Category: Saturday

An interesting dialogue between two characters in the Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy’s 19th century classic, ‘Anna Karenina’, recently came to my mind in the wake of the controversy generated by the new statue of the legendary statesman, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, just commissioned by the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akimnwumi Ambode. Under focus in this conversation was a new painting by the artist, Mikhailov:

“What is the subject of the picture?” asked Anna.

“Christ before Pilate. Christ is represented as a Jew with all the realism of the new school”. And led on by the question about the subject of the picture to one of his favorite topics, Golenishchev began to expound his views.

“I don’t understand”, he said, “how they can make so gross an error. Christ already has his definite embodiment in the works of the old masters. If, therefore, they want to depict not God but a revolutionary or a sage, let them take some character from history – Socrates, Franklin, Charlotte Corday – but certainly not Christ. They choose the one person that cannot be chosen as a subject for art, and then…”

Golenishchev’s quarrel here was with the artist’s departure in his work from what was supposed to be the eternal, unchanging, inflexible notion of Christ as deity and savior of man. The exercise of the artist’s creative imagination and license of expression has thus always been a constant source of vigorous contestation across time and space. It did not begin and will not end with the Nigerian artist, Hamza Atta’s, new statue of Awo.

The notable English journalist, Malcolm Muggeridge, made the same point in his magnificent narrative portrait of the life of Christ simply titled, ‘Jesus’, which was first published in 1975. According to him, the story of the life of Christ had “been more told, mulled over, analyzed and expounded and illustrated, than any other in human history. So many hands! So many and such diverse versions and interpretations…!” Thus, in statues, paintings, films, literature, music, scholarship and more, there has been the ceaseless “questing for the historical Jesus, the freedom-fighting Jesus, the erotic or phallic Jesus, the proletarian or revolutionary Jesus”.

As it is with Jesus, so is it destined to be with any great and outstanding historic figure, Awo by no means excluded. The lives of such personages are too dynamic, rich and expansive to be imprisoned within the confines of a static, one-dimensional perspective. This was the point that the columnist and author, Sam Omatseye, made in his recent insightful piece on the issue titled ‘Awo’s Bu(r)st’. The critics of the new statue wonder why the sage is depicted sitting down rather than standing and without his two fingers raised in the immortal victory sign that was his political trade mark. To compound matters, they moan, the statue has Awo uncharacteristically and ‘unnaturally’ wearing laced shoes when dressed in Agbada contrary to Yoruba culture.

As Governor Akinwumi Ambode’s Special Adviser on Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mrs. Adebimpe Akinsola, has rightly pointed out, however, the statue is a creative and artistic work and not a photographic production. Thus, the artist’s interpretative imagination and creative essence are given free reign. If every new statue of a historic figure must be a replica of already existing ones, then why not simply stifle the individual’s creative juices and be content with the familiar. Surely, our world would be a much poorer place were that to be. The audacity to challenge the conventional and question established paradigms has always been a condition for progress in all spheres of endeavour including the creative arts.

Does every statue of Awo necessarily have to depict him standing and flashing the victory sign? I don’t think so. If I had the gift of artistic creativity, for instance, I would love to depict Awo neither standing nor politicking but as he knelt in a meditative posture of prayer without his cap on at the Evangelical Church of Yahweh in Ilorin, Kwara State, sometime in 1978. Awo was in Ilorin in the course of his campaign tour across the country for the 1979 election and chose to worship in that church.

Was it a strategically wise thing for him to do in a predominantly Muslim state like Kwara, particularly in Ilorin, the state capital and a town where the rival NPN’s Dr. Olusola Saraki enjoyed fanatical support? I don’t think so. But the point is that he did.  That picture of the sage with his gracefully graying hair in worshipful repose in Primate Theophilus Olobayo’s church in Ilorin made the front pages of both the Nigerian Tribune and the defunct Nigerian Herald newspapers at the time and remains etched in my memory. What a great work of art it would make in my view. Awo was not just a politician. He was also a devout Christian and profound mystic.

No less true is the fact that Awo’s many triumphs and victories in public were preceded by his far less visible, yet no less important discipline of first sitting down for long hours of thinking, reading, meditating and planning in pursuit of his visionary developmental agenda for Nigeria. There is certainly nothing out of place in portraying Awo sitting down gracefully as the statue does. But then what do we make of the projection of the sage in laced shoes while in agbada? This seems to be incongruous for a man who was not only proud of his Yoruba heritage and culture but was also reputed to have a very tasteful dress sense without being frivolous.

Here again, however, I submit that we must respect the artist’s freedom to express himself without inhibiting fetters. Hamza Atta has explained the thought processes that led to the production of the Awo statue. We have the right to agree or disagree with him. But we also have the duty to defend his right to give expression to his artistic perception of Awo particularly because his work, in my view, retains acceptable visual fidelity to the sage’s image. More importantly, like any interesting work of art, Hamza Atta’s interpretation of Awo has provoked me to think further and more deeply about the Awo persona. Are the laced shoes entirely out of place in a figurative depiction of Awo? Not necessarily.

Yes, Awo was an accomplished professional and a man of outstanding abilities. He was immensely wealthy. Very early in life, he had vowed to “make myself formidable intellectually, morally invulnerable, to make all the money that is possible for a man with my brains and brawn to make in Nigeria”. He achieved his goals and became fabulously affluent. But Awo was a wealthy man with a difference. He never joined the social clubs that it was fashionable for men of his class to belong to. Awo did not delight in the indulgent pastimes of the opulent. He once declared that the time some of his contemporaries frittered away on frivolities, he spent burning the midnight oil and working hard to seek solutions to Nigeria’s problems.

Unceasing labour and industry defined Awo’s existence. He had the means but refused to yield himself to a life of ignoble ease and unconscionable luxury. And I refer here to not just mental but also arduous physical exertions. When campaigning for the presidency in 1978/79, for instance, the sage visited virtually every Senatorial District in Nigeria – a truly exacting undertaking. Beyond this, Awo, despite his enormous wealth, was a tireless intellectual labourer for the liberation of the downtrodden.

His articulation and elaboration of the ideology of ‘democratic socialism’ was one of the most rigorous intellectual enterprises aimed at liberating and empowering the poor and disadvantaged in African political thought. Within this context, Hamza Atta’s Awo is spot on. The Agbada depicts the accomplished and successful Awo, the sagely epitome of Yoruba cultural essence. And the laced boot-like shoes symbolizes Awo as the ceaseless labourer throughout his life, uninhibited by his personal triumph over poverty, for the emancipation of the masses from the shackles of misery and deprivation. There is some point of convergence in the seeming contradiction.

Governor Ambode has not only contributed to further immortalizing Awo through this commissioned statue of the sage, the lively debate generated by the work will surely rekindle interest in the life, times and ideas of the great man. Perhaps it will spur some to seek out and read some of Awo’s immortal speeches and books. One work of art on Awo which I would so much like to see is that of the great man in his prison uniform behind bars during his unjust incarceration in Calabar prison. That was a memorable even though painful event in his passage through life that must be captured and preserved for posterity. Yes, let a thousand flowers of artistic imagination bloom from Awo’s continuing life of ‘Unfinished Greatness’.

(Today, Illuminations yields this space to the notable progressive politician, statesman, author, pro-democracy activist, former Chief Whip of the Federal House of Representatives and Chairman of the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), Honourable OLAWALE OSHUN, who reacts to the columnist’s two-part piece on the recent ‘Ibadan Declaration’ by a broad cross-section of Yoruba political leaders and groups. Please read and let the debate continue).

 

Even if you are not a fan of Segun Ayobolu, you cannot deny him one thing: the soundness of his ideas and the thoroughness of his writings. I get the impression that he deliberately sets out to make the job of a critique hard, what with his strong foray into history and the deep analytical interpretation of his historical excursion.

My view is reinforced by his recent treatise on the Ibadan Declaration and what could have been Awolowo’s views or position there-on. Great and incisive writers however usually have a problem. The problem is that in attempting to mould the opinions of their readers, they also run the risk of seeking to impose their subjectivity on the unwary amongst them. There is nothing wrong in that, just that when a writer comes up with an impeccable track record, then he owes his readers that duty of laying all the cards on the table. Otherwise their readers and or followers, in this case, I consider myself an avid follower of Ayobolu, might be receiving the short end of the stick..

Why start with the above conclusion? I am doing so because there is a greater prospect of getting lost in your thoughts when you read columnists like Segun. For, you will need to admit that certain incontrovertible admissions had been made. First, it would be a moot point anyone challenging the mandate of Ibadan conveners considering the mobilisation that preceeded the Conference and the potential for others to champion their own views. Overall, he conceded that an idea is not necessarily bad because of its messenger, or implied motive of the messenger.

His thoroughness in this submission captures what would have been Awolowo’s standpoint in this great debate on National Restructuring. Awolowo’s thoughts are laid out in some of his writings, particularly, Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution (1966) and the Peoples Republic (1968). All followers of Awolowo would do same, not only because he remains Nigeria’s greatest thinker but because he is also the greatest doer. He was not just one who admonishes he remains, in my mind, the most avid follower of the Biblical injuction that ‘you do unto others what you would want them do onto you’. He did onto others in and out of office, what he would want them do onto him.

Before I come back to Ayobolu’s treatise on what Awolowo would have advocated in the Restructuring debate, let me state as a member of one of the Yoruba Groups that heralded the Ibadan Declaration, that the Committee set up to organise the event was carefully put together to represent all political hues, and to reach out to Yoruba leaders who could be said to have transcended groups and/or political inclinations. That of course is not to say a few individuals in the committee didn’t grandstand, pretending to have the answers and/or pretending to belong to a dominant Yoruba view point, Such people soon found themselves agreeing with others to present a common platform. That platform enabled and ennobled the situation in which those who hitherto had opposed and rubbished restructuring came out in the open to acknowledge the need for it and also suggested the path towards doing so.

For once, Yoruba progressives and conservatives, religious, business and traditional leaders came out to acknowledge the need to review and reform urgently Nigeria’s political system. If there is any doubt as to the Ibadan Declaration achieving that, the doubt was cleared effectively with the outcome of the Ibadan Conference of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on the same subject a fortnight after.

There are two main planks of Ayobolu’s reference to what Chief Awolowo would have advocated in the on-going debate on restructuring. The first is on the call for a return to the parliamentary system of government. The second deals with a call to return to the regional structure of government. Awolowo’s preference, argued Ayobolu, would have been another system of government, since hitherto we had ‘indiscriminately and unscientifically followed the British democratic practice, as if it was the best method’.  Awolowo was quoted to have rated the French presidential system better than the American presidential system which was also adjudged better than the parliamentary system.

In other words, according to Ayobolu, Awolowo’s argument against the parlimnetary system relied amongst others on the limited ‘Ladder’ theory, in which the Head of State may only be accountable to his constituency, his party and his fellow parliamentarians, and the ‘Technocratic’ theory which would make it possible for the head of government ‘to assemble the best team of ministers which his party or region can offer’. One other plank with which Ayobolu seeks to nail home his Awolowo’s possible restructuring advocacy is in ‘Cost of governance’ with a dual contention that regionalism is bound in the recommended outlay to escalate the cost of governance and also deny the central government the much needed funding which the sage himself admitted would be required to fund its vital duties.

Would it be uncharitable if I contend that Ayobolu deliberately paid scant attention to what marks a federal system of government from other systems despite his suggestion in the second piece of a power imbalance between the center and the states, hence not foreclosing that the center could be tyrannical in the exercise of such powers; and the second, a deliberate act, which is that he brought in Awolowo’s name apparently  to silence those he believes would think twice to critique the sage?

At Independence, Nigeria’s founding fathers settled for a federal system of government, opting for the parliamentary system, ensuring that the powers of the center and the federating regions were in parity. If Awolowo had reasons to advocate additional federating regions he had in mind the need to protect the minorities as distinct from the three main nationalities of Yoruba, Hausa-Fulani and Igbo. His focus, were the minorities in the western region, the reason he supported the creation of the Mid West region, the minorities in the East and the minorities in the North. If there had been apparent goodwill and belief in the survival of this country by the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) and the National Council of Nigerian citizens (NCNC), the same speed with which the Mid West was carved out of the west  would have been replicated in the North and the East respectively. Consequently those clamouring for six geographical zones for the present day Nigeria must have realised that the very first tenet of federalism is that the federating governments must never be the weakling, which is now the cross of the 36 states in Nigeria.

It is unbelievable that Ayobolu’s thesis on the effective competition amongst Nigerian federating governments in the First Republic gave the credit to the quality of leadership without interrogating how the leadership emerged in the first instance. How, may I ask, did credible and hard-working leadership emerge simultaneously in the federating regions of the West, the North and the East? Was it through providence? How about the predisposing influence of the form and structure of government? The competition amongst Nigerian leaders and their respective governments before and after independence was not just happenstances. Yes, the leaders were disciplined but the system also ensured that they remained disciplined and focused.

But let me return to the invocation of Awolowo’s name and ideas to dismiss the core argument of the current demand for restructuring at least in the Yoruba speaking zone of Nigeria. From 1966 and 1968, when the said longing for the American and French presidential system of government over and above the British Parliamentary system began and now, is half a century, a long time indeed.

Before I dwell on the time element, notice must be taken of Awolowo’s commitment in spite of his preference, to ‘try to adapt the best in the French and American methods and introduce our own innovations’.. Which by interpretation could mean any variation of British parliamentary system, the American presidential system and/or the French presidential system. If the intent was to cure the tripod allegory of Constituency, party and parliamentary colleagues and replace with a nation-wide constituency, time I suggest would have cured the failing.

Half a century in time; can that time ‘exist

independently of the mind’? That is a question Philosophers should contend with; however St.. Augustines Confession posits that ‘knowledge of time depends on the knowledge of movement of things’.

In fifty years so much has moved, forward and backwards, and so much has changed. Aristotle defined time as ‘the number of changes with respect to before and after, ……’. How dynamic therefore time has been, and could the mind have remained static in that lifetime of fifty years?

I ask, since by 1967 through to 1970, Nigeria was immersed in a civil war that claimed almost two million lives. That was a war that could have been avoided if leadership had not been embodied in one person, who saw and perceived himself as the nation. You may argue that at crisis times as Nigeria was just before the war, that such leadership could be necessary, but it still wouldn’t justify a leadership that overwhelms institution. We also have observed since the return to civil rule and the introduction of the presidential system of government how in each successive stage, the president, the governor and the Local government chairman have respectively become tin gods, more than despots, holding and exercising power of life and death over the citizenry, and how such office holders perceive and are perceived as the nation themselves.

Nigeria would in fact have been in a glorious moment had the head of government, at each identified level above, been accountable to his constituency, his party and his parliamentary colleagues. If Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, and Jonathan had been accountable to these institutions, Nigeria would have been a better place. These Presidents, thrown up under the Presidential system, regarded themselves as the sovereign and acted so.

Regarding the power to appoint ministers outside the realms of politicians, the so called technocrats, we know how un-sure footed these technocrats are in government, and how lily livered they can be in advocating and standing up in the interest of ordinary citizens. Mostly they leave office without leaving a mark, and spend considerable time thereafter complaining how they had been marginalised. Dare say that all political parties have members with adequate skills and knowledge, and any, elected and subsequently appointed into ministerial and commissionership position, is bound to be more versatile in applying his skills and in dealing with the citizens.

And would Awolowo have longed for the presidential system in this day and time, with the knowledge which he took to the grave, that even under the mild mannered and religious President Shagari, who is still alive along with some knowing ministers, that an arm of the Nigerian security fabricated reports to position him as a security risk and embarrass him?

I contend therefore that Yoruba people, in approaching the quest for political and Constitutional reforms, do not object to having a unified country, but long for a federation in name and substance. Overall, Yoruba people would not want to be imposed upon, just as it is not ready to impose itself upon anyone. Far reaching consultations revealed that a reversion to the British Parliamentary system is desired by the Yoruba people and that does not stop other federating agents from selecting any other form of government acceptable to their people. Also, in opting for the regional system of government, nothing suggests that the states would not co-exist with the region. The Yoruba are a pragmatic people, they will in the process of crafting their regional constitution decide how to deliver governance at the grass-root level. Nothing concerns the Central government in a federation on how the federating agent decides to run her affairs, including the number of states and how the states are ultimately expected to deliver governance in all its areas.

On resource management, the Yoruba region would seek to retain up to 65% of all resources generated in its area, and with all other federating governments concede 35% to the central government. That of course resolves Ayobolu’s implied fear relying on the need for a virile funding for the central government. Even the 35% would leave sufficient room for the central government to run its affairs and still by law allot resources to weak federating governments to run their affairs .