful?

Who does a young person see on television and conclude, “That is the life I want”?

These questions matter because societies eventually reproduce their values through their leaders.

A country that celebrates unexplained wealth should not be shocked when public office becomes attractive for the wrong reasons.

Democracy must become more than elections

Falola’s statement that Nigerians are fighting for democracy without fighting sufficiently for accountability deserves serious thought.

Democracy gives citizens the power to choose.

Accountability gives citizens the power to question what those chosen people do with that power.

Without the second, the first can become ritual. We vote. They win. They govern.

We complain.

Then we vote again.

That is not the whole meaning of democracy.

A functioning democracy must also have institutions capable of asking difficult questions, exposing abuse and imposing consequences.

Good governance cannot depend entirely on whether the person in office is personally virtuous.

The system must be stronger than the individual.

Perhaps Murtala’s Africa has come of age.

Perhaps Falola is asking what adulthood means.

This may be the most interesting connection between the two Nigerian voices separated by half a century.

Murtala’s Africa wanted political adulthood.

Falola’s Africa needs institutional adulthood.

Murtala challenged outsiders who believed they could determine Africa’s destiny.

Falola challenges Africans who have inherited the power to determine their destiny but continue to reproduce the same failures.

One fought the external cage.

The other is asking Africa to examine the internal one.

That is not a rejection of Murtala’s argument.

It may be its logical continuation.

Because independence is only the first form of freedom.

There is economic freedom.

There is intellectual freedom.

There is technological freedom.

There is institutional freedom.

There is the freedom to produce what you consume and retain the value of what you create.

There is even the freedom to stop blaming yesterday for everything that goes wrong today.

No world power can kill Africa

Falola’s declaration therefore carries a deeper meaning.

“No world power can kill Africa.”

Perhaps not.

But Africa can still wound itself.

t can weaken its institutions.It can export its brightest minds.

It can allow capital to flee.

It can reward political mediocrity.

It can neglect education.

It can consume without producing.It can fight endlessly over who gets power while ignoring what power is supposed to accomplish.

It can become independent without becoming self-reliant.

And it can remain rich in resources while millions remain poor.

That is the challenge before the Africa that Murtala declared had come of age.

The question is no longer simply whether Africa is free.

The question is what Africa will do with its freedom.

Murtala gave the continent a declaration.

Falola has given it another challenge.

If Africa has truly come of age, it must now behave like an adult.It must produce.

It must think. It must retain its wealth. It must build institutions.

It must educate its young. It must hold its leaders accountable.

And, above all, it must stop confusing survival with success.

Africa has survived.

That much is beyond argument. Now it must prove that it can build.