The West and the new Sexual Adjustment Program, By Olusegun Obasanjo
I
preface my commentary on the debate about gay rights with the
Structural Adjustment Programme to illustrate the West’s obsession with
the adjustment of African societies. While Africans are yet to recover
from the SAP-induced breakdown of values and social cohesion, the West
seems to be calling for yet another adjustment. This time it is social
(sexual) adjustment, not structural.
At the heart of the programme was the massive reduction in social expenditure of African governments. SAP ensured the removal of government subsidies in critical areas such as education, health, transport, and agriculture.
Constrained by their dependence on western aid funds and in some cases because of the financial gain to a few greedy individuals, most, if not all, African states adopted the Structural Adjustment Programme.
An immediate consequence was the disarticulation of African economies particularly the pulverisation and the
ruination of middle class values. At the peak of structural adjustment programmes in Africa, my friend, Professor Adebayo Adedeji, proposed what came to be known as the Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programmes for Socioeconomic Recovery and Transformation (AAF-SAP).
In his capacity as the then Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Professor Adedeji convened a meeting of all heads of states and governments in Africa where he made an impressive presentation on AAF-SAP as the viable alternative to SAP, which was becoming increasingly infamous as a Draconian initiative.
Sometime after the meeting, Professor Adedeji told me that in subsequent meetings, some of the African leaders stated clearly that they preferred AAF-SAP to the somewhat asphyxiating SAP agenda. Nonetheless they claimed that they would not embrace AAF-SAP because there was Prono money behind it, whereas SAP had some money backing it! Incredible as it might sound, that was it.
In time, most African countries capitulated and struggled to outdo each other in the implementation of SAP. The consequences of that gambit still remain with us, particularly in the area of social disarticulation. For the African masses, especially the middle class, SAP was nothing but a disaster.
I preface my commentary on the debate about gay rights with the Structural Adjustment Programme to illustrate the West’s obsession with the adjustment of African societies. While Africans are yet to recover from the SAP-induced breakdown of values and social cohesion, the West seems to be calling for yet another adjustment. This time it is social (sexual) adjustment, not structural.
In promoting their gay rights agenda, the west began by prodding African elites to accept homosexuality, arguing that it is a fundamental human right for adults to engage in sexual behavior that pleases them. This prodding yielded little results. Our reaction was muted at best. Sensing our near lukewarm attitude towards the issue, Western agents began to make gay rights a proposal to African leaders. This too failed.
Sources: National Mirror Newspapers
Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Kevin Djakpor's Blog.
