Kí Wọ́n Ṣá Máa Ṣe, Ká Ṣá Máa Lò

Remembering Beko Ransome-Kuti

By Babafemi Ojudu

One of the most remarkable mentors I ever had was Dr Beko Ransome-Kuti. I visited him often, and in those days, you would almost always find him behind his desk—thinking, writing, organising and plotting the next move in the struggle for justice. About the only recreation for which he occasionally abandoned that desk was a visit to the Ikoyi Club to play squash.

 

It was in Beko’s office that I first encountered an early-generation Apple desktop computer. He had travelled abroad, returned with the machine and taught himself how to use it. That computer revolutionised our work.

 

Once a month, we published a newsletter using what was then the wonder of a new technology: word processing. It was an astonishing advance from the laborious age of cyclostyling. The work became faster, neater and cleaner. On one machine, we could type the articles, edit them, lay out the pages and prepare the publication for printing.

 

I marvelled endlessly at the technology—and even more at the minds behind it. It was only much later that I realised that many of those driving this technological revolution were people of my own generation. While some societies were raising young men and women to imagine and manufacture the future, ours seemed largely content to import and consume it.

 

That memory brings me to something Beko once said—words that have continued to ring in my ears across the years.

 

This morning, I had a lengthy conversation with an old friend and brother who has also been a benefactor. We discussed the condition of Nigeria, Africa and the Black world. We lamented our circumstances and tried to apply some intellectual rigour to understanding how we arrived here, why we behave as we do, and why dysfunction has become so stubbornly resistant to change.

 

Throughout the conversation, I kept hearing Beko’s voice.

 

One day, as I watched his Apple computer perform what seemed to me like magic, Beko took a sip of his black coffee, drew on his cigarette, raised his head and looked at me. Then, with that familiar wry smile, he said:

 

“Háà, àwọn òyìnbó yìí ṣá! Kí wọ́n ṣá máa ṣe, ká ṣá máa lò.”

 

Roughly translated:

 

“These white people! Let them continue to make things while we continue to use them.”

 

The words were minimalist, almost casual, but profoundly unsettling. Beneath the humour was a devastating diagnosis of our condition.

 

They make; we use.

They invent; we import.

They research; we consume.

They build institutions; we personalise power.

They plan for generations; we struggle to survive the next election.

They interrogate failure; we explain it away with ethnicity, religion, conspiracy and fate.

 

Beko was not suggesting that the Black person lacks intelligence, imagination or creativity. History and daily experience disprove such a claim. His lament, as I understood it, was about the environment we have created: one that too often frustrates talent, punishes originality, distrusts knowledge and rewards proximity to power more generously than productive enterprise.

 

We have brilliant individuals everywhere, but too few systems that allow brilliance to multiply. Our brightest minds frequently leave home before their ideas can breathe. Abroad, they help design machines, discover medicines, build institutions and strengthen economies. At home, many of them are consumed by the daily battle for electricity, security, functional roads, decent healthcare and the basic dignity of orderly government.

 

That is why Beko’s remark applies far beyond technology. It speaks to our failures in social organisation, public health, education, governance and political development. We borrow constitutions without cultivating constitutionalism. We hold elections without deepening democracy. We establish universities without adequately funding research. Even the little that is available is spent on constructing fences, simply because it is easier to make money through contractors than through researchers. We build hospitals that lack essential equipment. We create agencies but weaken the institutions they are meant to serve. We celebrate titles while neglecting competence.

 

Something must give. We cannot continue this way.

 

In the past week alone, I have reflected on the deaths that have occurred around me or been brought to my attention. Many were needless—lives lost cheaply to failures that ought to have been prevented. This is not to suggest that people do not die in other societies. Death is universal. What is frightening here is how frequently people die from avoidable causes: poor diagnosis, delayed emergency response, unsafe roads, collapsing buildings, defective infrastructure, insecurity, the consumption of poisonous drugs, drinks and food, and the absence of systems that value human life.

 

Each death is quickly reduced to another funeral, another condolence visit, another prayer for the repose of the dead. Then we move on until the next tragedy arrives. We mourn the victims but seldom reform the conditions that produced them.

 

Even more troubling is the way we retreat into ethnic, religious and partisan trenches whenever serious questions arise. Instead of asking what went wrong and how it can be prevented, we ask who is being criticised, where the person comes from, which party he belongs to, and whether the criticism helps or hurts “our side.”

 

But death does not check party cards. A failed hospital does not ask for your ethnicity before it fails you. A crater on the highway does not distinguish between Christian and Muslim. A collapsing building does not spare supporters of the ruling party. Dysfunction is tragically democratic: sooner or later, it comes for everyone.

 

When, then, are we going to wake up?

 

An elder recently reminded me that it is easier to wake someone who is genuinely asleep than someone who is pretending to sleep. Perhaps that is our deepest problem. The evidence of failure is all around us, but we have perfected the art of looking away. We mistake endurance for resilience and adaptation to dysfunction for strength.

 

Beko’s computer was more than a machine. It was a challenge. It asked whether we would remain permanent consumers of other people’s imagination or become creators of our own future.

 

“Let them continue to make things while we continue to use them” may have been funny when Beko said it. Decades later, it should frighten us.

 

A people cannot consume their way to greatness. At some point, we must stop merely using the future others have made.

 

We must begin to think, organise, invent, build—and value life.

 

Above all, we must stop pretending to be asleep.

 

By the way, let me take this opportunity to wish Lande Ransome-Kuti a happy 50th birthday. Lande is Beko’s youngest daughter. Tonight, we party till dawn! After all, there is nothing wrong with a farmer from the Ekiti hills touching down in Lagos once in a while for an owambe.