My grandfather was the head of masquerades in Ivianokpodi of Agenebode, Etsako East, in Edo State. He was a happy man. He spoke English, and I often wondered how he learned the language, especially as he never travelled out of Nigeria—or so he said. But I beg to differ; I think his denial was born out of his disdain for the British.
I was his favourite grandchild. He adored me, and if my memory is still intact, he gave me my name; he said I reminded him of his mother.....quite cliché.
He was an averagely rich man. He had two wives and a handful of helpers: gardeners who were also security, and cooks who also cleaned. They weren't paid in cash, but in kind: a roof over their heads and a meal for adequate nourishment.
I read a couple of history texts about colonialism and slavery a while back, and I was struck by the tumultuous pain my ancestors had to endure at the hands of their brothers and the white man. But even more, I realised that slavery didn't start with the white man.
What is slavery?
Objectively, it is an institution or social practice of owning human beings as property, especially for use as forced labourers. Which is accurate in every sense, but I, however, have a quite nuanced definition.
Personally, slavery is a state of choicelessness. It is a condition in which one is left without a choice but survival.
Who started slavery?
Long before foreign invasion, the elite practised the act of owning humans as property. In pre-colonial Nigeria, status was often measured by the amount of livestock, land, and food one possessed. These assets placed an individual on a pedestal in society and thus handed them the privilege of having fellow humans of lesser social standing tend to them.
In African magic-epic movies, where actors replicate the systems that existed before colonial rule, we see maids tending to kings, queens, and their offspring. A vivid mental picture is that of a king deliberating on governance matters with his chief while a male servant swings a hand fan made from plant stalks back and forth.
While these aren't necessarily cases of the inhumane treatment associated with the transatlantic slave trade, they nevertheless do not defeat the underlying propelling factor of servitude: choicelessness. A person may be treated well and still exist within a system in which their circumstances leave them little or no choice but to serve.
And in modern-day Nigeria, it is imperative to highlight that this system has evolved into a refined form of slavery. While individuals are not literally battered and forced to work in fields, they are paid less for more work. The minimum wage set by the government is hardly substantial, especially in comparison with the volatile economy. A person may technically be free to leave a job, refuse an exploitative wage, or walk away from an abusive arrangement. But what happens when leaving means losing the only source of food, rent, school fees, or medicine?
One might argue that this is a global problem, but that would be a false equivalence. The lived reality of the average Nigerian is deeply bound to a cycle where survival dictates every choice. There is technically a choice, but what kind of choice is it when the alternative is hunger, homelessness, or the inability to provide for one's family?
Consequently, the desire to escape cuts deep, resembling the obsession with escapism often found among those who lived /live under oppressive systems.
It is psychological; from the top down, it is imbibed in each of us. The businessman is a slave to government policies, just as the sales boy is a slave to his oga.
The government worker is a slave to a system that may not adequately reward his labour. The graduate is a slave to the desperation of finding employment. The employee is a slave to the salary he cannot afford to lose, even when it is insufficient to live on.
And this is why I think of my grandfather.
He had people who worked for him. He had status. He had the privilege of having others tend to his needs. Yet, he also belonged to a generation that lived through the consequences of colonialism and carried its own resentment towards the British.
He could be both a man who inherited the wounds of oppression and a man who participated, however ordinarily, in a system where other people depended on him for their livelihood.
The story of slavery is not simply the story of the white man and the African. It is also the story of how humans have always found ways to place one another above and beneath themselves. The white man did not invent the desire to dominate. But he built an enormous system around it, profited from it, and left behind structures whose consequences we still live with.
We have, in one way or the other, exploited the choicelessness of another from a place of privilege. And this brings me to my third and final question