The old man and UNGA

Early last Wednesday morning, a friend and I walked past an old man splitting firewood in Gandun Albasa, Kano, letting out a subdued groan as the axe fell on the logs. I could see, he was hardly making any difference on the log. I felt such terror coursing through my veins like hot lava, and not because I had never seen a sorrier sight, this was different because I could see myself in that old man. I am going to be an old man myself; that is if I even make it that far. 

Was the poor old man a victim of his own wrong decisions while growing up, or was he only a victim of circumstances that could be blamed on the whole community, a whole country or a whole world? 

In Hausa culture, as in many, if not all cultures of the world, children are expected to take care of their parents in old age. Social safety nets are being formalised in other parts of the world through pensions and geriatric care by way of nursing homes so that people do not have to worry about their welfare when old and spent. 

The old man was not making an immediately visible difference at his task, but there was evidence around him that he was in fact getting the job done – even if painfully slow. There were at least a few truckloads of raw wood waiting to be processed, even though I judged that this could not possibly be by the old man alone.

I was in Sokoto a few weeks back and was both pleased and reserved to find out that a friend had become a big-time charcoal dealer. He told me that charcoal was the next big thing – as kerosene has almost completely been eliminated as an important source of energy in Nigerian households. 

Chances are that, unlike the poor old man, I would be comfortable economically in my old age – but the ecological health of the world would also have deteriorated so badly by then that any material comfort might be nullified by that. 

As part of the 78th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) still in session then, a midterm review of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will take place. Implementation has been abysmal across board because complex local contexts are not properly in the picture. The old man, and most Nigerians like him, would very likely scoff at the idea that they might be sentencing their own children and grandchildren to a worse fate. The idea of climate change will not even compute in the collective consciousness of our people even though the resultant ills are clear and are becoming terminal. And this is not because we are just too stupid or malevolent to understand. 

Lake Chad is only about 20 per cent of its former glory because of climate change, and the result is Boko Haram. More and more farmlands are becoming useless for agriculture, more and more pastoral water sources are drying up because of climate change, and the result is the murderous frenzies in the Middle Belt and the North West. The more charcoal produced, the more trees that must have been felled. That translates into more desertification and the exacerbation of what is already on the ground. But fact remains that we have to eat first to understand any of that. 

Sustainable development is a notion, a movement and an approach which has developed into a global wave of concern, study, political mobilisation and organisation around the twin issue of environmental protection and economic development. The approach embodies the notion and ideal of a development process that is equitable and socially responsive, recognising the extensive nature of poverty, derivation and inequality between and within nations, classes and communities. It also seriously advocates that the world be seen as one ecosystem and that the economic development process should include ecological and environmental issues as an essential component. But where is the old man in this picture? 

The old man may have children who just didn’t care, but it is even more likely that he did have children who actually cared but were themselves out there in the cold.

But the problem is not just the economic shock therapies of the President Bola Tinubu administration, but the structural inadequacies of developmental approaches that are not sustainable. His children are probably out there with families of their own to fend for. If they have jobs, they are making do with the starvation wages offered. They are out there with no productive skills they can leverage for a dignified existence and the cause is as much because we lack capable and visionary leadership as it is because there are just aren’t enough resources to go round. 

If there is a country with an excuse for poverty it is Japan. They have absolutely nothing in terms of resources but after the country was forcibly opened to the world by America’s gunboat diplomacy in the 1800s. Japan invested in its people and a phenomenal knowledge-value leap made them strong enough to defeat the Russian Empire in 1903, and strong enough to militarily bully America at the beginning of WWII. They were also able to rise back up also after suffering two nuclear bombs at the end of the war. 

The problem Japan faces going into the future is not competent and benevolent leadership but that of a population collapse–and the reason is because they are running out of resources to sustain their population. This means that at the end of the day, it will not come down to just leadership, but “sustainable” development. 

In the backdrop of the 78th session of UNGA, the old man is actually a metaphor for the life of a Nigerian. A vast proportion of Nigerians also have no choice but to turn to firewood and charcoal for energy. But in doing so we perpetuate the vicious cycle of poverty and want. 

Looking at where the old man stood in the big picture reminded me of late Kofi Awoonor’s poem, “Songs of Sorrow”: 

“Something has happened to me 

The things so great I cannot weep, 

I have no sons to fire the gun when I die

And no daughter to wail when I close my mouth” 

Old age is itself a type of death. I was so terrified at the sight of the poor old man because I saw myself in him. If I am so blessed, I will become an old man too, an old man who would have killed off the sons he wished would fire the gun after he dies.