By Dr. Efiong Edunam

Every land has its song but
Humanity has a large choir.
- Niyi Osundare

I am not as daring as Francis Fukuyama, the Japanese author who characterized the triumph of capitalism over communism in the 1990's as the end of history. But I am perceptive enough to note that Barack Obama's electoral challenge caused history to hold its breath. His subsequent success has reshaped the world to a degree that may take the whole of this century for us to really come to terms with all its ramifications. It is in this sense that I contend that the 21st Century, incontrovertibly, qualifies as the Obama Century. Hitherto, it was taking shape as the Asian Century. But Obama's advent has overshadowed that in the obvious sense that this success has brought remarkable racial redemption to all non-Caucasian peoples of the world. Obama who by himself represents a conflux of cultures has emerged with a promise, for the first time in history, of turning the different songs of every land on earth into a giant choir, a grand symphony which blends the different pitches, tones and tunes into a harmonious melody. It may well be that a new history of the world has begun, a new epoch when BC and AD may be replaced by BO (Before Obama) and AO (After Obama). So, where were you when history made this remarkable u-turn on the 4th of November, 2008?
Obama has confirmed that sometimes the fairest flowers grow on the foulest dung heap. Africans have for centuries been the foot mat of all other races through history. But his genius, his talent, his lexical dexterity, the hypnotic lyricism of his oratory, all promise to take the world on an unfamiliar journey of inspiration never seen since the founding years of the American nation state. His audacity, his convention-be-damned smile, the dizzy rapture of his accomplishment, the trade-marks of this fairy tale and postprandial surprise of 4th of November lighten the burden which curved the black man's back into an arc of despair and lifts him into the mutual admiration society of this unjust world. But it is not the only reason for the plausibility of suggesting that history is undergoing a makeover. There are many other pointers, such as the rise of the Asians, the radical redistribution of the world's wealth; the decline of religion, the advent of the Information Age; the decline of dictatorship; the progress of women; the triumph of consumerism, and the transformation of war. Those things and more had been happening imperceptibly before the end of the last century, generally below the radar. Bringing them together may help you have a feel of how much the world has changed.
You may recall that communism was conceived as the destination of the historical trajectory of industrial societies. Curiously, it tended to thrive more in underdeveloped agrarian and feudal societies. But as communism lost the war as a counterweight to capitalism, the Asian Tigers emerged from the vicious cycle of poverty to set the pace of modern economic development. China and India have adopted and adapted Western theories and capital to invent the new direction of guided-deregulation for the global economy. Their success may be measured by the fact that China is today, in a short span of 30 years, the fourth largest economy on planet earth. Its economy is now a threat to every other in the world. The contrast with Western economies paint an unmistakable chiaroscuro gleaned from a few illustrative realities. While America is indebted to the tune of ten trillion dollars and counting, China has a reserve of two trillion dollars. Moreover, China's defence budget is only dwarfed by that of the United States. Today, it is not a European nation that is seeking adventures in space but China (which has sent manned spacecraft into orbit) and India (whose unmanned probe has just landed and planted its flag on the moon). The East is now the manufacturer for the rest of the world. That explains why Toyota is overtaking General Motors in car sales even in the USA. That is one way in which history has been rewriting itself.
Furthermore, the dramatic rise in the price of oil in the last one year has completely transformed the balance of resources and, gradually, the balance of power in the world. Raising an alarm on this earlier this year in a joint article in the International Herald Tribune, Henry A. Kissinger (America's former Republican Secretary of State) and Martin Feldstein (an economic adviser to several Republican governments) warned: The tripling in the price of oil from $30 a barrel in 2001 to more than $100 today represents the largest transfer of wealth in human history. The 13 OPEC members alone are expected to earn more than $1 trillion.
Inevitably, this must bring with it major political consequences. Not the least significant aspect to this political and economic earthquake is that it is exacted from the world's most powerful nations by some of the world's weakest
Their fears were made worse by the fact that:
(a) a portion of the vast oil revenues was finding its way to radical Islamic groups to fund anti-Western terrorism;
(b) some reasonable proportions of these massive revenues were being recycled into sovereign wealth funds which OPEC nations in turn invest in the economies of developed nations. (Abu Dhabi alone is credited with $ 1 trillion of such investable funds highlighting the threat of buying up Prime American and European businesses).
(c) This trend in the long run may tempt such nations to hold the foreign policy of the industrialized world hostage and give them undue leverage in word decision-making.
With the retreat of the world economy into recession and the challenge to alter the world's financial architecture, the new found wealth of emerging economies has brought such nightmares forward for the West. The G20 meeting hosted by George Bush in the White House (Nov. 14 and 15, 2008) hasincluded China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. You may say the dreaded future is already here! A world in which new economic realities dictate who sits at the banquet table of world leadership; a world where British and American institutions look to the Middle East and the East for a bailout from their economic woes. That, my friend, is how, again, history is redefining itself in our life time.
In addition to the foregoing, there is a discernible, progressive decline in the influence of organized religion in world affairs. To be sure, there are still in existence Islamic theocratic societies around the world. There are also many countries that people regularly, as the American election has shown, credit religion with a degree of influence in their daily lives even where that means only a vague notion of God. There are societies like ours where religion has threatened to turn everyone into an insomniac through frequent tarry nights, solemn assemblies and crusades. In spite of these, however, it is difficult to mask the rapid decline of the influence of religion in world affairs starting with its perfunctory grasp of the hearts of men. Church congregations are drying up in America and Europe and increasingly church buildings are being converted to unholy uses like gymnasiums, supermarkets, residential quarters and tourism monuments. In France, Catholic seminaries are crying in vain for patronage by the young generation. They have been compelled to recruit priests from Africa. Economic prosperity, the giant strides of science, changing social values, it would seem, have conspired to subvert the centrality of religion in modern living. And where religion continues to matter much, it has adopted the agency of threats and force as in the Islamic sharia states to secure allegiance. And only a blind man may miss the reality that most people who claim strong religious fervour, probably, do so because it is socially expedient or politically correct. That deep penetration and genuine devotion now lie largely in the past. This explains why in our society with its army of deacons and deaconesses, reverends, pastors and uncountable bishops, corruption of shades is neither disguised nor as frequently condemned as ought to be the case. Religion is receding into the quick-fix resort in times of crisis and need, easily forgotten or treated superficially thereafter. For this reason, new religions are daily invented as people explore religion in the manner young people explore the thrill of narcotic drugs. The United States alone has people worshipping nearly two thousand different things with conflicting results. Religion, that conservative pillar of reference in a rapidly changing world, the provider of core moral values in a world afflicted by the virus of constant experimentation, is rapidly losing grip. The challenge before world religions may be summed up as “past glory or future strength?” Which way? And it offers us one more example of how history is undertaking a makeover before our very eyes.
In this first part, it is plausible to behold the Obama Century as an era of micropluralism of power. America may still be the sole super-power in military terms. China will be a bigger economic power, not in the fifty years envisaged, but in the next 25 years. The era of projecting unilateral power on the world stage without regard to the sensibilities of other nations is, perhaps, gone for ever. The new world outlook favours multilateral action, bridge and consensus-building. It is an era of multilateralism when the white, black, brown and green races of this earth must exist in mutual respect and tolerance and consign the era of racial bigotry to the dung heap of history. In a global world, no issue is exclusively local anymore. The destruction of primary forest in Akwa Ibom State affects global warming with consequences for all of humanity. It is an era of shared responsibility and no longer narrowly defined jingoism as was invented by academics in the 19th Century. Welcome to our world and the changed trajectory of its history.
See you next week with the second part.