Foundations of the American Century

by Inderjeet Parmar

  Ojetunji Aboyade (himself a Cambridge Ph.D.) noted the Anglocentrism of the political and academic elite that dominated Nigeria after independence.87 He also charged that elite with causing the ills of Nigeria—“the traumatic civil war, the total lack of commitment, dedication and patriotism on the part of the general populace, the false sense of values and the almost total neglect of a search for authentic Nigerian scholarship.”88 The implantation of Western values in Nigeria created an influential neocolonial mindset inimical to the interests of a newly independent nation, permitting the “continued exploitation of our human and material resources by the new form of imperialist international arrangements.”89

  The University of Ibadan, founded in 1948 as a college of the University of London, had its first Nigerian vice chancellor, Kenneth O. Dike, in 1960. An anthropologist, Dike had taught at Northwestern University and therefore associated with the founding lights of the African Studies Association, and he had been one of three Nigerian members of the Ashby Commission. It was under Dike’s leadership that Ibadan established “close rapport with government and… high policy-making circles.”90 That process owed much to American foundations’ preoccupation with encouraging Nigerian universities to act as manpower creators for development. As Adeleye notes, funding from international sources (Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie, as well as UNESCO and the World Health Organization) occurred on a vast scale—for capital projects, new faculties and departments, postgraduate training, and visiting professors.91 It was only massive American foundation funding, which Dike so assiduously pursued, that “made the rapid expansion… possible at Ibadan.”92 The problem was that associating with the Nigerian “power elite,” which was riven by ethnic political party competition and rivalries, politicized Ibadan’s own faculty, hardening ethnic consciousness when appointments and promotions were made, insinuating—rightly or wrongly—that ethnicity had been the reason for appointment rather than merit. The corrupt party politics of independent Nigeria—the seeds of which were planted in the late-colonial era and then nourished with external aid after independence—mired Nigeria’s premier university in the brutal politics that led to civil war. Many Ibadan academics were involved in the secessionist movement that directly led to the outbreak of the civil war in 1967.93

  Between 1958 and 1973, Ford granted $4.75 million to Ibadan for a wide range of specific and general projects including, uniquely, a General Development Grant of almost $3 million.94 Although smaller than the Rockefeller Foundation grants totaling almost $9 million, the decision to invest in Ibadan’s goal of becoming the premier university in West Africa was made by the two American foundations, without any consultation with the Nigerian government. Thus, Ibadan’s goals conflicted with the increasingly regional character of Nigerian politics and brought opposition from the country’s president, Nnamdi Zikiwe. Once again, American foundations acted in a manner that did not fully appreciate national-regional ethnopolitical dynamics, drawing criticism from academics appointed to evaluate their grants to Ibadan.95 Nonetheless, by 1973, Ibadan was a mixture of British, American, and Nigerian in terms of its identity and was a lot more integrated into the Western Region of the country.

  From the mid-1960s, the programs funded at Ibadan by the Ford Foundation included economic planning–capacity building at the Nigerian Institute of Economic and Social Research, an Institute of African Studies, and a Behavioral Sciences Research Unit. The latter, for example, was considered essential as part of studying the “psychological reactions of the African populations… in the light of rapid social and cultural changes.”96 Specific research projects included Nigerian students’ attitudes, criminal homicides, ecology of criminal delinquency, and family and social-class dynamics.97 In addition, the unit trained anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and social workers in understanding and dealing with processes of integration and disintegration in rural villages, as well as “the problems of adaptation and motivation among industrial workers.”98 Rapidly changing societies like Nigeria were increasingly prone to social breakdown—increasing numbers of psychiatric patients, prostitution, juvenile delinquency, drug addiction. All such outcomes led to a drain on human resources; studying the causes of breakdown and means of adapting individuals and communities to change were considered central “to the question of achieving orderly social and economic development.” Failure to study such matters scientifically also means that development resources are often wasted, as the reactions of people in villages who are targets of development programs are little understood or engender “popular resistance to the changes involved,” impeding industrial “takeoff.” The “extreme conservatism” of rural farm workers slows economic development in agriculture and limits the conditions for industrialization. It was considered vital that work be done to understand how to engineer a “change in attitude” among rural populations, particularly the youth, “in order to allow them to contribute to the evolution of a new socio-economic structure.”99 The author of the document—a grant application to Ford—was Professor Tom Lambo, a Nigerian connected with Northwestern University. There are certainly echoes of the kind of studies commended by Project Camelot under the sponsorship of leading American Africanists, including Northwestern’s Gwendolen Carter.

  CC and Ford were, of course, also interested in economic development and planning. Ford-funded planning, however, was not quite social democratic or European leftist planning, let alone in any sense socialistic. Planning under Ford’s auspices was principally oriented toward the creation of a strong market economy that was open to international trade, finance, and investment and to accepting voluminous foreign aid from the West in general and from the United States in particular.100 Labeled a “unique nation” in Africa, Nigeria was earmarked by Arnold Rivkin, the director of MIT’s Project on African Economic and Political Development, and, more significantly, the Kennedy administration to be an economically strong and politically stable ally of the West, integrated into the global capitalist order. According to Rivkin, Nigeria was committed to “a pluralistic and democratic internal structure and system which gives priority to economic development as a means of building internal political cohesion.”101 Hence, the Kennedy administration pledged $225 million to aid the plan even before it was approved by the Nigerian federal and regional governments. In his report to President Kennedy, Rivkin, who had headed up the special mission to Nigeria in May 1961, noted that Nigeria’s plan would be well conceived and pervaded with a “sense of social justice.”102

  The “moderate,” i.e., generally pro-Western and Pro-British, Nigerian political elite, which had formed with reluctant British colonial support and encouragement and under conditions of widespread anticommunism in the public and private sectors, was the principal ally of the United States and Britain.103 It was that “new Nigerian elite” that was to benefit most from independence and trade, investment opportunities, government contracts, and aid that followed.104 “Moderately” nationalistic but pro-Western and corrupt, this new elite signed technical, aid, and defense pacts with Britain; took a cool line with the Soviet bloc; and legislated against the employment of known “communists” in the Nigerian civil service, despite the shortage of educated and trained manpower in the country and the consequent over-reliance on foreign advisers and consultants.105 Yet it was this class that was to ensure that the benefits of a market economy be spread to “a growing segment of Nigerian society,” as Rivkin argued.106

  One key adviser was Wolfgang Stolper, a German-born American economist trained under Joseph Alois Schumpeter, an associate of Rivkin’s center on Africa at MIT, and proudly known as a “Mason boy,” after his long association with founder of Harvard’s Development Advisory Service, Edward Mason.107 Stolper was funded by the Ford Foundation, seconded to the Ministry of Economic Development as head of its Economic Planning Unit, and tasked to draw up Nigeria’s First National Economic Plan. Stolper, with more than a hint of imperial hubris, admitted he knew nothing about Nigeria or Africa but note
d that one could have too much knowledge and experience. Indeed, he felt that “breadth of experience is a much overrated commodity… as much a source of error as of wisdom.”108 As he notes in his rather candid diary of the nearly one and a half years he spent in Nigeria, he had nothing to prove in that country: his reputation as an economist was secure, thanks to his work during the decade leading up to 1960, which had focused on the economy of East Germany; his main claim to fame was his co-authorship, with the Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson, of the Stolper-Samuelson theorem. Celebrating his ignorance of Africa and Nigeria, he authored the book Planning Without Facts, in which he tells the official story of his ideas and role in Nigeria. Sober, rational, disinterested, and scientifically rigorous as his case in Planning Without Facts reads, the diary of his African adventure somewhat undermines his claims to objectivity and rationality. The diary’s extensive character and its candid entries outlining his racist stereotyping of Nigerians also challenge his claims to be working unearthly hours to write up “his” plan for Nigeria while combating all kinds of unreasonable opposition and enduring widespread laziness among support staff.109

  Ultimately, the benefits to Nigeria of Stolper’s economic plan are ambiguous if not elusive. According to Aboyade, Nigeria’s postindependence rates of growth were poorer than they might have been had there been improvements in economic organization and rationalization. Social and income inequality had also reached dire proportions.110 Aboyade was also certain that the Nigerian government had made an error in not inviting Nigerian economists to develop the plan, especially as they chose American economists—Stolper and Lyle Hansen—with no experience in national planning to draw upon.111 Despite this, Stolper (and, to a lesser extent, Hansen, who had served Harvard’s DAS in Pakistan) “provided the basic intellectual framework of the Plan,” generating “tremendous heat” in Nigeria.112

  To Stolper, freedom of the individual was fundamental to a successful economy. In addition, “the only valid investment criterion is economic profitability.” Elaborating on this, he argued that economic profitability was a generally applicable principle; anyone who wanted to consider “social” aspects in investment criteria was guilty of “manifest economic nonsense.”113 Stolper favored short-term benefit over long-term investment, free movement of capital, unhindered repatriation of profits by foreign corporations, and complete opposition to nationalization. Despite this, his self-image—as expressed in his private diary—was as a “nation builder,” the inventor of its future, and a member of the Nigerian civil service.114 Despite his constant criticisms of corruption among the political and business elite, he fully accepted that it was possible for corrupt ministers, such as Festus, the minister of finance, to be “patriotic” servants of their country.115 In effect, Stolper (along with Ford and the U.S. State Department) was willing for political reasons to accept the corruption of the Nigerian political elite so long as the country remained anticommunist, pro-American, and open for business. And the colonial-era, British-educated elite—academic and political—was happy to cooperate.116

  According to the Ibadan University economist Ojetunji Aboyade, Stolper’s plan was ill suited to the needs of Nigeria and was at heart a neoliberal project that fetishized the market mechanism, profit maximization, and an export-oriented economy. He also criticized Stolper for not having drawn up anything approaching a plan—which implies a reasonable degree of state ownership and control—because he proposed privatization at every turn. Stolper was opposed to the state in general and had a technocratic, elitist mentality. Stolper also falsely believed that Nigeria’s comparative advantage in primary commodity exports would, eventually, allow it to “develop” a strong economy; instead, the dependence to an extraordinary degree of commodities on the world market meant inherent economic instability and insecurity for the country’s mainly agricultural population.117

  Aboyade’s critique of Stolper extended to the Nigerian federal government, which Aboyade believed lacked courage and conviction, let alone social mission and conscience. The plan, he noted, had “no soul,” no underlying philosophy worthy of national sacrifices. The plan was to achieve and maintain the growth of the highest possible living standards, without defining precisely what that meant in practice or how that might be achieved. In the long run, according to the plan, the Nigerian economy was to achieve Rostowian “takeoff” by 1980; i.e., it would no longer be reliant on aid in the form of foreign loans.118

  Obliquely, Aboyade’s critique is quite progressive, even though he is caught up in a contradictory position. As a relatively progressive nationalist, he wants to promote growth, social justice, and national development for improving living standards. He supports a strong role for the state in that process. He even led the Economic Planning Unit, once the plan was in place; taught at Ibadan University’s economics department; and helped nurture a national elite. Yet the political elite of which he was critical was developed and nurtured by British colonials and supported by American aid. Its nationalism was always skewed toward reliance on the West for defense, trade, ideology, and legitimacy. The elite’s anticommunism meant shying away from authentic social and economic planning, state ownership, and strong regulation of currency and capital flows. The elite’s widely acknowledged corruption, which encompassed the channeling of funds toward personal and ethnic-group gain, thus fueling ethnic tensions and rivalries, made what planning there occurred even more unlikely to yield tangible results for Nigeria’s people. In short, Aboyade was expecting a pipe dream: a corrupt, foreign-oriented elite that would develop Nigeria for the Nigerians. Indeed, he notes his disappointment that “an opportunist political party game to consolidate economic class interests” had stunted “progressive dynamic leadership.” Power in Nigeria, inefficient as it was, operated merely to distribute the economic spoils to “political insiders.” Foreign economists and others—and here he is referring to the likes of Stolper, Rivkin, Ford, USAID, and the World Bank—play upon Nigerian leaders’ vanities by lauding the country as “a giant with considerable stabilizing force in the turbulent politics of Africa,” when a giant can just as easily be “a congenital idiot.”119 Yet Nigeria’s leaders were hailed as effective, nonideological “pragmatists,” fertile ground for American economists who claimed to eschew ideology for rational, nonideological, theory-free thought. Aboyade was caught in a trap: he worked at an institution heavily reliant on American foundation funding, for a state that was completely open to the West, and with a political elite that was content to act as an intermediary between foreign powers and corporations and economic opportunities in Nigeria.120 He was unable successfully to challenge the dominant order, even though his ideas were plainly social democratic rather than owing anything to Marxism. Indeed, his participation might be seen as legitimizing that very order; he is therefore an example of incorporation into the Establishment. As Stolper noted in his diary, newly educated Nigerians were “captured by the system [and] likely to become part of the Establishment.”121

  Wayne Nafziger’s excellent and thorough analysis of Nigeria’s slide into civil war places the blame squarely with an ethnic “settlement” at independence that was dominated by self-interested elites whose main aim was to maintain a system of spoils from which they benefitted most and who had no interest in poverty alleviation or general prosperity.122 In effect, the Nigerian elite fostered by the British colonialists for postindependence rule and lauded by Emerson, Pifer, Rivkin, and Stolper was the heart of the problem that led to the coups d’état of 1966 and the bloody civil war of 1967–1970. American authorities had noted as early as 1951 that many Nigerian elites were so ambitious for “political prestige and monetary gain” that they could be controlled by appointment to high office and the powers of patronage that afforded.123 Indeed, Rivkin informed the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in 1961 that Nigeria “is a society very responsive to economic incentives.”124 It was that system that Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie operated within and therefore legitimized when they continue
d to invest funds, despite their knowledge of widespread corruption and political opportunism—and furthermore by promoting Nigeria as “an oasis of rationality in a sea of unreason,” as Stolper wrote in his diary.125 Of course, the Nigerian elite was favored because it was anticommunist and open for business: despite “independence,” almost 92 percent of Nigeria’s exports were primary products in 1965, and almost all its trade was with the capitalist West, while foreign banks and businesses benefitted disproportionately from the relaxed investment and tax regime. The Nigerian political class benefitted from “rake-offs,” as Nafziger notes.126 The political class with which Ford et al. did business was, according to Sklar, “the primary force that creates economic opportunity and determines the pattern of social stratification,” a process well recognized by Stolper’s diary notes on the subject.127 The Nigerian political class—and Ford—backed Stolper because their economic preferences for Nigeria served well the interests of the business-oriented political elite and aligned with the “private enterprise” and anti–income redistribution preferences of Stolper’s economic philosophy.128