By Mohammed Adamu
The ‘Preamble’ to this piece incidentally was also a ‘Preamble’ to an earlier two-part piece I had written some 10 years ago on the title: ‘Gaddafi: Mad Man Or Visionary?’ (April, 02, 2010). And it reads:
“He (Gaddafi) had once called for the dismemberment of Nigeria along two ethno-religious sovereigns. He must’ve meant a ‘Northern Nigeria’ and a ‘Southern Nigeria’. Each of these new entities he said, should then be ethno-religiously more homogenous, administratively more flexible and therefore each also politically less volatile. This was how much Gaddafi thought he loved Nigeria. If two siblings or spouses cannot seem to ever get together, the hell let them separate –temporarily or even if permanently. The two ‘Nigerias’ existing separately, Gaddafi said, were more likely to live ‘happily-ever-after’ than if they persisted in this present ‘one Nigeria’ with such terribly un-assuage-able fault lines. But trust Nigerians, now that it was an outsider –and especially Gaddafi of all people- giving the prescription, we had all risen with patriotic ardour, to condemn the man. Most spouses even of irretrievably distressed marriages are hardly amenable to good counsel. Besides, many Nigerians had argued that ‘happily ever-afters’ are epilogues more in the end-lines of pleasant moonlight tales than in the existential lives of nations that dare to toy with disintegration.
But Gaddafi had cited Mother India which, in 1974 he said, was peaceably and peacefully split into Hindustan India and Islamic Pakistan. And to which our ‘lovers’ of ‘one indivisible Nigeria’ had observed –rightly too- that neither India nor Pakistan had lived ‘happily ever-after’ since that balkanization. Citing South Sudan as a most recent example, they had warned that ‘blood, sweat and tears are the more likely endnotes to any tale of balkanization no matter how peacefully achieved. And maybe yes, India and Pakistan may still not have lived that fabled ‘happily ever-after’ cliché, but one still dares to say that the two Asian nations at least do in fact ‘live’ –which is more than one can presently say for Nigeria, which merely exists. This ‘mere geographical expression’, or should we say this ‘snoring African giant’, called Nigeria has never had the luxury even of the basest ‘living’. She merely exists; and always in the most internecine of crises. No thanks to the many delicate hyacinths of ethno-religious fault lines which her ethnic nationalities (both minorities and majorities) are only too happy to create.
‘The Green Book’
And for good measure, I thought that the late Mu’amar Gaddafi, more than anyone else, was most eminently qualified not only to have postulated on the organic matters of state but also to have pontificated on the question of statehood and of nationhood. What with the fact that by 2010 he had already fully marinated as the idyllic benevolent socialist dictator-leader –if you will- of an El-dorado Libya for over 40 years, since 1969? And what with the fact that Gaddafi was the only leader with a doublet of two essential attributes: a man of dual racial origin, being an Arab and an African, and a bona fide member of two continental bodies, namely the Arab League and the African Union. Plus he was the celebrated author of an ingeniously crafted instruction manual of governance systems theories, ‘The Green Book’, combining socialism, Islamic political theory and Libyan Afro-Arab tribal practices.
This 120-page book that had elicited a grudging rave-review in the West as the mysterious product of a tent-living desert Bedouin, contains a cleverly-woven Afro-Arab philosophy which offers the world what Gaddafi himself described as the ‘Third Universal Theory’ –a candidate alternative to the existing socio-economic governance-theories of ‘democratic capitalism’ and ‘autocratic communism’. The Green Book in a nutshell provides a practical ‘third-option’ to these mutually-opposing models of ‘Western capitalist-democracy’ with its soulless ‘Free-Market’ system and ‘Eastern European communism’ with its ‘obnoxious’ Command-Control emblematic of the Sino-Soviet collapsed wedlock of the sixties.
Said one oriental writer: “Whereas Plato’s ‘The Republic’ still remains the blue print of a utopian society waiting to be experimented, Gaddafi’s ‘Green Book’ is itself the product of a practical revolution which has radically transformed Libya”. Another had derogatorily wondered if this was not “a case of pristine Bedouin morality steeped in the fundamental morality of the seventh century, riding in from the desert to reform twentieth century state craft”!
And after having tortuously hobbled and wobbled to read ‘The Green Book’ myself, way back in my days as a fresh knowledge-thirsty undergraduate student of English at the University of Sokoto, I had also, in 2010 -while doing a post-assassination tribute on Gaddafi- picked up and done a racy, tied-to-purpose reading of ‘Islam And The Third Universal Theory’ -a 150-page book-analysis of the ‘The Green Book’ written by a Harvard trained philosopher and expert on comparative religion, Mahmoud Ayoub.
But because I had only selectively nibbled at Ayoub’s book for the purpose of my tribute, I remember then, imposing on myself a duty, soon I said, of having to carefully read this excellent Ayoub-analysis as a way to kill two birds with one stone: first to update my long-faded knowledge on the three-part ‘Green Book’ itself which, I had hardly fully understood in the late 80s when I forced myself to read it; and second, to obviate need thereafter to have to re-read the main book. I have not since then been able to accomplish that until a few days back when it had to take this Nigeria’s profusely haemorrhaging quest for national unity to evoke flashing recollections of some of the interesting discourses I had read, in ‘The Green Book’, especially on the subjects of religion, nationalism, language and the ethnic minority question.
And as one congenitally given to fire-brigade approaches on virtually everything academic, yours faithfully had vengefully pored on this book in just one long night vigil last weekend and I cannot wait to share my views with you. The snail-slow, procrastinating reader that I know myself to be, I think that I have amazed even myself. Sometimes you just want to call the bluff of whatever goblins or ‘principalities’ there may be that are bewitching your accustomed sense of prolificacy.
Take-aways
Gaddafi’s ‘The Green Book’ discusses politics and the predicament of national minorities from the premise of the fundamental argument that “religion and nationalism are the two primary forces moving human history” and that “minorities do not necessarily fight for a language or for social customs, but rather for economic and political rights”. Ethnic identity, Gaddafi said, although it is as pristine as nature itself and although it is known to bind the people together “even before they have religion”, yet he said there is nothing more toxic to ‘ethnic identity’ than the politics of who gets what, where, when and how?
Thus partisan affiliation, he said, is inevitably injurious to ‘ethnic unity’ and can lead even to the disintegration of national unity. And herein lies the fundamental raison d’être for the concept of the Libyan ‘Jamahiriya’ (or direct democracy) which had every adult citizen almost compulsorily as a direct participant in the democratic process. It was so, Gaddafi said, that Libyans, in spite of politics, would still “be one rank like a well compacted edifice” –goal that has continued to elude Nigeria.
Gaddafi had favoured ‘direct democracy’ over so-called ‘representative government’ which he described as “false democracy” for the reason that it is always “a dictatorial rule either of the minority over the majority or vice versa”. It thus explains his ideological repudiation of ‘multi-party democracy’ and his preference for a one-party system of socialist democracy. It was the only way he said to minimize divisive schisms in the polity and to safeguard national unity.
To be concluded.
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