CONCLUSIONES Y RECOMENDACIONES

subject of history, he was also neither the subject nor the object of socio-economic development.

The foregoing clearly presents the characteristic features of the colonial legacy in Africa. It is from this point of view that Oladipo argued that the problem of African development has a colonial origin. It should be clear now why Oladipo insisted on the need to re-examine our past with a view to finding the path we need to follow in order to achieve the goal of building a prosperous nation. Thus, given the available information, one wonders why it has not been possible to subvert the colonial background and create a conducive environment for development in post-colonial Africa. It is in response to this worry that the succeeding section of this work argues that the colonial state and its institutions are inadequate in driving the tasks of post-colonial development.

5.3 The Inadequacy of the Colonial State and its Institutions for the Tasks

Today, Africans are totally free from colonial rule and racism through the achievement of independence. Yet, to be candid, there is a general discontent on the continent today given the precarious socio-economic situation and the hardship that has accompanied it in Africa which is contrary to the tall hope which the people were made to have in the post-colonial Africa during the anti-colonial struggle days – the dream of independence; a hope which has, from all indications, become shattered by the unfolding realities on the continent.

No doubt, independence in Africa has not fulfilled its promise. This is because, for the average African, independence was expected to “usher in a new era of basic rights and freedom long denied under foreign or settler rule.”⁴⁶Very well, “it would amount to stating the obvious,” according to Chris Uroh, “to assert that this has not happened and in fact may not happen for a long time to come.”⁴⁷ Obviously, there is crisis of expectations or, what Abiola Irele has called “a bleak future,”⁴⁸ in today’s Africa. What these indicate is that Africans are yet to secure the freedom which they require as a precondition for making a sense of their collective existence and building genuine human development.

Put bluntly, they are yet to be free from external economic domination, injustice and oppression.

One key factor that is responsible for the African predicament today is the interpretation of the nature of independence and its demands which African leaders embraced during the period of the struggle for independence. Oladipo

observed that “Most African leaders, in their struggle for colonial disengagement, had a limited view of independence as freedom from colonial rule and racism.”⁴⁹ No wonder notable African leaders, like Kwame Nkrumah, professed the assumption that freedom from colonial rule (that is, political kingdom) would bring with it, almost immediately, the solution to all of African problems. But today, neither a political kingdom nor economic and social development is feasible.

Furthermore, to strengthen the argument that the genesis of the African problem lies mainly in the inadequacy of the colonial state and its institutions for the tasks of post-colonial development, it is imperative to introduce one primary consideration – the decisions and actions of the African leaders immediately after independence. During the period of the struggle for independence, the African leaders spoke and acted “as if, given the opportunity to self-government, we would quickly create utopias in Africa, and peace throughout Africa.”⁵⁰ But they made a fundamental error at the inception of post-colonialism. According to Oladipo, “Rather than transform colonial institutions in a manner that would make them suitable for serving new needs and interests, they simply proceeded to use them, in many cases without significant changes in the means and methods used, to achieve the limited aims of colonial governance.”⁵¹ This has proved disastrous to the achievement of the task of post-colonial development in Africa.

Clearly enough, the crisis of post-colonial development in Africa is as a result of the inherited colonial institutions. Oladipo puts it clearly that the inherited colonial institutions have been inadequate for the achievement of the goals of post-colonial development. He gave the example that the colonial state and its institutions were quite adequate for the maintenance of law and order and for taking care of colonial needs and interests but that, at independence, they could not serve as vehicles of social and economic transformation. Thus, for Oladipo, this is why today the socio-economic condition under which Africans struggle to meet their needs and protect their interests is even worse than it was at independence in the 1960s.⁵²

What we have engaged in so far is an attempt to tell the story of the crisis of development in Africa. The substance of the story, however, is that “the historical background from which the advance to modernity began in Africa was not one that was supportive of...development.”⁵³Unfortunately though, much of what has been done in post-colonial times has been to consolidate this background rather than subvert it. It is against this backdrop that Oladipo said,

“all of Africa is now free from colonial rule and racism,” but “the African situation today is still largely a colonial situation.”⁵⁴ As a result, after such careful diagnosis of the African predicament, Oladipo strongly recommends social reconstruction as an efficient recipe for the African quandary.

However, a hermeneutical study of Oladipo’s theory of African development, which he summed up in his proposal for social reconstruction, reveals that the central thesis of social reconstruction is the strengthening of weak institutions. This is the logic with which this study advances its deduction of institutional development from Oladipo’s theory of development. In any case, what is immediately required at the moment is how to demonstrate that institutional development could be validly implied from social reconstruction.

This is the primary concern of the next section of this work.

5.4 Institutional Development as an Implication from Social Reconstruction