Category: Columnists

(New trends in nation formation)

Almost five hundred years after the Treaty of Westphalia, the nation-state paradigm continues to fascinate as a major work in progress. No one is sure of how it will end, or which strange turn it will take in even the most developed centres of the globe. Like the novel genre which consecrated its arrival, its obituary has been announced several times only for it to arrive as a ghostly guest at its own funeral. So till date, the nation-state remains the dominant instrument for mapping territorial space.

Like the famous owl of Minerva which often begins its journey after the events, the nation often begins its real journey after the pundits have exhausted themselves. Most times, it is better for people to vote than to revolt. Elections, when and where free and fair, remain the most potent weapon for arbitrating and modulating the destiny of the nation.

Sometimes, a single election assumes the status of a national or regional referendum. As it has been noted, people fight and die for a cause only to discover that what they have fought for is not what they have achieved. Since human existence is luckily finite, it is then left for others to pick up the gauntlet. Elections often play a sick joke on humanity in the process of guiding their affairs.

Last week as the good people of Ondo state in Nigeria marginally voted for a continuation of the status quo or a version of sub-regional self-determination, a more historic referendum loomed large in the near distance and became an almost inevitable reality rather than an elusive mirage. British Prime minister, David Cameron and Scotland’s pro-independence first minister, Alex Salmond, meeting in Edinburgh finally agreed to a referendum to determine the 400 year union between England and Scotland. It must take place by 2014. Is this end of the first truly modern nation-state, or the end of the beginning as Winston Churchill, the most famous Englishman of all time will put it?

Within the context of what is known as la longue dure or the long arch of history, it is possible to view the Ondo election as a botched or bungled referendum which will return to haunt. It is also possible that what we are witnessing is the rise of sub-ethnic nationalism or the most dramatic instance of the segmentation of elite consciousness within the old region. If the issues raised are not immediately addressed, they will make regional integration a forlorn dream, a fatal dagger in the heart of the thematisation of national narrative in terms of regional aspiration.

In its most depressing possibility, it may well be that by the time the Ondo conundrum is resolved, another political warlord would have struck from another direction in the old region, further politically dispersing the tribe. We may yet have military rule to thank for this Balkanisation of regional consciousness. With the benefit of hindsight, it may well be the military’s most enduring contribution to nation-building.

But if on the other hand, a greater national emergency were to intervene in the nearest future, the old regional consciousness will reassert its superiority and supremacy in a new form irrespective of local opposition. It is hard to imagine a more impossible taskmaster than the nation-state paradigm and its tortuous and mind bending history.

Be that as it may, the global import of the impending referendum in Britain whittles into utter insignificance a mere election in a remote state of a former British colony. You cannot give what you don’t have. The British model of nation-formation is put to severe test by developments in their own backyard. The sorcerer’s apprentice cannot be wiser than the sorcerer.

As it was the case in their own nation, the manual is to forcibly weld the nation of different nationalities through the violent instrumentality of a master-nationality around which the new nation must congeal and coalesce by blood, sweat and tears. This model has come to grief in the old India, in Sudan, in Southern Africa and elsewhere after much strife and bloodshed. After being exported abroad, the virus has now returned to the original carrier. It is the turn of the English patient.

But we must thank god for small mercies. The impending referendum explodes several myths of the nation which Nigerian authorities and Nigerians must do well to study and monitor closely. First, it is always better to allow the diverse people of a territorial space to determine the best and most creative form of cohabitation rather than hold them together and sometimes against their wish like inmates of a colonial garrison or a mental asylum.

Second, no nation is ever divinely ordained or handed down from heaven. This is a stupid myth. Finally, the forcible union of disparate groups in a nation-space is not an irreversible or immutable arrangement like the Catholic marriage which is not subject to dissolution and/or annulment. Nations being human constructs are subject to human amendments when and if the form violates the contents. You cannot force a grown up man into the trousers of a toddler.

Yet there are profound ironies and a play of signifiers across rigid binary divisions about the impending referendum which ought to be of interest to us in Nigeria. It is quite curious and intriguing that it has always been Conservative governments that are in the forefront of championing Devolution in Britain rather than the more radical and reform-oriented Labour Party. In 1993, John Major had declared that the nation would not decline were the majority of the people in Northern Island to vote to join the Republic of Ireland.

The point is that with its roots in Fabian Socialism and its consciousness steeped and forged in an indivisible proletarian consciousness and pan-Britain confraternity of the socially aggrieved, Labour Party would always view separatist movements through the prism of suspicion and unease. Old statist Bolsheviks with their command economy and command politics are still very much alive. In any case, the separation of Scotland from England would rob Labour of substantial electoral fortunes. The socialist vision resonates more with the underdog..

But it is also possible that after centuries of cohabitation, the Scots have come to love and appreciate the immense economic advantages and the political homogeneity that a bigger British identity confers over the shrivelled possibilities of separatist laagers. In the end, material wellbeing often trumps cultural and ethnic grandstanding.

In a revealing survey, it was shown that if the referendum were to be conducted at this moment, the majority vote would go for the retention of the old union. When disparate entities are forced together over a long period, they tend to develop certain overarching commonalities. This should warm the heart of Nigeria’s old military nationalists and one-nation panjandrums.

What should even intrigue concerned Nigerians the more is the fact that the prospective Scottish nation will have the Queen of England as its titular head just as it has been the case in Australia and Canada. It will remain in NATO and retain the pound sterling as an ancillary buffer to pressures from the Euro-zone. It is certainly going to be a strange new-type nation and one whose creative nuances should be of interest to those interested in a reinvention of the outmoded and superannuated model of colonial nationhood foisted on Nigerians..

For the proud, thrifty and tough Scottish people, it may very well be the beginning of the end of a historical nightmare lasting several centuries. The conquest and suppression of the Scots was done with the savagery and brutality that befitted tribes slowly emerging from the Dark Age. There were epic cruelties on both sides. For several decades, the gore remained on the Scottish highlands for all to see.

Deprived of their own empire, the doughty Scots turned inward, to their inner resilience, resources and to the inner empire. They emerged as great builders, statesmen, politicians, great writers, soldiers, scientists, philosophers and intellectuals without which the British Empire would have been impossible. To a large extent, they became model citizens.

But the historic hurt and humiliation remain. Apart from their traditional single malt whiskey, nothing warms the Scottish heart more than when ventilating about the past heroes of the land, particularly Wallace the Braveheart, a man of spectacular bravery and heroism who was subjected to horrendous torture before being crudely dismembered. Yet a recent film about this iconic Scot was dismissed as ninety percent inaccuracies and ten percent lies.

As a conquered race, the Scots could do with such cosmic self-inflation. There is enough evidence to suggest that the early Scots were cast as primitive and uncivilised people by the victorious English.. For example, the great English man of letters, Samuel Johnson, a.k.a the Dean, subjected his faithful Scottish companion, amanuensis and intellectual confidante to scathing racist taunts based on his country of origins. At some point, Johnson solemnly informed Boswell that wild oats which was the staple diet among the Scots was fed to animals in England.

Yet it was not always a tale of woes. The Scots were allowed to pursue their own way of life and to pursue life in accordance with their culture, particularly in the areas of education, economy and religion. All that is solid often melts into thin air indeed. In a play of profound ironies, it is even rumoured that the famous Scottish kilt, the equivalent of a national attire, was actually the invention of an English nobleman. Snooper congratulates the good people of Britain on this impending referendum. We recommend the model to all nations in distress.