Pendulum: In Search of Public Relations Practitioners in Africa By Dele Momodu

Fellow Africans, let me start by expressing my unflinching love
for Africa and all Africans, regardless of race, gender or colour.
My love of Africa was ignited by my older Brother, Professor
Ezekiel Oladele Bolarinwa Ajayi, a Physicist who got his PhD from
Stanford but, in the course of his university education there,
encountered racism first hand as a student in America.

His supervisor at Stanford was William Bradford Shockley Jr. who
shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with John Bardeen and Walter
Brattain in 1956 for “their researches on semiconductors and their
discovery of the transistor effect.” My story today is not really
about the scientific adventures of my dear Brother, from the same
womb, and his eccentric Professor, it is about the politics of race
and hate in the classroom and the reason why I embrace all things
Africa and African unapologetically. That is not to say, that I too
am racist, but merely to emphasise that I cannot close my eyes to
where I come from simply on the altar of trying to be politically
correct.

Professor Shockley was unapologetically racist. He wasted
precious time trying to prove how “the major causes of the American
Negro’s intellectual and social deficits are hereditary and
racially genetic in origin and, thus, not remediable to any major
degree by practical improvements in the environment…” You can then
imagine how gobsmacked and shocked Shockley must have been to come
in contact with not just a Blackman in his class, but one from a
village called Gbongan, in today’s Osun State. Shockley seriously
believed in the theory that Blacks should be sterilised before
coming in touch with Whites, a terrible prejudice that totally
radicalised my brilliant brother who went all out to demonstrate to
Shockley that though he had travelled long distances to arrive in
California and across oceans, he was as phenomenal, prodigiously
cerebral and, ultimately, as decent as any White man. In effect, my
Brother, Professor Ajayi, was not only a first class physicist, he
also became a courted academic in his field, thereby shocking
Shockley to the very marrow.

My Brother showed interest and participated in the activities of
the Pan-Africanist Movement. He even attended one of the
Pan-African Conferences in Dar es Salaam, as many distinguished
leaders of African descent converged in Tanzania. My Brother met
the great President Nwalimu Julius Nyerere and came back with so
many literatures extolling the virtues of the African race and some
books that lamented the unfortunate quagmire Africans have got
sucked into. One of his favourite books I inherited without his
permission was HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA, by the famous
Guyanese historian and author, Walter Anthony Rodney. Rodney was so
radical that he got assassinated in 1980. Naturally, I followed up
with other radical literatures by compelling authors like Dr Kwame
Nkrumah, the first President of the Independent Republic of Ghana.
I instantly fell in love with two of his popular books,
Consciencism and Africa Must Unite. I read Frantz Fanon, the French
West Indian philosopher and psychiatrist, who wrote the seminal
work, The Wretched of the Earth.

Thus, my romanticism of Africa started in earnest. Of course, my
Brother had arrived in America in the middle of the civil rights
movements and agitation for racial equality. It was impossible not
to read and know about the amazing contributions of the American
Baptist Minister, Martin Luther King Jr. who was assassinated at
the unripe age of 39, on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel,
Memphis, Tennessee, USA. I read about the American Muslim Minister
and human rights activist, Malcolm X, who had been assassinated
earlier on February 21, 1965, also at the young age of 39, in
Manhattan, New York. I, like many of my contemporaries, was fired
up by these iconic iconoclasts. I bought and devoured the African
Writers Series, published by Heinemann Books as a secondary school
student and this was the genesis of my interest and love for
literature, particularly African Literature, and the background for
my Masters Degree in Literature in English.

My first knowledge of Africa, its history and the peoples, came
from reading authors from the North and to the South of Africa.
Egypt’s Naguib Mahfouz, Kenya’s Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Meja Mwangi,
Cameroon’s Mongo Beti, Ghana’s Ayi Kwei Armah and Kofi Awoonor,
Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Elechi Amadi, T. M. Aluko,
John Munonye, Kole Omotoso, and others, Senegal’s Sembene Ousmane,
South Africa’s Alex La Guma, Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda, Cameroon’s
Mongo Beti, Ferdinand Oyono, Mbella Sonne Dipoko and others,
Somalia’s Nuruddin Farah, and so many other authors. My original
plan was to be a teacher, marry a teacher and live happily
thereafter because I was surrounded by teachers – my Brother was a
lecturer in the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University,
and my Sister, Feyi Adeniran’s husband was a teacher at my alma
mater, St Johns Grammar School, Ile-Ife. But man proposes and God
disposes. Unknown to me then, those books actually prepared me for
a journey in a different direction, journalism, which I came into
by pure accident. Let’s leave that for my forthcoming memoirs.

I have gone through this relatively long preamble to evince how
I became fanatical about the celebration of Africa. Once upon a
time, it seemed the West saw nothing good about Africa, which
Joseph Conrad had described as The Heart of Darkness. Many racists
believed, won’t be surprised if they still do, that Africans live
on trees and jump from one tree to another like monkeys. Indeed,
the monkey chants, gestures and depictions we hear and see on
sporting grounds, particularly the football terraces, when our
talented African stars showcase their skills tells me that this
belief is still rife amongst some ignorant people. Africa was
synonymous with wars, famine, deprivation, diseases and all what
not. At the beginning of Ovation International magazine in London,
in 1996, we took a firm decision, and made a bold commitment, to
publishing stories about Africa in a positive manner. 23 years
after, the world has come to agree and accept that Africa deserves
a standing ovation, against all odds. Many of those who did not
understand our mission and trajectory refused to see the good in
celebrating ourselves if no one would look our way.

Africans have had their fair shares of greatness and also
backwardness. But no race has a monopoly of both. The difference is
we have been our own worst enemies. We love to rubbish our own
achievement while we celebrate that of others. On our part at
Ovation International, we have laboured assiduously to put Africa
on the global map where it rightly belongs, and we shall not
relent. The best of Africa deserves this. I’m particularly grateful
to the Africa Studies Centre at Oxford University for rekindling my
interest in academic work some 31 years after finishing my Masters
degree at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. I’m particularly
delighted by the privilege of rubbing minds with world scholars.
For me, there is no better place to be at this time than Oxford. I
intend to make the best use of the opportunity.

Oxford made it possible for me to start the first quarter of
this year on a powerful note. The second quarter is even looking
more exciting. On May 10, 2019, we shall have the honour of the
distinguished presence of the former President of Ghana, Dr. John
Dramani Mahama, at Oxford. According to a release, “H.E John
Mahama, former President of Ghana will give his insightful lecture
at Saïd Business School in collaboration with the African Studies
Centre and the Oxford Africa Business Alliance. President John
Mahama was the President of Ghana from 2012 to 2017. Previously, he
served as Vice President between 2009 and 2012. He is a
communication expert, historian and writer and the presidential
candidate of Ghana’s National Democratic Congress (NDC) for the
2020 presidential election. He is the author of My First Coup
d’État and Other True Stories From the Lost Decades of Africa
(2012). The lecture will include an audience Q&A moderated by
Prof. Wale Adebanwi, Director of the Africa Studies Centre &
Rhodes Professor of Race Relations.“

Oxford University is doing so much work on Africa at the moment
and I’m grateful for the opportunity to share in their huge
experience and vast libraries of research materials. Africa seems
to be the last virgin continent. With the right kind of leadership,
Africa and many more Africans would ultimately occupy their
rightful position in the pantheon of greats. I’m happy that our
modest efforts at celebrating Africa has not gone unnoticed. There
are times you feel no one notices your hard work or shares in your
vision. You almost get enslaved by frustration and capitulation.
But when I feel this way, I remember, where I have come from, and
how far the journey has taken me, and I refocus and re-energise
myself.

The biggest task facing Africa today is how to rebrand itself
from a squalid continent to a prosperous one. This is why we need
to engage in serious public relations to clean up the image of
Africa as a gabbage continent. One country that has changed its
savage narrative to a positive one of unity, growth and progress is
Rwanda. Rwanda should be a case study for Nigeria and Nigerians in
particular, and the rest of Africa in general. Rwanda has benefited
immensely from what I consider to be the power of positive
thinking. The leadership of Rwanda has demonstrated the limitless
capacity for human endeavours and achievements.

Please, let me now share my good news. On May 14, 2019, by the
grace of God, I will be conferred with the honorary Fellowship of
the African Public Relations Association (APRA), the only recipient
from Nigeria. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda will be decorated as
a Patron of APRA. Other recipients of honorary Fellowships include
former Ghanaian President, Dr John Dramani Mahama, and Ambassador
Kwesi Quartey, Deputy Chairperson, African Union Commission
(AUC).

In a letter signed by the President of APRA, Mr Yomi
Badejo-Okusanya, he wrote: “Concisely, APRA sells ‘Positive Africa’
and in line with our key intervention areas, recognizes individuals
for their efforts and accomplishments in promoting the continent.
Considering your dedication to Africa, and role as an inspiration
to our profession, the Executive Council of APRA is proud to confer
you with the Honorary Fellowship of its association, with all
rights and privileges pertaining to.

“You will be decorated at the opening ceremony of our 31st
Annual Conference tagged ‘Africa and Storytelling: Changing the
Narrative”… Other expected honorees will be the President of the
Republic of Rwanda, HE Paul Kagame, who will be decorated as a
Patron in line with his office, the Deputy Chairperson, African
Union Commission, Ambassador Kwesi Thomas Quartey, and former
President, Republic of Ghana, Mr John Dramani Mahama as Honorary
Fellows respectively…”

My sincere gratitude to all members of the APRA, and in
particular, the Executive, for finding me worthy of this amazing
honour. This acknowledgement of my modest contribution to the
development of a positive African ethos, greatly humbles me. It
makes me ever more determined not to relent in my efforts to
champion what is best and noble about Africa and Africans, and to
refuse to follow the pervasive trend of succumbing to the
prejudiced notion that nothing good can come out of Africa. This
award will definitely inspire me to do more for Africa.

Once more I also use this opportunity to appreciate all my fans
and well-wishers who have also made this award possible. I believe
that your demonstration of affection for me has helped the APRA and
its Executive, in no small measure, in coming to the conclusion
that I deserve this much cherished award.

Thank you APRA! God bless you, God bless Africa.

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