The Ottoman Turkish Empire in 19th century Europe used to be derided as “the sick man of Europe” apparently because it was an effete empire, a caricature of its glorious history when its suzerainty extended over most of North Africa, the Middle East and south Eastern Europe particularly the Balkans. The decline eventually was stopped when the military under Mustafa Kemal the Ataturk (leader) overthrew the Ottoman emperor in 1923 and ruled the country with iron fist until 1938 and began the modernization of the country. No aspect of the country was left untouched even up to the way the Turks were attired. The only thing that the Turkish leader did not touch was Islam, the religion of the people. He however enshrined in the Turkish constitution that the state would forever remain a secular state whose secularity was guaranteed by the all-powerful military. Turkey, despite the attempt of its current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to tamper with the secular constitution has not succeeded and his attempt almost led to his being overthrown by the army and what has now come to be described as the “deep state” otherwise known as the national bureaucracy and all the institutional paraphernalia that makes a state run whether there is a government or not. There is no doubt however that the legacy of Mustafa Kemal, the Ataturk has survived in modern Turkey which no one would refer to as a “sick man” of Europe any longer. Turkey today is one of the strongest countries in Europe and reputedly has the largest army in NATO bestriding the borders of Europe and Asia. The country also has a reasonably strong economy; of course it could be stronger if it was run as a strictly free enterprise and democratic country without the military breathing down its throat.
I have used the analogy of Turkey to try and dissect the current malady of Nigeria characterized by violence and religious fanaticism.
Nigeria at independence had all the attributes of a future powerful and successful state and has perhaps the potentiality of becoming the Japan of Africa. Nigeria was seen as a country capable of wiping the racial slur on black peoples as never-do-well, some kind of what Germans would call “untermenschen” or sub humans. The prime minister of Nigeria was the toast of the powerful countries in the world. President J. F. Kennedy lavishly welcomed our prime minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to the White House in 1961. The British knighted him and even the USSR under Nikita Khrushchev tried unsuccessfully to open its country’s embassy in Lagos but was rebuffed by a proud country which did not like the “subversive tendencies” of the USSR in Africa. The imperious General Charles de Gaulle met his match in the standoffish Sir Abubakar who cut Nigeria’s ties with France in 1965 when France refused to accede to the request of Nigeria and other West African states to stop testing atomic bombs in the Sahara desert because of its radioactive fallout which might have endangered the lives of Nigerians and other Africans. Even the prime minister of Great Britain, our former colonial masters, Harold Macmillan, took seriously Nigeria’s positions on institutionalized racial discrimination in apartheid South Africa which forced its prime minister to withdraw the country from the commonwealth in 1961.
The point I am making is that all the auguries were positively indicating a bright and great future for Nigeria in its early years of its independence. Our country even called an extraordinary Commonwealth Conference on Rhodesia towards the end of 1965 to get the Commonwealth to take a united position on ensuring that Rhodesia did not go the odious racist way of South Africa when its white government was determined to gain independence under minority white regime.
A few weeks after this demarche, the prime minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the premiers of the West and the North and high ranking military officers were slaughtered in a coup overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Nigeria. That was the beginning of our problems. The country was not perfect before this time. The British colonial masters were not philanthropists who cared for any black people whether in Africa, Asia or the Americas. They naturally cared for themselves and their country’s future. They planted seeds of future divisions in our country so that we would always be beholden to them as our patron to whom we would always run to during our predictable problems. The dice was heavily loaded against us. The federation of Nigeria was an unbalanced state with the size and population of the North bigger than the two southern regions combined. The population of the north appeared to have been rigged by the British to give it numerical advantage over the south. In spite of these hidden problems, Nigeria perhaps could have remained on the path of steady growth and reform until perhaps a reformer in the mould of Mustafa Kemal would have appeared on the scene. Nigeria has not had that fortune but rather what we have had were military adventurers and soldiers of fortune who conquered the state and treated it as a conquered territory good for plunder. This is what has happened to Nigeria since 1966.
The corrosion and coarseness that have afflicted the state manifest in the general and unbelievable poverty in many parts of our country. Rather than to build a secular state as enshrined in our constitution, what we have done is to abandon the state to religious bodies – some moderate and others extreme – to deal with the state the way they wish. The manifestation of these tendencies can be seen in our people abandoning their responsibility and hard work and pinning all their hopes on so called breakthroughs on God/Allah.
When the poor people do not get instant gratification they either become violent or reverse to their primitive pre -Christian or pre-Islamic beliefs and practices including human sacrifices which we have witnessed in many parts of Nigeria where people are killed in rituals supposedly designed to make money. All these maladies and killings including the recent killing of Miss Deborah Samuel Yakubu are a manifestation of state failure and state collapse.
Most Muslim leaders in our country and outside including Sultan Abubakar and King Husain of Jordan have said peace and tolerance are the hallmarks of Islam. I was surprised to hear King Husain say the Holy Koran says Muslims should love God and their fellow human beings as themselves and that Allah did not say love fellow Muslims but all humanity created by God. This is exactly what our Lord Jesus Christ said was the kernel of the Christian religion. Prophet Muhammad forbade his followers attacking Christians and Jews because they are “people of the book”. I am told by people who are intimate with Islam that the concept of even jihad is misunderstood. The greatest jihad a Muslim can fight is against self. Disciplining oneself to go in the way of Allah is more difficult than fighting to defend the faith of Islam. Islam deprecates forceful conversion, so jihad is essentially a defence strategy to protect the abode of the faithful.
I remember President Barack Obama saying he cannot understand any Muslim fighting God’s war because that presupposes that God is so weak that He needs puny human beings to defend Him or fight his battles. Our Muslim leaders have a job to do in the education of our people along the right path.
But it is not the religious leaders alone who have work to do. Our political and other leaders have work to do also. We need to build our country into a modern state where it will not matter whether one is a Muslim or a Christian. We must stop using religion as the opium of the people. Highly educated people whose material needs are met by the state or through gainful employment will not resort to murder over religious differences. This is why the crowd contesting various elections next year should first take a look at the country they want to rule. If we continue like this there will be no country to govern.
It has also become clear to most knowledgeable people in this country that even if an angel becomes president in 2023 under the present constitutional structure of the country he will not succeed. So let us put first things first. The politicians should first be talking about establishing a constitutional grundnorm (basic law) dividing the country along its natural linguistic lines while the centre as in most federations remains a coordinating centre with its powers specifically and specially defined. We must also map out a strategy to distribute wealth to all Nigerians and to make sure all Nigerians are properly educated to appreciate the sanctity of life.
Electing a president is the easiest thing to do but having a country that is worth living in and dying for should really be the focus of our national aspirations and not which person or ethnic group is in or out.