Bukola,
The
Americans have just celebrated fifty years of visiting the moon. I can only
imagine what the euphoria was like when the first man was catapulted into that
alien space in search of another life there, or to find out if there were other
governments, or if God lived there with his angels. This moon affair no doubt
consolidated America’s influence on the global stage at a time when she was
keeping malice with Russia after an international divorce nicknamed the Cold
War.
Russia,
like a jilted ex-wife trying to prove to her runaway husband that she was
better and stronger alone than in that abusive marriage, also launched herself
into that alien space first desecrated by America’s lack of respect for
anything mysterious (yes, because while many people worshipped the moon and
never contemplated what was in the orbit of their god, the only way the Americans
could worship it was by first reducing its mystery). Was it not John Donne who
asked God to rape him so that he could be chaste?
But
it is not the bickering between America and Russia that interests me in this
moon affair. It was the declaration made by America about the ownership of the moon
that baffles me. In America’s unique magnanimity, like a father who brags about
his sacrifices for his children, they declared that the moon belongs to
everyone on earth and that whatever resources is found there will be used for
the development of mankind. Don’t you just admire the American generosity? Their
propensity to share the resources found in the moon with people of distant
lands like my grandmother in far off Imbise is very staggering.
But
what America didn’t say and didn’t need to say was that whoever has the power
to reach the moon owns the moon. So if the Americans had found something in the
moon who would have asked her to share it equitably? Would it have been like the
Nigerian federal allocation style where all nations would travel to America to
collect their monthly allocation of the moon wealth?
Bukola,
I am worried. Not worried about the Americans now, but for Nigeria in the next
50 years if we survive as a nation. I am worried because while the world is
busy ensuring that all children learn to code so that the future would not be
determined by this form of American generosity, we are talking about Fulani
herdsmen and Ruga settlements. I feel sad. Sad because while J.F Kennedy
conjured up the vision of landing in the moon with that famous inaugural speech
of his and backed by action, we have a president that cannot even pick his
ministers months after winning an election.
While
the world is coding, we are building mega-churches and mosques and forcing our
children to recite verses of the holy books. Don’t bring up the argument about science
without humanity, because religion cannot be equated to humanity.
With
our current run of backwardness, can Nigeria own the moon with America and
Russia in the next 50 years?
