It has been 100 years to the day in 1926 when Fredrick Lugard published Dual Mandate, giving his views about the African. Looking at what President Lula and his Workers Party have achieved in Brazil, was Lugard not spot on?

Ayo Akinfe

“In character and temperament, the typical African of this race-type is a happy, thriftless,

excitable person. Lacking in self control, discipline, and foresight.

Naturally courageous and naturally courteous and polite, full of personal vanity, with little sense of veracity, fond of music and loving weapons as an oriental loves jewellery. His thoughts are concentrated on the events and feelings of the moment and he suffers little from the apprehension for the future, or grief for the past.

His mind is far nearer to the animal world than the that of the European or Asiatic and exhibits something of the animals placidity and want of desire to rise beyond the state he has reached. Through the ages the African appears to have evolved no organised religious creed and though some tribes appear to believe in a deity, the religious sense seldom rises above pantheistic animalism and seems more often to take the form of a vague dread of the supernatural.

He lacks the power of organisation and is conspicuously deficient in the management and control alike of men or business. He loves the display of power but fails to realise its responsibility.

He will work hard with a less incentive than most races. He has the courage of the fighting animal, an instinct rather than a moral virtue.

In brief, the virtues and defects of this race-type are those of attractive children, whose confidence when it is won is given ungrudgingly as to an older and wiser superior and without envy. Perhaps the two traits which have impressed me as those most characteristic of the African native are his lack of apprehension and his ability to visualise the future.”

Looking at the way President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva aka Lula has transformed the Brazilian economy, I have to ask if we are the same type of Homo Sapien. Look at what Lula has done:

[1] He introduced a public works programme to eliminate unemployment

[2] He resolved the street urchin problem that was identical to our Almajiri menace. Over upon a time, street urchins were all over Brazilian cities

[3] He renovated and beautified the slums in cities like Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia and São Paulo

[4] He raised public sector wages above the rate of inflation

[5] He invested heavily in infrastructure

[6] He broadened state help to the most impoverished with a family grant programme known as the Bolsa Familia

[7] He has committed Brazil to phasing out the use of fossil fuels

[8] He has reduced deforestation in the Amazon

[9] He has defied Donald Trump’s moves to make Brazil a US lackey. Despite Trump slapping 25% tariffs on Brazilian goods, Lula has refused to be cowered

[10] In Brazil, interest rates stand at 13.75% and inflation is only 4.6% despite the fact that it remains above the central bank's tolerance range of 1.5% to 4.5%.

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