BOB MARLEY’S DAY: THE CONCEPT OF ONE LOVE AS A TOOL FOR NATION BUILDING IN AFRICA 

Introduction

It is over Forty years ago, on the 11th of May 1981, that Bob Marley passed on to the great beyond after a serious battle with cancer, in the United States of America.

Marley left a huge and tremendous legacies for our contemporary World that has to stay. One of such legacies is the idea and concept of One Love drawn from the larger framework of Pan Africanism, a Philosophy and Nationalist Movement that originated in America which espouses the Aggregate Unity of all Africans irrespective of their race, ethnicity, creed and religion.

Furthermore, the One Love Concept believes in the idea of a common brotherhood of men devoid of racial and religious coloration. It emphasis the idea of a collective unity of the ruling political elites, a reconciliation of factional and bipartisan politics that breeds Political violence and destruction of human lives.

Pan Africanism as a Philosophy and Movement was rooted in antebellum of black slavery in the New World and the need to forge a common black brotherhood that unites all Africans in the diaspora and Africa. The Pan Africanist movement identified a common challenge that all Africans faced both in the diaspora and Africa. In both worlds, in America and Africa, the common challenge of the African was that of institutionalized racism through the recycling of slavery in America rooted in Jim crow laws. On the continent of Africa, colonialism was an institutionalized system of slavery that justified the ruthless exploitation of Africa’s human and material resources. Colonialism created an unparalleled world of inequality and injustice that was rooted in the Institutional framework that defined the African as a sub human creation.

Therefore, in the New World Society and Africa, the Pan Africanist political agenda was the emancipation and liberation of all Africans from the vestiges of racial slavery and the impoverishment of the African. The movement sought for justice and the equality of Africans as first class citizens of the world with equal access to development and material happiness just like the European races that impoverished Africans through slavery and colonialism.

We need a background of the political situation in Jamaica before 1978 to understand and appreciate the idea of the One Love Peace Concert. The background will also enable us understand the role that the One Love Idea can contribute to Nation Building in Africa.

One Love Concert 

On the eve of the One Love Peace Concert, Jamaica like other nations of the Caribbean withnesed and experienced political violence and extremism that was fueled by factional politics and political warlords. Jamaica was divided into factional political groups led by Edward Seaga and Michael Stanley. Factional politics precipitated gun battles and violent extremism that was gradually pushing the Jamaican nation to war. While the nation remained divided and balkanized, the political elites took advantage of the disunity of the masses and the people to loot and enrich themselves. A factionalized and balkanized Jamaica gave the ruling political elites the advantage to loot and piffer the wealth of the nation.

This scenario of divided nation caused by partisan and factional politics is much similar to the political challenge of African nations in our contemporary times, most especially in Nigeria. Violent political extremism has been the bane of wars on the African continent that often divides both the political elites and the people. There is the examples of the two Congos where factional politics has frequently degenerated to a situation of war. 

Bob Marley was invited to stage the One Love Peace Concert as a Musical Political Strategy to reconcile the warring factions in Jamaican politics. Reggae Music and the Rastafarian ideology were to be deployed by Bob Marley as  tools for national reconciliation and healing of the Jamaican nation.

On the eve of the concert, there was an attempted gun assassination on Bob Marley and his team at his residence in Kingston Jamaica. Marley fled for safety and took political refuge in England in London and partly in the United States.

Bob Marley was shocked and traumatized by the fact that his own black African brothers wanted to assassinate him. The political asylum ended with the return of Bob Marley to Jamaica and the staging of the One Love Peace Concert in Kingston Jamaica. In a well televised musical concert, Bob Marley symbolically held the hands of two political rivals, Edward Seaga and Michael Stanley over his head as a gesture of peace, reconciliation and the unification of the Jamaican nation.

One Love as Nation Building Panacea 

The One Love Peace Concert became symbolic in that Reggae Music and the Rastafarian faith were important critical vehicle’s in the process of Nation Building. Africa and Nigeria in particular is plagued by factional politics and political warlords who threaten the peace and mutual coexistence. We earlier pointed out how factional politics has led to numerous wars and conflicts in Africa.

Colonialism imposed the idea and practice of Elite Politics on the African. Since then, Africa has remained a divided continent where Politics is often divided along ethnic and religious lines. Ethnicity and politics have been the biggest vehicles that has mobilized Africas factional politics thus leading to violent conflicts. Kwame Nkrumah, one of the exponents of Pan Africanism in his book, Neo Colonialism : The Highest Stage of Western Imperialism blamed elite politics for the violent conflicts in Africa that has kept Africa divided and backyard.

First, Elite Politics divided the African political class into factions and political camps that are antagonistic to each other in the quest to wrestle power and control of state resources. Secondly, the Neo Situation divided the African ruling class into civilian and Military. Western Imperialism through Coups and Counter Coups created the Military Political Class that have been used to truncate populist regimes in Africa, in some cases leading to war.

Since the Independence of African countries from the late  1950s, Africa has witnessed over thirty Military coups and military interventions in politics. In Congo, Mobutu Sesoseko became an easy tool in the hands of the Western Imperial nations that toppled and killed  Patrice Lumumba. In Ghana, General Achempong overthrew the government of Kwame Nkrumah.  In almost all African countries, the West used military coups that cut short revolutionary African leaders with a Pan Africanist political agenda that was designed to unify the African continent.

In Nigeria, one of the biggest obstacles to the process of Nation Building has been the Colonial Heritage that has defined and divided the nation under a tripartite system of Northern Region, Eastern Region and Western Regions. The centrifugal and centripetal forces that interfaces in the politics of the Nigerian nation, which mobilizes the nation along ethnic and religious lines has been the cornerstone of violent politics and conflicts in Nigeria.The contradictions of the tripartite system exacerbated by the contractions of centripetal and centrifugal forces led to the Nigerian Civil War.

Furthermore, elite Politics in Nigeria has often deployed the vehicle of ethnicity and religion to divide and rule the Nigerian people. Since independence in the 1960s politics and ideology in Nigeria rotates around the themes of ethnicity and religion. Political Parties and Membership recruitment hardly transcends ethnic and religious lines. Equally, the rotation and sharing national resources and power rotates around the premise of the tripartite system. This background has been more visible in the First and Second Republics of 1960 to 65 and 1979 to 1983. It was this kind of elite politics; factional and primordial that led to the annulment of the June 12 Presidential elections of 1992.

In our contemporary Nigeria, we have seen the worst vestiges of the politics of divide and rule that mobilizes the Youths as a Cannon Fodder for violent extremism. In contemporary Nigeria, there are two major political parties along side with other parties. The two major political parties are the All Progressive Congress and the People’s Democratic Party. 

Elite Politics has created factional leaders and political warlords in and outside of the two political parties. Internal Democracy within the two major political parties is often balkanized and divided. The party primaries of each of the political parties often leads to the emergence of more warring factions and warlords each masquerading on the political landscape with followers prepared and equiped to fight each other, kill and to destroy. 

Elitism has created a godfather and godson political trajectory that has further exacerbated factional political extremism. The Patron – Client relations, what defines political recruitment and participation in Nigeria, has been used and exploited in a negative sense as a tool and vehicle for all forms of violent extremism. 

The Political Elites in Nigeria, inorder to hold on to power and sustain relevance, has created Militant and Irredentist Movements such as the Boko Haram, the Niger Delta Militants, IPOB and ethnic militia groups jostling for the control of spaces across the Nigerian political landscape.

The political situation in contemporary Nigeria is not that different from that of Jamaica in the 1970s. Nigeria’s political history has a comparative analogy with that of the Latin American countries where political participation and mobilization rotates around warlords and political personalities. 

Since 1999 , Nigeria has been a theater of some of most violent political extremism in Africa. This is evident in the Boko Haram Conflict in the North East of Nigeria, the Fuani Herdsmen Militia Groups in North Central Nigeria, the Movement for the Sovereign State of Biafara in the South East.

The One Love Solution

Is there a likely hood that Reggae Music through the ideological framework of One Love Peace Movement can reconcile the warring Nigerian political elites, unify our political leaders and heal the nation of political violence and killings? 

How can our generation, as we celebrate Bob Marley, mobilize and deploy his legacies to find lasting political and material peace in Nigeria’s fractured and fragile Society, where there is mass poverty and deep helplessness. 

Statistics from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund indicates that Nigeria is experiencing a fast growth rate. However the question is what is happening to economic development. All indices still suggest that over Sixty Percent of the Nigerian People are living below the poverty line. Despite the numerous social intervention Progrmmes of the Federal Government in fighting poverty and Youth unemployment in the country, unemployment is still as high as forty percent. Inflation which stands at over thirty percent with banks commercial rates that are high, have all combined to make life a nightmare in Nigeria. The Federal Government through monetary and fiscal policies has tried in the stabilization of the naira, yet galloping inflation and exchange rates still have made staple foods such as bread beyond the reach of the masses 

Conclusion

How long shall we continue to allow our political elites to divide and exploit us while the common man sinks and is being swallowed by the bottomless pit of poverty on a daily basis. The celebration of a Bob Marley’s Day this year, 2024, is a call to deep sober reflection on the divisive and destructive impact of elite politics on Nigeria. Let us remember that Bob Marley says:

“Them full but We Hungry

A Hungry Man is an Angry Man”

Let us not forget that Bob Marley looking at the political elites also says:

“They don’t want to see us unite. 

All they want us to do is, keep fussing and fighting.”

It is ordinary people like you and I that we fight and kill ourselves everyday. The political elites will always provide the guns and ammunition but they will never do the dirty job of fighting on the streets or in the villages. We are the Cannon Fodder that feeds and fuels their partisan, factional and self centered Political Wars 

What is the hope of Africa in our contemporary global World? Africa remains the most backward of the continents of the world. The entire Gross Domestic Product of Africa still stands at six percent and cannot compete with that of the State of California in the United States. 

Africa since the Colonial Age has been the major source of the export of all mineral resources to the West. Africa is the center stage of human capital migrations as as high way of human trafficking to the West. 

I do not intend to paint a gloomy picture of the African Situation, but rather to use it as a wake up call for Africans to think and reason. 

Leadership still remains our challenge, but we can fix it through a Renaissance of a Pan Africanist thinning and reasoning. It appears that Africa has forgotten her history; that our history has been relegated to the backwaters of global history and development. One may ask, who and what is responsible for the loss of history or the systematic demensia that Africa suffers from.

Let’s not Forget that Bob Marley what Marley will say:

“One Love, Let’s Get together and Feel Alright “

Africa must unite beyond racial, ethnic and religious lines. The imperial religion of the West and the Middle East have so long divided us. Ethnicity is a social label. The common denominator and tribal marks that all ethnic groups in Africa have and share, is poverty. Poverty is man made. It is the product of elite politics, it is not creation of God. 

“Africa Unite

Cos we moving out of Babylon

And we are going to our Fathers land.”

In Benue State, let us stage a One Love Peace Concert that will Unite all our political leaders and elites. Let us stage a Peace Concert where all of our past Governors together with the National Political Class will dance together and hold hands together. Let there be a Peace Concert that will Unite herdersmen and farmers. Let us have a One Love Peace Concert that will tear down the walls of hate and prejudice in the minds of our ruling political class. Let us have a One Love Peace Concert that will heal the wounds of poverty and injustice in the minds of the ordinary people.

One Love and Jah Bless

Uji, Wilfred Terlumun Department of History and International Studies Federal University of Lafia