By J.G Nkem Onyekpe
In their antagonistic and fierce competition and struggle for the domination of the world, the so-called developed countries deploy their economic wealth and their science and technology against one another. The upper crust or stratum of the elites in the same developed countries provides support for their states in the competition and struggle, because ultimately the rich elites are the major beneficiaries of the ‘victory’ of their states. But beyond the competition among the developed countries, there is the struggle among them for the acquisition, ownership, and exploitation of the less developed countries or the Third World.
Indeed, competition among the developed countries is about who gets what parts of the less developed world. Thus, the wealth and riches of the developed countries, and the upper crust of their elites are deployed against the poor, especially the poor regions of the world. This was the background, and the theoretically and empirically valid explanation for the European conquest and colonisation of the poor regions of Aftca, Latin America, and Southeast Asia in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. After a long period of direct colonial system of imperialism covering between 60 and 150 years for different colonies, the colonies gained independence that was largely superficial.
At independence majority of the former colonies elected their national political elites into office. The processes were designed, controlled, and regulated by the colonial masters themselves while the national political elites were all at the receiving end. This, in itself, was a fundamental problem as the new states remained under the domineering control of their former masters.
A far more critical problem of the new states was that while political independence was granted to them, the structural and institutional foundations of imperialism were left intact. Consequently, the new states emerged as neocolonial entities, politically Independent without economic sovereignty, a situation that rendered political independence a mere sham.
Several decades after their wretched existence as dependent neo-colonial states, the countries of the Third World are today faced with the challenge of re-colonisation. But unlike the colonisation of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th Centuries which was an exclusively European affair involving Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, Holland, and Spain, the current imperialist drive, in addition to Europe, involves the United States, China, and, the not-so flagrantly aggressive, Japan. More important, unlike in the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries when colonisation was through military invasions and conquests, it would appear that the imperialist and neo-imperialist states of today and their juggernauts have opted to deploy the instrument of medical sciences. Not few seasoned and accomplished medical scientists and well informed elites across the world are of the opinion that the corona virus and other deadly viruses were generated not only as a weapon of competition and struggle among the great powers, but also to drastically and rapidly depopulate the Third World to free it for economic and settler colonial occupation. Heavily overpopulated China is already acquiring parts of Africa, for example, Zambia. The same China is currently signing unequal economic and financial assistance agreements with poor countries, for example, Nigeria. Poor countries are signing these agreements without studying their contents! In the event of any default, the poor countries concerned would lose their economy and, consequently, their feeble political sovereignty also. Instructively, it has been revealed that the corona virus was not natural but an artificial virus ‘scientifically’ developed in a Chinese laboratory. No wonder the US president, Mr Donald Trump has called it “Chinese virus”.
The virus migrated into the Third World about February (2020). As if to help the Third World, vaccines are being produced in the developed countries for them. It must be emphasised that, if the corona virus was artificially created, whatever medications produced or vaccines discovered against it cannot be less artificial. It is important to note that the corona virus has been far more ravaging and catastrophic in its effects in the cold Mediterranean, temperate, and arctic climaticic environments of the northern hemisphere or the global north, than in the largely hot tropical and semi-tropical southern hemisphere or global south. This has been attributed to the fact that the virus thrives in cold ecological conditions.
Since the virus is not producing the expected result of depopulating the Third World, the makers of the virus and their allies have embarked on a frightening propaganda and campaign that other waves and new variants of the virus are coming and, so, the Third World needs vaccines. The point here, therefore, is that the idea of vaccines especially for the Third World is far from altruistic; on the contrary, the idea is a subtle mephistophelian subterfuge programmed by the hegemonic powers for the depopulation of the Third World.
This is an elephantine challenge the states and governments of the Third World and their peoples must rise up against. The political elites in control of prebendary power in the Third World and their apparatchiks should not see the importation of killer- vaccines as another opportunity to recklessly defraud their states and further enrich themselves. The states and governments of the Third World should, instead, urgently come together at different regional levels for a common ground against their common enemy and their ultimate goal of atavistic economic and settler colonialism. Africa and the rest of the Third World should listen to the voices from Madagascar and Ghana!
Dr. Onyekpe, an Associate Professor in Department of History and Strategic Studies, University of Lagos, is a Fellow of the Historical Society of Nigeria (FHSN).
