Category: Friday

Plurality defines the Nigerian state. It is a state endowed with plural nationalities, plural languages and dialects, plural religions, including plurality of intra-religious sects, and plural sensibilities. Since plurality and diversity are synonyms, we might as well say that diversity is the reality of the Nigerian state. But this is no news to anyone. Indeed, we acknowledge it in many ways including in the lyrics of our first National Anthem: though tribe and tongue may differ, in brotherhood we stand. The question that we have yet to settle is how we should deal with the plurality that defines us. Do we simply wish it would go away? Do we actively suppress it? Do we celebrate it? Or do we actively engage it in a productive way and make it a blessing rather than a curse?

Last week, I agonised over the most dreadful disease of problem-denial that ails the country. Today I deal with the specifics and offer a way out of the dilemma of an eagle that is incapacitated by the weight of its wings.

Back in 1960, we acknowledged our plurality and actively engaged it, ensuring that each region managed its human and natural resources in ways that were beneficial for its peoples and the entire country. If one determined that it needed to invest in the development of the human talents of its entire people, we let it be. If another focused on benefitting the elite cadre and sustaining the hierarchical ordering of the society, we didn’t stand in the way. We acknowledged the fundamental right of each to manage its resources with the recognition of derivation as an important principle of revenue allocation. The country was on the right side of the discourse on the management of plurality. But then something wasn’t right and things fell apart.

In a genuine effort to deal with the ringworm that afflicted the political system, we applied a medication suited for leprosy. We chose to kill an irritant ant with a sledge hammer, and in so doing we killed the dream of unity-in-diversity by denying diversity and embracing uniformity.

The reality of the menace of political ringworm was not in question. It had to do with the tone of political debate and the intolerance of the players in the political arena. But we failed to treat that ailment talk less cure it as is evidenced by the nature and tenor of current political debates. Political leaders still take pleasure in hypocritically heating up the polity with diatribes concerning the other.

The leprosy medication ended up destroying the nerve of our nation-space, causing debilitating pain that has impacted our drive and militated against our flight into the space of giants which we are supposed to be.

Centralisation and unitarisation is the Achilles Heel of this republic, and like every weak spot, it can spell its downfall. We may pray as we want, but even the scriptures attest to the need to combine faith with work and wonders aloud if we could multiply grace while we dwell in sin. The singular sin of a political structure is the deliberate distortion of the relationship between its component parts and this is what we have managed to do in the last forty-seven years.

Consider the following. We have centralised all security services including the police, but we have not seen any improvement in our security situation. One rationale for centralisation of security is that states executives may use the police for political purposes. It’s unclear how that rationale squares up with what’s going on in Rivers State now. And assume that the tendency to politicise state police is real. Are we so out of ideas for dealing with such scenario? Are there no constitutional means of ensuring that the management of state police is kept out of politics?

There have been proposals for the centralisation of all elections, including state and local government elections. The assumption here must be that states cannot be trusted to conduct free and fair elections into their local governments. But we have witnessed cases of election fraud, rigging, and manipulation with elections conducted by INEC. And now the new idea is for local governments to come under the federal authority through direct funding. For, if state governments have no budgetary relationship with their local governments, the reality is that they will have no political relationship with them. Yet local governments are units within particular states.

Recent events show clearly that some options are not available to the Nigerian state in the matter of dealing with the plurality of its component parts. The reality of geography ensures that nationality groups cannot be assimilated one into another. That reality seals our fate as a plural state. Political leaders and actors affirm it in various ways when they are sincere and honest. They embrace their kith and kin especially when they thrive no matter where they may reside in and outside the country. Of course, they can be hypocritical if and when they are sure of its political benefit.

There is another way we show that nationalities and ethnicities rule our space. Residency rights should normally come with responsibilities. But we claim the rights in various ways and then renege on the responsibilities. Census times and election times see the most inter-sate and inter-zonal movements of people across the nation. Yet both of these are politically essential and sensitive activities in a republic. Consider the case of Lagos. If many of its residents go back to their home states for census only to come back after, Lagos is shortchanged and placed in a position of disadvantage in the allocation of resources that are essential for residents. What has been the response of political leaders to such a reality?

It is also not an option to exclude, excise, or alienate one nationality or another from the assembly of nationalities that make up the republic. Every nationality has a unique contribution to make to the upliftment of the nation’sprofile and deserves an adequate space to do so as well as the respect of all. To do this, however, we must recognise the uniqueness of each, what it brings to the table, and what it needs to make its contributions. For far too long, we have fallen prey to the political manipulation by the elite who exploit national sentiments for political advantage. But that doesn’t mean that nationality is unreal. It means that it needs to be actively and productively engaged for the good of the nation.

If neither assimilation nor excision is an option in our engagement with our diversity and plurality, what is? From the foregoing, it seems clear that our option is to acknowledge the reality, embrace it, welcome it, and make it work for the good of the nation. This is sometimes referred to as the pluralist approach to nation-building. Pluralism recognises, affirms, and respects plurality. What holds together members of diverse cultural, linguistic, and religious nationalities that comprise the Nigerian state is the right and privilege of citizenship. Since none can assimilate another or be assimilated, and since none canexcise another or be excised, we must devise an ingenious way of inclusion and recognition of all in the varieties that each brings to the fold. The political arrangement that best deals with this is federalism in its purest form. That, in all seriousness, is the task that we have to perform successfully.

Opalaba once said that the most dreadful disease that an individual may be afflicted with is shamelessness, the inability to experience shame. I think he is right because while there is medication for dealing with, if not curing most other dreadful diseases, there is none for shamelessness.

A nation is a collection of individuals and multi-nations are collections of nations. But while there is a common denominator of individuals, the nation is more than the collection of individuals that makes it up and therefore the most dreadful disease that ails an individual isn’t necessarily the same as that which ails the nation or multi-nation.

I hate to do it, but let’s ignore the sage for a moment, put all semantics aside, and assume for the purpose of this dialogue that Nigeria is a nation. Sure, it is a nation of nations, a multi-nation. All that we need to establish from this is that Nigeria is not Opalaba—not an individual entity. Therefore the disease that ails Nigeria is not the same as that which ails Opalaba. And even if the disease of shamelessness ails some or many its members and their leaders, it cannot be validly inferred that shamelessness ails Nigeria as a nation.

What then is the most dreadful disease that ails Nigeria as a nation? Let us consider some notoriously famous candidates: leadership, followership, poverty, inequality, sinfulness (godlessness), and diversity. This is by no means exhaustive; but they suffice for my purpose which is to show that none of them qualifies as the most dreadful ailment that afflicts Nigeria.

Leadership is important and I have also argued in several column entries that in the life of a nation, “leadership matters.” A visionless leadership ruins a nation while a visionary one builds it up. It was Chief Awolowo’s leadership that gave the Southwest a head start. And because we have not been blessed with that kind of leadership at the centre since the beginning of the republic, we are where we are. Still inefficient and ineffective leadership is not the most dreadful disease because there is a cure for it, especially in a democracy. If a republic suffers from bad leadership it has the means of correcting it and effecting a change that it needs. This is where followership comes in.

It has been suggested that Nigeria doesn’t have a problem of leadership; rather its problem is that of followership. The proposition makes a lot of sense. As I have just argued in the last paragraph a republic has options with citizen participation in the choice of leaders. That is what elections are for. But a nation that is afflicted with the disease of followership cannot get its act together to secure an effective cure for the disease of leadership. And it ends up replicating and multiplying delinquents as leaders. We have had this demonstrated incontrovertibly at many levels in the short history of Nigeria. Still followership is not the most dreadful disease.

The disease of followership is attributable to certain curable causes which include poverty and ignorance both of which facilitate the onset of the disease of inequality. It follows that if we eliminate the cause, we may effectively eliminate the disease. We cannot here avoid reference to the sage again, for he had the foresight to know what the country needed to make progress. He zeroed in on investment in public education to cure the disease of poverty and ignorance, and improve the condition of followership.

If we followed the sage’s prescription, we would not now have 69% of Nigerians living below poverty line as reported by the African Development Bank, or over 40 million citizens unemployed according to the information volunteered by Dr. Christopher Kolade, the Chairman of Subsidy Reinvestment Programme (SURE-P). Of course, without a good educational programme, mass ignorance is assured, and a nation denies itself the availability of human talents for the initiation of development projects and without a critical mass of those projects, there can be no employment opportunities. But mass ignorance does more than make development impossible. It also makes impossible the critical reflections on one’s condition, which is the first step towards seeking change and improvement.

Many of our social ills have been attributed to the trio of ignorance, poverty, and inequality. Thus, religious or ethnic militancy has been considered as having a direct causal relationship with these three ailments. This is in keeping with the common belief that a hungry man is an angry man, and it is true that the devil finds work for the idle hand. So sinfulness or godlessness is a direct result of poverty even in the case of those committing atrocities in the name of God. But as I have argued above, with the right remedies in place, these are curable diseases and the most proven of those remedies is a good educational system combined with an employment strategy that guarantees good livelihood that promotes human dignity.

In Nigeria today, all the various ailments discussed above can be cured if we didn’t have a more serious ailment. Our sister nations succeeded where we failed. Brazil is one of the most recent success stories. I listened to a Morning Edition radio program on my way to work this week on how Brazilians moved from a mostly poverty-ridden country to a nation of middle and upper classes. Brazilians used to wait five months to secure interviews for visa to the United States of America. Now they wait for two days and the interviews last only a few minutes. This is because the Consulate knows that Brazilians have the money to spend in the US.

Diversity is the last on my list. And though it moves us closer to the most dreadful ailment, diversity itself is not our disease. The United State of America is a country that makes its diversity its strength.

The most dreadful disease that afflicts Nigeria as a nation is a genetic one; it is a birth disorder. But that is not the worse part. Birth disorders can be corrected with genetic modification. The most serious of our ailment is denial. We are in self-denial about our ailment. And a nation in denial will continue to suffer under the burden of self-deception and a failure to acknowledge that it is on the road to self-annihilation.

Now, let me come back to the assumption I made at the inception of this discussion. I suggested that we ignore the sage and assume that Nigeria is a nation. I now want to say that we do so at our peril. But that is what we have done in the last forty years. We even abused him when he dared to suggest that Nigeria is a geographical expression, andbrought it up over and over again to scuttle his political ambition. Yet the truth is that our actions and attitude have never proved him wrong.

Indeed, the individuals and groups that deny Awolowo’s conscientious declaration in public, urge it in the privacy of their ethnic conclaves. We are a nation of hypocrites and charlatans. We have managed to deceive ourselves about the authenticity of our claim to nationhood status. However, if we sincerely bring our private sentiments to bear on the dialogue about what the country needs to move forward, we would zero in on our denial and we would make the necessary constitutional arrangements to bring us into a more perfect union. Until then, we are only day-dreamers and shadow chasers.

“The president is right. Nigerian leaders should stop playing ethnic politics. Yes, we started as a nation of nations. But we accepted even if reluctantly the imposition of one-nation status and we have lived together as such for almost a hundred years. Damn it, we are celebrating our centennial next year. So what’s wrong with our people? When will they stop speaking in tongues and embrace WAZOBIA?”

“Welcome, Mr. WAZOBIA and Mr. President’s comrade-in-arms. But I have two questions for you. First, are you aware of the philosophical jargon “Ought implies can?” You must, since you are a philosopher. Second, and this is for you as a surrogate of the president in this matter: Did Mr. President look in the mirror?”

Opalaba will never stop shocking me. Even when I was certain that I knew my good friend and would vouch for him, he had always surprised me. This time, I had simply presented a case for President Jonathan’s latest insight thinking that it was something Opalaba shared in view of his claim to a cosmopolitan lifestyle.

“Ought implies can? Yes, of course; but what has it got to do with this matter? I asked my friend. To suggest that I ought to do something implies or presupposes or assumes that I can do it. So you may not insist on an ethical obligation for me to jump over a 12ft fence because I simply cannot. How is that related to the presidential injunction to fellow Nigerians to stop playing ethnic politics? Do you imply that Nigerians cannot but play ethnic politics?”

“Yes, and I stand by that claim, obviously to your disappointment because you and Mr. President are idealists. But I don’t trust you. Indeed, I see a tongue-in-cheek scenario when anyone makes that kind of claim, knowing fully well in my mind that behind every such claim there is an agenda.Surely, the President and his aides have always come up with his image as father of the nation. And a father has to bring all of his children together. But the same aides don’t shy away from throwing jingoistic bombshell when it suits them. Hence my second question: Does the President look in the mirror? Does he realize that the pest that assails the vegetable of unity is inside?” Opalaba concludes.

“Prove it!” I challenged my friend.

“Of course, you would feign ignorance as if you don’t follow the news. When Ijaw militants vowed to end Nigeria as we know it unless Mr. President is allowed a second term, where were you? When elder statesman Edwin Clark claimed Goodluck as his son and challenged the North, where were you? And for the sake of everything that is decent and honorable, where was the Presidency? Did you hear a rebuke?

“Sure, I followed those exchanges,” I answered Opalaba.” But as you also know, there is no smoke without fire. And Ijaw militants or elder statesmen didn’t start the raucous atmosphere that ensued. They were reacting to the demeaning nature of contemporary Nigerian politics, one that appears to favor majority. And you are also aware that as it is in national politics, so it is in state and local politics. Minorities feel marginalized. In the case of the south-south, they are asserting their right to have one of their own at the center in recognition of their status as stakeholders in the Nigerian project. Is there something wrong with that? I asked my friend.

“Nothing is wrong. Indeed, you just made my point because as I would go on to show, it is also natural.

“There are two important elements of ethnic identity, especially in the context of post-colonial African states. First is the natural tendency for language, especially mother tongue, to unite and divide. We had an opportunity at the dawn of independence to use our mother tongues to unite through the auspices of a language policy that would have ensured that from elementary to secondary school, Nigerian languages were compulsory. We chose not to. We not only embraced English as our national language, we also encourage the study of other foreign languages. Yet mother tongues remain the only mode of communication in our local communities and states, uniting speakers and separating them from non-speakers. We cannot avoid ethnic politics as long as we embrace linguistic diversity.

“Second, while we embraced the so-called world religions and abandoned traditional religions for good, we have also managed in our own ways to ethnicize Islam and Christianity. So we speak falsely of Christian South and Islamic North and this is what has entered our political attitude. A national candidate from the North is expected to be a Muslim while his or her counterpart from the South is expected to be a Christian. This stereotypical attitude to politics has been with us for as long as the beginning of the republic and we deem it natural. Where then is the urge to jettison ethnic politics?”

Opalaba went on.

“What is particularly troubling to me in the case of President Jonathan is how he failed to exploit the national goodwill that he enjoyed at the beginning of his term. First, it was the will of the nation that he assumed office as Acting President. Those that are now vilified as ethnic jingoists were the fighters that rallied on his behalf. They were nationalists at that time. There was a national outrage when it appeared that he was not going to get the nomination of his party on account of a zoning formula. And when he finally got the ticket, he appeared to have a nationwide mandate, though rigging took place in a number of states. What this showed was that in spite of the tendency to ethnicize, Nigerians were willing to look, not at the sound of the tongue, but at the content of the character. And the question is, how has that victory been managed?

“When the same voters complained of leadership vacuum in the matter of dealing with insecurity and unemployment, what has been the response? Now that there is palpable dissatisfaction with the state of the nation, our people are accused of playing ethnic politics. And you want me to go along with that judgment?”

“Minority parties in the National Assembly showed tremendous courage and sound judgment when they voted for House Officers on the basis, not of their ethnic origin, but of their conscience prompted by their judgment about who can better do the job. The Nigerian Governors’ Forum voted to reelect their Chairman on the basis of their judgment of his performance and the fact that they did not appreciate external influence on the affairs of the forum. Where was ethnic politics in that event? It would appear that those external forces that expected the Northern Governors to vote as a block deserved the accusation of ethnic politics, and there were good indications that they were acting on behalf of the Presidency. So can the kettle really justifiably demean the blackness of the pot?”

“I would go further,” Opalaba continued. I am tired of being preached to about national unity. Politics is about interests. John Locke got it right better than your favorite political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We come to the political table with our various interests. Those interests don’t get left behind as we enter the doors of the state or national assembly. Otherwise, we would not be treated to rancorous debates about “what my people deserve.” Birds of the same political feather flock together in pursuit of their interests. Against our idealistic tendency to castigate and criminalize ethnicity, we must be aware of its behind-the-scene appeal as it colors deliberations which are supposedly in the national interest. Ethnic politics is not the enemy; deceptive embrace of national politics is.”

Thus Opalaba ended his unsolicited lecture. And as God Old Cicero would say: Oro pesi je.”