Fellow BusinessDay columnist Abimbola Agboluaje writes:
Colonialism was an economic consolidator, raising taxes and greatly expanding the geographical space of transactions. The technologies for achieving this feat- weapons, literacy, written legislation, public (engineering) works, banking and international exchange- were not sourced from the local society, hence the government was a deus ex machina (god from a machine). The “inorganic” state towered above society. All the politics and economics were wrong in post-colonial Africa.
And:
People voted in a “parliamentary democracy” when an overwhelming majority could not read, much less make sense of fundamental concepts such as rule of law or the separation of power. The politics that ensued was a “state of emergency” politics; politicians mobilised kinsmen to prevent the capture of the state by malevolent sectional rivals. Nothing was too sacred to sacrifice in the battle to save their people; ballot boxes could be stuffed, thugs hired and police converted to party thugs.
Read it in full here. Excuse the poor formatting.