GIVEN the candour and trenchancy of former vice president Atiku Abubakar’s views on the state of the nation last week in Abuja, federal officials may spend more time analysing his motives than understanding the import and relevance of his constructive ideas. Alhaji Atiku had at a public presentation of Chido Onumah’s book, We Are All Biafrans, made scathing and particular remarks on President Muhammadu Buhari’s management of the economy and politics. The president, he said, must find ways of leading the effort to restructure the federation, decentralise it, and make it less suffocating. He was also uncomfortable with the president’s economic management style, especially his approach to the herdsmen crisis.
The former vice president caused many to wince when he suggested that Nigeria was saddled with “a leadership that is not prepared to learn from the past and a leadership that is also not prepared to lead.” A few days earlier, the president had told media interviewers he had no interest in revisiting past efforts, particularly those of his predecessor, ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, at restructuring the federation through a national conference. Whether Alhaji Atiku was responding to the president’s unwise view is not clear; but it is enough that the views are strong, relevant and weighty. The president himself had been roundly condemned for denouncing efforts to restructure the federation in the face of mounting national challenges to peace, stability and growth. So, when the former vice president weighed in on the same subject, and couched his view so trenchantly, he was likely to be accused of directly referring to and denouncing the president’s stance.
In some respects, the former VP had earlier made some of the remarks attributed to him, though with perhaps less severity than last week’s. His views are probably gaining traction because of the president’s disregard for the true change the electorate thought they had voted for. Of course, the electorate knew the president must grapple with a broken economy made anaemic by the Jonathan government. It was also clear by the time of the last polls that many other aspects of the nation were either broken or about to be broken. Once sworn in, the president had to prioritise the nation’s existential challenges and deal with them firmly and urgently. But almost immediately, it also became clear to the public that the president needed to expand his vista and multitask very quickly, for too many other ancillary challenges were beginning to crop up and complicate the problems, making them intractable.
But instead of responding to the widening gyre of crises gnawing at the country’s innards, the president stuck to his default mode, scorned the campaign to extend his areas of concern, isolated himself from both his party and other support bases elsewhere, and postured grandly as a lawgiver whose person, views and perspectives were sacrosanct and incorruptible. That standoffishness, combined with the deepening and metastasizing national crises, and a general unwillingness to explore new ideas and seek help from a wider political and ideological base, have unnerved the country and appeared to stultify the president’s efforts. This may explain why Alhaji Atiku’s seemingly harsh advice resonated so widely last week.
The Buhari presidency will be tempted to focus on Alhaji Atiku’s person. They should resist that temptation. Even if the former vice president was motivated by malicious reasons, his views are not. He was right on Niger Delta; he was right on the need to repair the country’s political structure; he was right to ask for new economic paradigms; and though it may grate on the president’s nerves, the former vice president appeared to be giving the problems of the country more thought and was even sounding presidential, not to talk of courageous, a commodity he had never lacked. It must be humbling to the presidency that Alhaji Atiku addressed these salient issues, and did it very well. Should the presidency join issues with him on his observations, they would embarrass themselves, for they would be forced to debunk arguments admired by the rest of the country, and put the lie unsuccessfully to frustrations sometimes unspoken but nonetheless felt. No matter what motives propelled Alhaji Atiku to give vent to his views on the nation’s crises, he has done the Buhari presidency a world of good to draw their attention to these problems in their first year in office.
It is also not unlikely that Alhaji Atiku, an unrepentantly ambitious politician, had other motives for publicising his succinct views. He has never hidden his ambition to be president, and inspired by the trajectory by which President Buhari assumed the presidency, the former VP would hold out hope for a glorious electoral future. In terms of courage, which he exemplified by his opposition to former president Olusegun Obasanjo between 2003 and 2007, he has shown himself to be a forthright and sensible politician and individual, one not afraid to gamble his future on a single throw of the dice. He has proved adept at synthesising public yearnings far better than President Buhari, and is more accessible, more gregarious, more gifted at discovering talents and mentoring them, and more nationally inclined, with friends everywhere. There is no doubt he would make a good president, probably a better president.
But he could not have defeated Dr Jonathan in 2015, for the epithets hurled at him by Chief Obasanjo in the years before 2007 stuck to him painfully and remorselessly. He was of course healthier and more endowed than the then Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, the late Umaru Yar’Adua, but Chief Obasanjo had told the country and the world that Alhaji Atiku could not be trusted with the country’s money. The former vice president did everything in his power to shrug off what he described as criminal defamation, but nobody was buying. He ran a good race on the ticket of the then Action Congress (AC) party, but it was a short and hopeless fight. His sojourn in the political wilderness has however not attenuated his vigour, his friendliness, or his presence of mind.
For a man so gifted, so thoughtful and so indomitable, it is a mystery that his virtues are not accompanied or reinforced by the principles and character that define and ennoble greatness and statesmanship. He generally does not flip-flop on ideas and philosophies, but he is unpredictable in party loyalties, jumping from one party to the other casually and almost insouciantly. Had he acquired the staying power and fortitude necessary to undergird his fidelity to ideas, and had he eschewed the lust for power which constantly triggers and dogs his nomadism and political peregrinations, it is not inconceivable he would today be leading the PDP and, in view of a faltering All Progressives Congress (APC) bent on self-destruction, be positioning himself for a powerful bid for the presidency in 2019. But notwithstanding his weaknesses, the nation is blessed to have him in politics, especially the courage and ideas he propagates so admirably.
Category: Sunday
-
Atiku on Buhari and restructuring
-
The Fulani menace is pan-Nigeria
Nigerians would be gravely mistaken if they think that the Fulani menace is limited to rural areas or to farming communities only
“A highly placed citizen from the North, former Governor Balarabe Musa, warned in 2014 that a new insurgency was in the offing – a new insurgency different from Boko Haram, better organized, better armed and much more dangerous than Boko Haram, and planned by some highly influential Nigerians for the purpose of achieving some major political objective in Nigeria. Are we now seeing part of that insurgency?” –GBOGUNGBORO, The Nation, Thursday, 02.06.16
Let me begin by saying that the above title, as it is, not limited to the Fulani herdsmen, is deliberate; deliberate because the Fulani herdsman is, after all, a mere employee of a very big Fulani man/woman and should therefore not be singled out as the problem. It is fascinating, too, that as soon as the ferocious Boko Haram appears beat back, the North has very quickly birthed another “effant terrible” in its place in the form of a Fulani herdsman “much more dangerous than Boko Haram and for the purpose of achieving some major political objective”.
Who can now claim that the North has contributed nothing significant to Nigeria?
As the following reaction to last week’s article will show, Nigerians would be gravely mistaken if they think that the Fulani menace is limited to rural areas or to farming communities only. Though it will not be a complete surprise since a retired General of the Nigerian Army once had his throat unkindly slit at the spot by Fulani herdsmen, it will further confirm what perilous times these people are putting Nigerians through, as The Nation’s Gbogungboro has warned. The only good thing in the reaction is the fact that the Inspector-General of Police is already well aware of this danger and has, unlike the Director-General of the DSS, whose director in Enugu state we have not heard was punished over the brutal Fulani herdsmen attack in that state, whereas the Commissioner of Police has since been transferred. Both officers were reported by the governor to have assured him that they would frustrate the planned attack though we have since learnt, courtesy the Chinua Achebe Center for Leadership and Development (CACLD), that some “Fulanis in the higher levels of the military and the Police do ask their officers to stand down when an attack is imminent”; which is one reason the President’s directive to the security agencies to go after these killers may not yield the desired results.
Engr Wale Ogungbe is the Managing Director of DRY WALLS SYSTEMS, a company specializing in the provision of light weight DRY CONSTRUCTION solutions for all types of buildings, facades, cladding, partitions etc and who together with many of his staff, have reasons to constantly use the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. His account: “My experience with the Nigerian police along the long bridge on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway sometime last week was a sharp contrast from my perspective of the Nigerian police. Around 11:30pm on the day, the driver called to tell me one of my trucks had broken down on the long bridge, approaching Lagos. I drove down to render whatever assistance I could as the driver was carrying some clients’ goods. By the time I got there, I met some armed police men who were already assisting. They not only stayed with him, they also assisted in securing a towing truck to move the truck with the goods to a safer location. I was surprised, but very impressed with the disposition of the police men who asked for no gratification whatever, and we soon got talking. What they told me is so scary I think Nigerians deserve to hear it.
According to the leader of the team, the long bridge on the Lagos – Ibadan expressway, is a particularly dangerous spot and has been identified by the police as a major black spot. He told me that Fulani herdsmen serially attack and kill unsuspecting motorists whose vehicle develops fault along the bridge. And this, he said happens both day and night. Their usual approach is to first pierce the stomach of their victims with a dagger and then go to ransack the vehicles, dispossessing the victims who they then throw down the bridge. According to him, people are killed daily in this fashion that the IGP had to specifically instruct a 24 –hr surveillance on the whole length of the bridge. He told me a particularly chilling one: during one of their surveillance trips, they noticed from the other side of the bridge, a man in a white shirt, trying to replace a flat tyre and they quickly sped down to make a U-turn at the end of the bridge to assist him. Unfortunately, by the time they got to where he was, they only saw blood on the road. Apparently the poor man had been killed and thrown down the bridge. Usually the herdsmen also jump down the bridge. His advice is that if your vehicle ever develops a fault on that bridge, just shut down the car and run away for your dear life because the next 5 minutes may be too late! The IG, he said, has given specific instructions that there must be no report of any attack on the bridge again. For this reason, he said, during the day, policemen are stationed some 250m apart along the bridge and in the evenings, they are replaced with 4 police patrol vehicles, constantly driving, to and fro, the bridge entire length. I asked who these attackers are from his own experience and his prompt answer was that they are Fulani herdsmen who are always carrying daggers, guns and charms, and are attracted to attack stranded motorists at the slightest opportunity. Please publish this so that motorists along that bridge would know what terrible danger they face but the question now is: why would these Fulani herdsmen, who were traditionally known for peacefully grazing their cows, suddenly become a major threat to their host communities?
I would like to thank Wale for this public service. We have the Lagos state governor’s immense assistance to the Nigerian police, a patriotic Inspector-General as well as an effective State Police Command, to thank for the pro-active actions taken so far to safeguard lives on the bridge. But I think I can hazard an answer to Wale’s question. President Buhari must have been absolutely correct when he said in a CNN interview in London that some of these herdsmen are Libyan militiamen, trained by Ghadafi; well-armed and well-trained fighters who fled southwards to West Africa when Ghadafi fell from power. I think what our normally reticent President refused to add, however, is the fact that many, if not all his fellow cattle owners – he has 270 heads of cattle as per his last asset declaration – minus of course the President himself, being a well known lover of Nigeria for which he once publicly wept, must have all gone outside the country to recruit these murderous Muhajideens to protect their heavy investments. I say this because the new Controller-General of Immigration is on record as saying that the department has never recorded any case of such persons entering the country with herds of cattle.
However, as I have stated elsewhere, if President Buhari were a Yoruba man, he would have realised ‘pe iso nrun lara oun’, meaning that the fart smells around him, being both a Fulani and a cattle owner. This should, therefore, have led him to very pro-actively find solutions to the many nagging questions that have arisen about the Fulani herdsmen. Among these, quoting Gbogungboro again are: “What are the true purposes of the grazing reserves being sought? Are they designed by some people to house illegal armies of occupation in the states of the Middle Belt and the South, for the purpose of intimidating the peoples of those places? Are they meant to be jihadist instruments for forcible Islamization? Are they designed as weapons of one ethnic group’s conquest of Nigeria? Do we now have the president’s word that Nigeria is under invasion by Libyan militiamen? And, what does the Nigerian government intend to do about that?”
The President cannot afford to delay his answers to these questions in the face of the many problems Nigeria is currently battling with: economic, Boko Haram, Biafra, Avengers etc.
-
Overwhelmed Nigeria needs to snap out of paralysis
PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari marked one year in office without ceremony. He was right not to. Nigeria’s multifarious problems helped make the anniversary memorable and momentous. The Niger Delta is a cauldron of permanent unrest that has halved crude oil production and national revenue, thus worsening crippling low oil prices and vaulting inflation. The Southeast is in an uproar, threatening to explode in everybody’s face. The anti-corruption war is not yielding fruits as readily and rapidly as the Buhari presidency banked upon. Herdsmen have laid siege to many communities, exacting vengeance for perceived slights and offences, and hurting crop production. Dire socio-economic problems have made insecurity worse, splintered families and the society, predisposed the youths to cultism and other vices, and made hunger and frustrations more likely. In short, the country is in a lather, convulsed by a general sense of failure which the presidency can’t seem to get a handle on.
For months, the Buhari presidency had stridently blamed his predecessor for the incalculable damage done to the economy and polity. As the problems worsened, the blame game has suddenly become vapid and repetitive. Last year it was obvious to the people time would be needed to sweep the Augean stables clean. Now, the people have become restless and despondent. They do not mind waiting; but they are no longer sure the Buhari presidency even knows what to do, or how to do it. They were prepared to endure stagnation for a while; but instead they are being asked to endure much worse, perhaps retrogression. Food prices have skyrocketed, energy costs have become astronomical, and palpable fear of recession is voiced in key sectors of the economy as thousands lose their jobs. The hostile conditions are so inimical to stability that there is pressing fear that both the Niger Delta and the Southeast could simultaneously explode.
It is in the midst of all this that former vice president Atiku Abubakar delivered his bombshell suggesting that the lack of adequate and sensible response to these problems could be blamed on poor leadership. (See the piece above). President Buhari’s uninspiring May 29 speech appears to lend credence to Alhaji Atiku’s conclusions. Even more critical was the president’s general interview given to media establishments as part of his first year anniversary. The interview is doubtless well composed, even eloquent, and honest. It serves as a window into the president’s heart and thinking. But it is also frightening for its lack of profundity, generally misconceived for its facile surrender to political and economic anachronisms, and bewildering in its temper for the manner he excoriated aggressive dissent and unorthodoxies. It is good the interview was published in many newspapers; for then it should afford the president the opportunity to reflect on the questions a second time, and ponder his responses and the public’s reactions to them, again and again to see what he could do differently in the next three years. He can improve if he chooses. For, it seems, the main lesson from the anomalous answers he gave to the serious questions posed to him is that his determination to run his presidency in the unilineal and insular manner he has chosen is simply ruining his presidency.
The president has apparently set too much store by his belonging to everybody and to nobody. But in politics, rather than the diktat he seems enamoured of, he needs to bring people together, meet minds with the best in the land, cast his net far wider than his background has propelled him, make conscious effort to cultivate the trust and friendship of various ethnic groups and religions, prepare a blueprint for the reform and rejuvenation of the various sectors of the society including the judiciary, get a firm grip on the haughty and imperial police and military establishments, and sell a brilliant and pragmatic vision of Nigeria to Nigerians. He has done none of these. He has been stuck with his anti-corruption war and counterinsurgency in the Northeast because he seems to entertain the strange doctrine that nothing else could be done until both issues were dealt with.
He also responded quite bafflingly to the question on national conference by reminding everyone he never supported it, and would not support even the report of the conference. Unsurprisingly, the nation has risen in unison to remind him he does not own the nation, and must revisit the report because the present structure is simply unworkable. The public opposed Dr Jonathan’s conference because they knew it was opportunistic, half-hearted and desperate. If President Buhari does not champion the restructuring of the country in line with the people’s wishes, the country will go ahead and still do it and give him no credit.
His answers to the question of herdsmen’s attacks is disingenuous; to that of Boko Haram, apocalyptic; and to that of Biafra, insensitive and misguided. It does not matter how long the government pretends the Biafra issue is unimportant, the president must confront it dispassionately, skillfully and diplomatically. So far, he has confronted it emotionally. In the interview, he shows no enthusiasm in engaging the economists who discuss with him, let alone their panaceas for a troubled economy. All he says is that he will see how to accommodate them and their theories, seeing how they often spoke above his head. Then he finally and incredulously suggests a dose of patriotism to curb elite excesses in undermining the economy.
What is quite evident from the interview is that the president must come to terms with his past experiences, recognise the ideas that worked in the past but are no longer relevant, and urgently open up in order to receive help and advice from those competent and well-meaning to do so. He needs to forge a new nation from an old and dying nation, and he needs to set it on a modern foundation capable of sustaining its people into the next century. -
Okon unveils a harsh austerity regime
As the grueling economic meltdown holds everybody in a nasty bear hug, as the bitter reality of a nation in economic recession begins to sink in, as tempers flare on the streets, it was a dejected and despondent snooper that arrived home last Friday to find the whole house in dire darkness. Meanwhile Okon was lurking somewhere with an eighteenth century torchlight feebly discharging grey yellowish rays. To compound matters, a drunken and triumphant Baba Lekki was regaling Okon with snippets of his lucky escape from a vehicle commandeered by one-chance boys.
“Oga eku aiki na. Welcome to the Dark Age and say hello to the Dark City Brothers. When blind overseer come jam blind seer, na katakata be dat one”, the old crook jibed. Snooper ignored the crazy old man, but he was relentless in his pursuit.
“Oga, dem one chance boy come sit on my belly and I come shit. Dem oga come say na dat shit I go whack when dem reach Golgotha”, the old man cried. Snooper ignored him again and quickly moved to contain the mad theatre .
“Okon, why is there no light? And what happened to the generator that I just serviced?” Snooper screamed in alarm.
“Ha oga dem generator com degenerate again. No fuel. Diesel today dem dey sell for 180 naira for one cup”, Okon lamented.
“Oh my God!! Why am I in the same country with this kind of people?” snooper growled.
“So oga we go dey manage with one hour light at nine o clock sharp sharp. Abi na for diesel you wan spend dem pension money?” Okon drawled. Shocked by the mad boy’s temerity, snooper exploded in volcanic distemper.
“Shut up idiot! What is your business with that, or is it your father that pays me pension?” snooper shouted.
“Okon, leave the fool. He will soon return to his village”, Baba Lekki sneered.
“Oga, but I get one solution. You know dem tiny tiny insects dat dey give light for night? Dem dey sell dem for market. One bag na one thousand. Dem call dem solar insects”, Okon offered.
“ Ha, na dat one dem Yoruba people dey call tanatana. I don dey farm dem too for Okokomaiko. Okon I go bring one basket of dem glow worm make you put am for him room make dem insects bite him blokos well well. Sebi him dey complain say no light, na dis one go remove him yeye pajamas”, Baba lekki hollered with sadistic relish.
“And oga make una no vex sah”, Okon began with biting sarcasm. “From now on no milk, no sugar, no tea, no egg , no bread and no meat, you go dey manage camel milk, garden egg, cassava bread and dem elephant ear mushroom. I go put plenty locust beans”.
“So, the essential commodities of the eighties have now become inessential commodities?” snooper lamented aloud.
“You see stupid man? All that was bourgeois palliatives for an over-pampered elite. Just drink akamu with fried red ants. It is good for your libido . Good night”, Baba lekki sniggered and exited with legless bravura.
-
Tragedy in Kogi State
TOMORROW, the Kogi governorship election tribunal sitting in Abuja will begin delivering judgement in the disputed November 2015 governorship election case. Hopefully, it should bring to an end the tomfoolery being displayed by Governor Yahaya Bello. The state awaits justice in the case brought by James Abiodun Faleke asking to be declared winner of the poll, which he argued had been concluded. The governor does not rely on law to sustain his rule; he relies on his backers in Abuja and elsewhere whom he believes have done enough magic to keep him in office. It remains to be seen whether magic will trump law.
Meanwhile, it is estimated that since he assumed office, he had received from the federation account more than nine billion naira and an additional N20 bailout money. But he has declined to pay salaries; and from inheriting about three months salary arrears, he now owes about five months. In addition, his legislative subversion, once supported by the Attorney General of the Federation and the Inspector General of Police, is now given fillip by the Nigerian Army which has sent soldiers to bar the legitimate, court-approved 15 lawmakers from sitting in the House of Assembly, and to guard Mr Bello’s five lawmakers as they purport to make laws for the state and approve his list of commissioners. If Kogi lacks shame, what of the presidency that connives at this monstrosity? -
What the Children are inheriting…
Well, we have now reached the stage in Nigeria where we need to ask God to pray for the country that our children are inheriting
Last week, this country marked the Children’s Day. I don’t know if the children did any jigs on that day in celebration but I know that adults gave speeches as usual and promised the children heaven and earth. Well, I’m not going to give a speech here, let alone promise heaven and earth and I’m not doing any jigs either. I’m simply going to mark the day for them in my own way: I’m going to show them their inheritance.
When I was young, I always imagined that a rich relative would conk out, naturally of course, and leave behind a pot of money for us children to inherit and I always imagined what I would do with N1m of my own share. Well, my imagination was wild though my needs were few, being limited mostly to drinking more coke and eating as much suya as my stomach could take. I am now grown (I think), and have not inherited any money, mostly because the rich relatives refused to conk out or decided to take the richness stuff with them. So, I decided to go earn something, and even with what I earn now, I dare not buy one bottle of coke or eat suya. Doctor’s orders.
There is one inheritance though that will come to all of us. We all must grow up and inherit our country or the world. No one told me this when I was young. Everyone just told me to hurry up and go to school or get a job or get children. No one ever said girl, you are going to be inheriting a heavy world weighed down by its own problems. I think if I had known that, I might have… oh, I don’t know, detoured to the nearest asylum, maybe. Instead, here I am, feeling like the world is placed squarely on my shoulders, and I cannot drink one coke to get a little bit of happiness for the task.
However, the children are young (now, isn’t that such a lovely perambulation?) so it’s nice to tell them about the Nigeria they are inheriting. It would have been nice to tell them that they are inheriting a country of prosperity, flowing with milk and honey, but we can’t. True, some of them may indeed come into millions (stolen or earned) and some may have millions thrust on them by sheer hard work. But, if they are like me, they should still be suspicious ‘cause I’m telling you, nothing comes free in this world, not even problems. Take the little problem of love for instance.
Whoever knew that falling in love could kill ya? Listen, I reported on this column last week that some young men are now so desperate for money that they have begun to do ritual killings for it. Well, a gory picture went round an internet site some two weeks ago showing the remains of a young lady who had been a girlfriend to a member of a group until she was killed and dismembered like a gutted and quartered chicken for money ritual. So, our children are inheriting a Nigeria where the citizens have been brainwashed into believing that only people who have lots of cash and to spare deserve to live. Now, the populace have been polarised into two: those who have come into money mostly by hook or crook; and those waiting to. The latter group is peopled more by those willing to do anything for money such as killing…
Yes, our children are also inheriting a country filled with religious houses. You would think that these should do us a lot of good and rid us of murderous tendencies. Only two days ago, I walked down a street housing not less than fifty churches. There were also houses with private mosques on their lots. However, the country is so deeply polarised between these two religions that it cannot see its way clear. So, most of these churches and mosques spew out nothing but hate and filthiness of soul across the divide and even within each divide. It is clearly then too much to hope that our children will inherit a country of godly people that worship God, not themselves.
Moreover, the country we are bequeathing to these young ‘uns has also not got its political system right. Indeed, the political system is not only flawed, it has become fraudulent mostly because it is now led and championed by fraudulent politicians. They are the ones who fill the front-line positions as councilmen, assemblymen, Reps, senators, governors, god-fathers, you just name it. They fill the country’s political turfs one and all with guns, thugs, hatred, intolerance, violence, ritualised human bodies, and everything else that can be imagined except good governance. They do not have any dreams of their own except to capture the country’s resources, neither do they help the country realise its dreams, visions and missions. That is why someone said that these politicians go into office poor but emerge from office richer than the state.
Naturally, a fraudulent political system has birthed a fraudulent social system so the country we are bequeathing is grappling with corruption. Actually, if truth be told, what is going on in Nigeria gives corruption a bad name. Yet, the reason for this sad state is hard to tell exactly as scientists are not agreed on the diagnosis. And, when scientists are not agreed on something, you better begin to pray for it. Have you heard about the doctor who, after trying in vain to heal a patient, told the fellow to go home and pray? Well, we have now reached the stage in Nigeria where we need to ask God to pray for the country that our children are inheriting.
However, two things give us hope in this country. If they pan out, they may yet change the equation for the country that the children are inheriting. Firstly, we are hoping that the country will somehow come around to begin to truly practice federalism. At the moment, it would seem that the country is going by the name of a federal republic but it is neither republic nor federalist. Even though Nigeria is a state, the sovereignty is not yet fully in the hands of the people, only those who can rig elections. Indeed, it is said that more than half of the ‘elected’ representatives were not at all elected. And it is certainly not federalist yet since the overly strong centre is the problem of the country right now. Come federalism, however, the country will devolve into more manageable chunks; for, let’s face it, this rather ungainly size of the country is not the huge asset many think it is. So yes, we hope.
Our other hope, which is yet to materialise, is that the support and goodwill that the present president of the country, President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB), enjoys will not be exhausted by the litany of untoward things besetting the country: fallout of a corrupt past, falling oil prices, falling Naira, unpaid salaries, armed and unarmed insurgences, election violence, etc. At the moment, hunger has increased in the land, so has the level of frustration. Yet, many among us still believe that the problems of today are the fallout of yesterday’s licentious living. Because we did not resist that libertine era till we shed blood and we did not warn stridently enough about the consequences, we must all pay for the sins of our prodigal sons.
So, we hope that soon, the cycle of degeneration will be complete and repaid and PMB can go about reconstructing the state. In the meantime, it is good that the children know what they are inheriting: a faulty system but hopefully, not for long.
-
The Buhari administration has issued its ‘minimum program’; we, the people, must now issue ours
For too long, ours has been a society that neglects the poor and victimizes the weak. A society that promotes profit and growth over development and freedom. A society that fails to recognize that, to quote the distinguished economist, Amartya Sen, ‘poverty is not just the lack of money. It is not having the capability to realize one’s full potential as a human being”.
President Muhammadu Buhari, First Year Anniversary Speech, May 29, 2016.
Above all, that means political parties and politicians committed to serving the Nigerian people rather than themselves.
From the same speechFrom my professional skills as a literary critic one of whose specializations is the use of words and language to either obscure or clarify meaning, I checked very carefully to determine whether or not President Buhari’s quote from the great Harvard Nobel Laureate in Economics, Amartya Sen, in the first epigraph to this piece was a mere opportunistic appropriation that did not fit in at all with the overall philosophical and ideological tenor of the president’s first year anniversary speech. After all, Nigerian politicians do this a lot, perhaps the most egregious example I can think of being Atiku Abubakar quoting Frantz Fanon! In this particular case of Buhari grounding the moral and philosophical foundations of his speech in the ideas of Sen, I was greatly pleased to discover that the quotation was not gratuitous, was not opportunistic. For as much in substance as in finer points of detail, Buhari’s speech was powerfully evocative of a genuine and robust social egalitarianism that had for a long time now seemed to have vanished completely from both the discourses and policies of our ruling class politicians. It is true of course that the President’s claim that his government’s plan for the poor and the downtrodden of our society “by far the most ambitious social protection programme in our history” is vastly overstated. We have the programs and policies of the Awolowo welfarist governance in the First Republic and the social democratic policies and acts of the PRP state governments in Kano and Kaduna to disprove Buhari’s claim for the program his administration is about to launch. However, we must give this much credit to the president’s claim: this is the closest we have come since the resumption of civilian democratic rule in 1999 to a “Talakawa Liberation Minimum Program” What does this mean?
To respond substantively to this question, first a clarification of what a “minimum program” is, especially in contrast with a “maximum program”. In a “minimum program” of deep and meaningful socio-economic reforms in favor of the marginalized majority, the basic structure of greatly unequal wealth and income distribution is left untouched and the wealthy and the powerful still call the shots and corner the greater part of the surplus value generated in the economy. Moreover, a “minimum program” is profoundly gradualist and incrementalist: even if the program lasts for several decades, only a small percentage of the poor will see meaningful improvement in their conditions of life. Finally, a “minimum program” is really a manifestation of the enlightened self-interest of the rulers: they see and fear great and damaging social convulsions that may sweep their rule away and so they act, not so much because they want to end or substantially reduce poverty, but only and mainly because they want to either save themselves or prolong the day of reckoning. Seen in the light of this explanation, the absence of a “minimum program” in the 16-year rule of the PDP is the best indication that we have that that moribund ruling party was completely devoid of enlightened self-interest, so total, so self-defeating was its predatoriness.
We can only very briefly deal with the concept and praxis of a “maximum program” since we have never had one in the annals of our political history, with perhaps the debatable exceptions of the proclamations of the both the January 15, 1966 coup and of the so-called “Ahiara Declaration” in the secessionist Biafra Republic. Moreover, a “maximum program” typically comes only on the heels of a revolutionary overturn of the existing political order, hardly ever on the basis of the electoral defeat of a ruling class party by another party, another faction of the same ruling class.
Having thus acknowledged the deep divide between a “minimum program” and a “maximum program”, we must observe that there is sometimes a deliberate and sincere attempt to lead one to the other, to see the incremental, gradualist gains of the “minimum program” as milestones towards the sea change of the “maximum program”. In other words, some progressive and reform-minded governments and ruling class parties see their embrace of a “minimum program” as, not an end in itself, but a means towards achieving a far more genuine narrowing of the great gaps between the haves and the have-nots. I happen to think that this is not the case with the “minimum program” outlined in Buhari’s First Year Anniversary Speech. If that is the case, we, the people, have to issue our own “minimum program” and bring it into dialogue with that outlined by the President.
The cornerstone of Buhari’s “social intervention programme” for the benefit of the Nigerian masses is the allocation of 500 billion naira in the 2016 budget for the following five key areas: job creation opportunities for five hundred thousand teachers and one hundred thousand artisans throughout the nation; 5.5 million children to be fed nutritious meals to improve learning and completion of education rates; a conditional cash transfer scheme that will provide financial support for up to one million beneficiaries, most of them market women, together with four hundred and sixty thousand artisans and two hundred thousand agricultural workers, all across the nation. This all sounds very impressive, but only on the condition that this will not be a one-time only budgetary allocation. For altogether, the whole programme will affect far less than 10% of the national population. Even if one makes an adjustment for the multiplier effects of some of the individual items of the programme, it is only on the condition that the same or even higher levels of allocation will be made for extension of these projects in annual budgets throughout the life of the Buhari administration that we can say that this is indeed a genuine talakawa “minimum program”. On this note, it is significant that the President was completely silent on this point, leaving us with no other conclusion than that this is almost likely a one-time only affair. In our people’s talakawa “minimum program”, it must be clearly spelt out that we are talking of repeated annual budgetary allocations for these projects well beyond the life of the current administration. And most important of all, the size of the total allocation should be greatly enlarged by at least 300%. What is the basis of this demand?
One of the most astonishing things about the President’s First Year Anniversary Speech is that it actually asserts that 30% of the budget will be for capital projects – as if this was a profound or revolutionary change from the existing status quo. When I saw this figure, I thought I had misread the text, but a second, more careful look showed that I was not mistaken. Then I thought that perhaps this was the result of a mistype by the speechwriters. This is because this is exactly what the PDP and the Jonathan administration left as a legacy to Buhari and APC: expenditure for capital projects is immensely dwarfed by appropriations for recurrent expenditure. In plain language, the cost of governance is absurdly high in our country; indeed, it is one of the highest in the world. To leave this practice, this tradition completely unchanged means that the sums available for the talakawa minimum programme of the administration is severely limited. Add to this the fact that what our legislators and public officeholders get as salaries and allowances are many, many times larger than what millions of our people will get in Buhari’s “minimum program”. In other words, it is still “monkey dey work; baboon dey chop”.
It is important to speculate on why the President leaves the structure of the inverse largeness of recurrent expenditure in relation to capital expenditure more or less intact as it was handed over to him by the PDP. On this account, it is instructive for us to bring into the present conversation the words of the second epigraph to this essay: “Above all, that means political parties and politicians committed to serving the Nigerian people rather than themselves”. The whopping part of the cost of governance in our country goes to paying politicians in government and the legislature salaries and allowances that are one of the highest in the world: this is not serving the Nigerian people; it is the Nigerian people serving politicians! If the President means what he says and says what he means in the words of this second epigraph, he must have the courage and the will to put an end to this legalized and institutionalized pillage by our politicians that is diverting colossal sums of money away from programs for the poor, the excluded toward whom Buhari seems so solicitous. After all, he is the head of the ruling party.
Will he do it? Can he do it? Not without a great shakeup throughout the rank and file of the new ruling party. And that is the bottom line of our own peoples talakawa minimum program. If the President had the opportunity to consult Amartya Sen on this matter, that is the advice he would get from the thinker he so approvingly quotes in his First Year Anniversary Speech.
Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu
-
Public education and the future of Yoruba civilisation (1)
In order to attain to the goals of economic freedom and prosperity, Nigeria must do certain things as a matter of urgency and priority. It must provide free education (at all levels) and free health facilities for the masses of its citizens.Nigeria should be a secular State … As far as possible, there should be separation of activities between the States on the one hand, and religious bodies on the other.—Obafemi AwolowoThoughts on the Nigerian Constitution
I rejoice with the biological Obafemi Awolowo family on the 60th anniversary of free education which is today. I also rejoice with ourselves, political offspring of the sage. His vision of quality education and development is the driving force of our government…Governments that seek immortality in the hearts of the people must pattern their policies after Awolowo as we are doing in Oyo State.—AbiolaAjimobi at the 60th anniversary of free education in Western Nigeria.Regardless of whatever recommendations come out of the ongoing consultative forum on Oyo State’s attempt to initiate ‘marketization’ of public education, citizens should insist on referendum before the current policy on education is denatured through transfer of public schools to contractors
The states in Nigeria have certainly been experiencing difficulties in paying their bills since the decline in the price of oil. No further evidence is needed for this than the fact that several states have failed in paying their workers’ salaries in the last six months. The governor of Oyo State recently committed 100% of its federal allocation to payment of workers’ salaries, a sign of problems in meeting other demands in the public service sector.
Whether a final decision has been taken by the Oyo State government to gradually transfer public schools to contractors or the government is just consulting with stakeholders in respect of the future of public education, it is palpably wrong for the state to advertise for buyers or partners in the state’s provision of public education. And it will also be wrong for any state in Nigeria in general and in the Yoruba region in particular to want to end the tradition of public education, regardless of the size of allocations from federation account or the inefficiency of the current civil service to provide education as it is done in successful countries. For the avoidance of doubt, Oyo State is largely functioning as a self-appointed scapegoat for other Yoruba states that had been nursing programmes of two public school systems: model/mega for the privileged and another set for the underprivileged. Therefore, whatever is wrong with Oyo State’s choice of action in respect of public school applies to other Yoruba states that had established semi-public or semi-private model schools or that are planning to do so.
Education is a constant driver of the two core elements in Yoruba culture: tolerance and commitment to egalitarianism. In the modern era, Chief Obafemi Awolowo reinforced the Yoruba value of tolerance and egalitarianism through the policy of free public education.In the mid-1950s, Chief Awolowo’s Action Group initiated free primary education scheme by cooperating with pre-existing missionary schoolsto offer free education to citizens of the region. Mission schools then were treated more or less as grants-aided schools. Later in the late 1970s, Awolowo’s Unity Party of Nigeria embarked on a full-fledged public school system through government takeover of primary and secondary faith-based schools.
The belief in the ideology that government’s primary responsibility is the welfare of citizens drove the consistency in the commitment of governments under Awolowo’s political parties to provision of public education, to the extent that even after Chief Awolowo and Chief Akintola had parted ways, Chief Akintola still kept to the policy of free education in the region while he was a member of a national party that did not believe in universal primary education.Even during and shortly after the civil war when Nigeria was not very liquid, Generals Adeyinka Adebayo and OluwoleRotimi, governors of the region at that time did everything to sustain provision of free public education in the region. The purpose of this longish return to history of policy on education is to remind those currently governing the region that whatever advantage that must have come to the Yoruba today happened because of two interventions: ideology of social welfare by past rulers under thick and thin in the years before petroleum revenue and the acceptance of that philosophy of governance by civil servants.
Therefore, convening a special consultative forum to discuss attempts to sell or rent public schools to private business or transfer management of public schools to contractors is an unimaginative way to address the myriad problems facing public education in the region. Regardless of whatever recommendations come out of the ongoing consultative forum on Oyo State’s attempt to initiate ‘marketization’ of public education, citizens should insist on referendum before the current policy on education is denatured through transfer of public schools to contractors.
The desire to improve the quality of education given to citizens in Oyo State is an excellent gesture, but the way to achieve qualitative education in Oyo or any other states in Nigeria is not for the state to abandon its own responsibility in providing equal opportunity of access of citizens to public schools that provide the same service to all students. Private schools are already providing an alternative to public education at a cost that excludes majority of the population. By attempting to transfer or share ownership of schools with the business sector, Oyo State is putting at risk the access of its citizens to education, as there is no business in Nigeria—secular or spiritual—that is likely to go into any enterprise without expecting profit. Before the advent of public primary and secondary schools in the Yoruba region, the so-called faith-driven schools—Christian or Islamic—did not provide free education. It was the denial of access to citizens without adequate resources to pay tuition charged in such schools that made the Action Group under Awolowo to initiate free primary education. It is, therefore, naïve to expect that making secondary education a PPP venture is going to improve quality without frustrating access. Improving quality of education and providing access to such education are not necessarily mutually exclusive. What is Oyo State likely to gain by selling 30 secondary schools out of over 600 in the state to the private sector? And what are the criteria behind selection of the 31 schools to be passed to contractors?
In addition, history has shown all over the world that the best way to provide a secular education in a country housing multiple faiths is to make provision of education the responsibility of government. While every citizen should always be free to have and express his or her own religious belief, selling public schools to missionaries puts secular education at a great risk. Thrivingin a modern society requires that citizens are not subjected to religious indoctrination or radicalization in the course of receiving education for the purpose of living in a modern society. Transferring control of public schools to propagators of any religious belief is tantamount to returning to the primitive or pre-modern system of tying learning to specific religious faiths.
The decision to start transferring ownership of schools to private business unveils doubt on the part of political leaders of their role in modern governance.The claim by Oyo State’s spokesman that the objective of the state is to transfer public schools to expert managers for the purpose of providing qualitative education is puerile in the context ofa state that had run public school system for more than half a century. Does this policy suggest the government’s commitment to run two parallel public school systems: oneby contractors with capacity to provide qualitative educationin collaboration with the government and another set owned solely by government but without capacity to provide qualitative education?
The problems facing education in Oyo and other states in the 21st century cannot be reduced to managerialism. To say that the government is not competent enough to manage public schools is in fact an indictment of government itself. With the ongoing dialogue in Ibadan on how to manage public schools,Oyo State is asking the wrong questions about how to provide qualitative education or creating a solution to a problem that has not been identified.
- To be continued
-
Buhari at one, and democracy at 17
IT has been one momentous year for the Muhammadu Buhari presidency. In line with the president’s promises to fight corruption before it killed Nigeria and restore normality to the Boko Haram-ravaged Northeast, he has been dogged, fearless and urgent. He has not affected substantially the behaviour of the military to think and act inspiringly, but it has done remarkably well fighting insurgency enthusiastically and restoring ample peace to the blighted and restive region. The real corruption war has not started, and such as can be properly described as a war that has started has not always been fought within the expected judicial rules of engagement, but the president has at least stirred a revolt against the cankerworm, putting it on the defensive, attacking its symptoms, and exposing the depth of the problem and its choking tentacles in virtually all sectors of government and national life.
Concerning all other campaign promises, the record has been rather abysmal. The school feeding project has not begun, but even after the budget passage kick-starts it, its execution will not erase doubts in the minds of the economically astute as to the wisdom behind it and its undergirding principles. The promise of improved electricity supply has misfired badly; fuel price, which the president gave indication would decline when the magic wand of refinery restoration was waved, has proved a chimera; and the exchange rate parity he inscrutably lent support to during his campaigns has exploded in his face. With the economy receiving inexpert attention, not to say almost fitful response, the optimism of the early months has given way to deep-seated ennui.
Overall, given the scale of depredation superintended by the Goodluck Jonathan presidency, in addition to the appallingly clumsy and wobbly foundation laid by the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency for both democracy and the Fourth Republic, President Buhari has done substantially well to keep the country afloat. The citizens have egged him on with a lot of goodwill, even accepting fuel price hike with glacial resignation and puzzlingly embracing and applauding many of his unorthodox judicial methods. He should proceed in that euphoria to enunciate a few more realistic and populist measures to ameliorate the dire conditions his people face. After the passage of the budget, he has readied himself and his team to do battle with the declining economy, a decline his initially unsteady measures and nostalgic panaceas complicated.
Except perhaps a few Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leaders, most Nigerians agree that the electorate displayed wisdom to vote for President Buhari. His campaign promises were mostly Neanderthal, and he himself appears a throwback to the distant past, but Nigerians would have shuddered to have Dr Jonathan win re-election. Undoubtedly but surprisingly both Chief Obasanjo and Dr Jonathan have been better democrats than President Buhari. However, given the mood of the moment and the scale of destruction of the last five or six years, it is somewhat reassuring to have President Buhari, with his virtues of discipline and integrity, in office.
President Buhari has a vision for Nigeria, but that vision is amorphous and incapable of generating the momentum he envisages in his subconscious. He wants a society where corruption will be minimal, but he has neither enunciated how he hopes to bring it about nor taken any concrete step, no matter how awkwardly or tentatively, to bring it to reality. More appropriately, given his statements in the past few months, his attitude to the judiciary and legislature, his view on the opposition within and outside his party, his refusal to imbue his various social battles with elevating and magisterial detachment, and the limiting and limited rubrics of his ideas, not to talk of the composition of his kitchen and general cabinets, his hopes and ambitions for the country are bound to be stymied, if not miscarried altogether.
Indeed, if President Buhari has done quite well so far to arrest the drift to financial and political chaos, it is because his predecessor had done unusually worse in fighting corruption and insecurity. His pessimism and constantly loud proclamations of impending disaster and national weakness, especially at the attitudinal level, either resonate with the public or are accepted with exasperating indifference and equanimity. Meanwhile, for the nation to rise above the crises hobbling it, and the president himself to record the kind of achievements he pines after, he will have to rework his vision and align it with the highest standards human history has exemplified. He will really and urgently need to develop a comprehensive and breathtaking vision for the country, one in which his piecemeal battles and campaigns must fit in.
President Buhari has spent one year in office, the 17th year of civil rule in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. He cannot wait until he has ended the Boko Haram war and defeated corruption in order to develop an ideological master plan for Nigeria. He has enunciated desultory ideas about what he visualises for Nigeria, but he will not have the success he desires and deserves until he has made those ideas to achieve consistency and coherence with an overarching vision for Nigeria. What is missing precisely so far in the Buhari presidency is a far-reaching vision, the superstructure upon which to build his piecemeal edifices. Building roads, hospitals, schools, houses and power stations, as important as they are, will not substitute for the need for an overarching vision.
It is that vision that will dictate the kind of political restructuring, social engineering and economic reforms the country needs. The president has not said a word on these crucial needs. Yet, it is these political, economic and social changes that will also dictate success in other areas, such as anti-corruption and counterinsurgency, which the president is focusing on. Any achievement in those two areas will not only be temporary, they will also be severely limited. In addition, the vision will also dictate how far, wide and deep the country’s ambitions, character and identity will be within the global space. The vision will guide and circumscribe the president’s worldview, statements — whether of the critical or self-denigrating variety — and self-worth.
This column does not know any country that achieved greatness without first going through the defining moments stated above. If President Buhari cannot draw inspiration from Russia, United States, Britain, France, Germany and others, he can draw example from Askia (Muhammad Ture) the Great of the Songhai Empire, Mansa Kankan Musa of the Mali Empire, and closer home, the many empires and vibrant kingdoms that inhabited Nigeria’s geographical space. President Buhari will be making a huge mistake to think he can build a great and modernising society on the flimsy ideational foundations of his nostalgia and imagination. Nigeria is at the point where fundamental changes have to be adroitly introduced if the country is to survive, as the Niger Delta unrest is showing. In his first year, the president has not even giving any indication he knows the indispensability of the changes the country needs, or of how to formulate and implement them. And whether in his kitchen or wider cabinet, there is no one who has inspired confidence that rather than venerate the president they can coax him in the right direction, and away from his sometimes surprisingly constricted and bewildering statements and worldview.
Within the confines of the limited ambition of many Nigerians disenchanted with the Jonathan government, President Buhari has done remarkably well to arrest the drift begun especially by his predecessor. But for those highly knowledgeable about world history, the president has not even started, let alone done well. For a country that is not yet a nation, riven as it were by ethnic and religious distrust, and its elite so dissolute and ignorant, there is a crying need for real and substantial change outside the dogmatic confines of partisan politics. To midwife this new system calls for a new elite and leadership able to visualise a constitution that will endure for centuries, and a country where religiosity, ethnocentrism and other forms of intrinsic and acquired parochialisms will not be their hallmarks.
-
When “Hear Word! (Naija Woman Talk True)” came to Harvard – finally
Gboro, iyawo gboro/Gboro, iyawo gboro so’ko lenu! [Listen, woman listen/listen, wife listen and obey your husband!] From a popular Yoruba “apala” hit song of the 1960s
It a literal, non-idiomatic level, the Yoruba word, gboro, that I have translated as “listen” in the first of the two epigraphs to this piece is more accurately translated as “hear word”. But as every self-respecting translator and linguist knows, literalism is the death of language, especially in its capacity to enable us to actually say what we mean and mean what we say. This is why “listen” is a much better translation of “gboro” in English than “hear word” that is almost nonsensical in the English tongue. But then, along comes Nigerian Pidgin which uses this same bad translation, “hear word”, as its normative term, not only for “listen”, but for “listen and obey”. Tracing our way from this normative Pidgin mistranslation back to the song fragment in our first epigraph, we find rather unexpectedly that in Yoruba “gboro” also means “listen and obey”. More felicitously, it means “listen and comply with what you hear, what you’re told”. Thus, both in Yoruba and Pidgin English – and I dare say most Nigerian languages – the word for listen when used beyond the mere phenomenology of sound, really serves as a powerful normative tool for enforcing obedience and compliance with the established order of things. This is why though in the song fragment in the epigraph only one woman, one wife is addressed, the command is actually to all wives, all women: wives obey your husbands; women, accept that it is a man’s world! In contemporary radical cultural theory and criticism, a word, a phrase that has such power of constructing and imposing identity is said to be ideological in the most effective way possible. But what does all this have to do with the subject of this essay? Well, these thoughts on language, gender, identity and human equality came to me after “Hear Word”, an all-female theatrical production on the condition of women in contemporary Nigerian society came to Harvard, but only after I had thought deeply about the impact of the performance.
Yes, “Hear Word” did finally come to Harvard and, moreover, its coming turned out to be a veritable instance of the sort of outstanding foreign adventures captured in the classic rendering of Julius Caesar’s victorious military campaigns in Pontus: “veni; vidi; vici” (I came; I saw; I conquered). Except of course that in this case, that famous phrase has to be slightly revised to more properly fit the visit of “Hear Word” to Harvard: “we came; we performed; we conquered”. For the three days between April 15-17, 2016 when the show was staged here, the house was not only completely sold out, the impact on the audiences far exceeded all our expectations. Performance is not war, not a military campaign and so the analogy to Caesar here is misleading, even if the phrase celebrating Caesar is metaphorically and fortuitously appropriate. Performance is art; it is poetry in motion, space and time that brings, when truly outstanding, all the emotions that move people individually and collectively to get out of their comfort zones to see reality and the world with fresh eyes. This was what happened when “Hear Word” came all the way from Nigeria to perform to ‘standing room only’ audiences for three days nearly a month ago. If that is the case, why am I just writing about the event now; why didn’t I write about it earlier?
This question is not as redundant as it seems; rather, it goes to the heart of what I wish to write about this performance in this essay. I could truthfully say that the performance took place at a critical period toward the end of the semester and the school year when things were so busy for me that I could simply not find the time to write a review, a discussion of the performance and the group that brought it to Harvard. But this is not the real reason. Also, quite truthfully, I could argue in addition that since in this column about seven months ago I had actually written in great anticipation about the coming of “Hear Word” to Harvard, I could take my time to reflect deeply on the event when it finally took place. [See “Hear Word” comes to Harvard and America: ‘rebranding’ Nigeria with the best in ourselves”, TLH 134, September 20, 2015] But this also is only part of the story. More to the point is the fact that as I sat and watched the performance on two occasions, it gradually dawned on me that I was seeing something of a very rare order in art and performance, something that required one to go back to basics, to first principles.Not to sound too professorial in expressing the nature of this sort of illumination or revelation, I would put it as the moment when the power, pain and joy of a performance takes us to the roots of being and becoming. That’s what happened to me – and as far as I can tell, also to the majority of the members of the audience – when “Hear Word” came to Harvard last month.
In getting to the heart of the discussion in this piece, I draw the attention of the reader to the main artistic and structural features of the performance, with special regard for the most powerful, moving and eloquent moments of what was altogether and almost without exception a performance whose every segment, every moment was well conceived and executed.In its main artistic and performative identity, “Hear Word” combines the best of individual character acting with ensemble group performance. In laywoman or layman language, that means that in some of the 22 pieces of stories making up the entire production, it seemed that one was watching a slice of a dramatic play exploring the emotional and psychic depths of one character’s soul while in other pieces, it seemed as if one was watching experiences common to women as a group, as half of the human race within one particular national community, Nigeria.Those who know anything about theatrical performance know that it is a daunting challenge to successfully combine character acting with ensemble performance. Actually, in my experience, “Hear Word” ranks as one of the best performances that I have ever seen that consummate this rare order of artistic achievement. It so happens that this achievement is central to the overall impact and future potential of the production as, hopefully, it makes its way across Nigerian and many other foreign travels to come. What exactly does this observation, this claim mean?
If you are either an outright misogynist or a covert male and/or female opponent of gender equality and the empowerment of women of all social groups and classes in Nigeria, you could – and perhaps would – argue that “Hear Word” seems to be doing too much all at once. The 22 pieces in the production just about covers the demographic and regional diversity of the whole country, from the North to the South and from the East to the West. The list of issues and topics it covers is truly staggering: the chastening oppressions of child marriages in some parts of the North; in the South-south, the moral cynicism of families that participate in the trafficking oftheir own daughters and nieces in the international trade in abducted or enslaved sex workers; the chillingly unhappy fates of widows in “traditional” marriages in whichthe deaths of husbands transform women into non-persons in many parts of the country; sexual violence, rape andthe ensuing silencing of the victims after the act, within and outside the family as a social unit; the relentless, unending and ‘universal’ chorus of the preference for male as opposed to female children; the ubiquitous practice of training girls and young women to devalue and degrade the girl or woman who tries to set goals and targets that are considered “male”; the often slow and inchoate nature of girls’ and women’s coming to consciousness of themselves as innately valuable and worthy of respect from men and other women. The list goes on and on and, moreover, the stories and anecdotes are legion: “Hear Word” [Naija Woman Talk True] is truly a compendium that apparently wishes to tell it all, almost as if no other chance will ever arise to tell these stories again. So, how did the combination of individual character acting and ensemble performance of the whole group rise to the challenge of this driven, relentless inclusiveness of all the alienating challenges that women face in Nigeria today?
In responding to this question, we must return to our opening reflections on the linguistic and ideological dimensions of the phrase “hear word” as a Nigerian Pidgin rendition of the most controlling and repressive term for the oppression of women, from infancy as a girl-child to adulthood as a married, unmarried or widowed woman. Everyone reading this piece who speaks and/or understands Nigerian Pidgin has heard the phrase used in one or two of its many controlling forms: “you no wan’ hear word?”; “the porson wey no dey hear word, na trouble go teach am sense!”; “wetin we fit do for dis pickin make e begin dey hear word?”; “Ha, you no know am, dem done beat am, beat am, still she no de hear word!”. It was a stroke of simple but profound genius for “Hear Word” [Naija Woman Talk True]” to have hit on this keyword, this trope of ideological control and normalization of oppression that universally applies to diverse groups and situations but finds its greatest functional power of coercion and intimidation in application to women and children as the anchor for all its otherwise staggering number of tales, anecdotes, dances, jokes and songs.At the most obvious level, as one watched the play, it became more and more apparent that the first part of the whole performance comprising about 12 of the 22 stories dealt with “hear word” in its repressive, negative constructs while the closing 10 narratives reversed the dominant, controlling form and began a counter-discourse, a counter-narrative of liberation in which the term, “hear word”, was now being addressed to both the oppressors and the dominated. But at a more fundamental level beyond the structure of the contents of the production, the whole performance came to encode a powerful feminist vision of both oppression and liberation as being in the final analysis, embodied. Speaking for myself, I think that the inspired combination of brilliant individual character acting with ensemble performance made this possible.
Honourable Minister of Information and Culture are you reading this piece? This is a show that did Nigeria proud at its first international outing at Harvard. This outing, this journey of this performance must now extend far beyond Cambridge, MA, to other parts of the world with large Nigerian and African diasporas.
Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu