Category: Sunday

On 1st January, 1914, a giant country was born by the British and was named Nigeria. In geographical size and population it was bigger than its creator –Great Britain-a 356669 square miles land mass which is said to be the ‘size of United Kingdom, France and Belgium combined’. She had a problem almost from the beginning – the lack of family love: she suffers from what can be called hate-syndrome. Generally seen as a child of circumstance she has often been treated with scorn by her parents like an unwanted baby. However, in spite of such ill-treatment and other problems, the baby grew steadily, surviving all odds and hardship. Very soon- precisely on 1st January 2014 she would be 100 years old. In its wisdom, the Federal Government announced plans to celebrate the centennial existence of the country –an obviously remarkable feat. Unfortunately, that decision to celebrate such epochal stage of our history has generated much furor. The purpose of this essay is to show why it is good to celebrate one hundred years of the country’s existence. The 1914 amalgamation is not the evil it has often been painted by critics. It is the cradle of our nationhood.

The criticisms have been based largely on two grounds, namely, the circumstance of birth and the poor performance and achievement of the country since birth. However, it is the circumstance of birth that seems to be more vociferous. Our position is that while there is nothing much to worry about the circumstances of our birth which is beyond us, there is much to worry about a life badly led after birth especially since independence. The latter was within our control to make or mar.

This distinction is important for as AWO the sage popularized many years ago, it is not life that matters but the courage brought into it. The question most of critics have ignored is: what amount of courage and developmental imagination did the Nigerian Ruling Elites bring to bear on the fortunes of country since her independence in 1960? The obvious answer is not much and the obstacle is not with the circumstances of birth per se but poor upbringing due largely to the gross incompetence or inability of the ruling elites after birth. Blaming 1914 for our problem is thus wrong: it reflects lazy thinking and amounts to giving a dog a bad name in order to hang it. It is unfair.

Hatred and prejudice-review of criticism of 1914

The criticism of 1914 dates back to history of colonialism in the country and it is largely one of hatred and prejudice. The problem though is that the criticisms have never satisfied curiosity. They may explain partially how Nigeria came into being, and poor, but they don’t explain why the country has remained ever so poor, underdeveloped and persistently corrupt long after the attainment of political Independence. For instance a persistence criticism is that the 1914 amalgamation has been responsible for the disunity, under-development and poverty of the country. But instead of working hard to overcome such age-long identified problems and making the best out of our common inheritance, the elites have been busy blaming the circumstances of our birth, amassing personal filthy wealth and living in obscene opulence and continuing to mourn the death or eclipse of once upon a golden time of our forefathers. They romanticized the pre-colonial past as though all was golden and so provide excuses for passing the bulk and unconvincing reasons for the present day failures. In the process the real problems are left unsolved and the culprits are allowed to run away with their crimes unpunished and unchecked. Recent comments on 1914 reflect the old mark of prejudice which blames our problems on colonial factor but tends to ignore the present danger next door. This has not been helpful.

To some of the critics, 1914 is evil – the source of all the country’s problems today including insecurity. As it were, there were no problems in pre-colonial Africa and each empire lived in peace, love and harmony till the arrival of the white man. But we know that this is not true. There were wars and insecurity even among people with common language as we can glean from the history of the slave trade or the Yoruba wars in the 18/19th century. To others, 1914 represents an act of subjugation by a foreign power and thus unworthy of celebration because according to them, it is not wise to celebrate one’s period of slavery or conquest. History is full of accounts of the rise and fall of empires from Roman Empire to Songhai, Benin, Oyo etc. The African experience is therefore not strange. The odd thing really has been the inability many of African countries including Nigeria to make the desired progress after freedom.

Yet others have disdainfully referred to Nigeria as mere geographical expression, the ‘mistake of 1914’, colony of ‘strange bed fellows’, a colonial measure meant only to reduce colonial administrative cost and enhance British economic fortunes overseas, the cause and source of her continued under-development etc. These are some of the wrong ideas fed to citizens over time from colonial era to post Independence period by the elites which had made citizens resentful of their country thereby making the task of Nation-building extremely difficult- if not nearly impossible to prosecute. A major problem with dependency theory is the tendency to pass the bulk, blame others for their misfortunes and find excuses for present failures. In Nigeria it has made the cultivation of unity of purpose, patriotism, mutual coexistence, cultural and religious tolerance, morality in public life and other related values necessary for national unity and development very hard. Wrong and hateful ideas can be hurtful to any cause including Nation-building.

According to Dozie Ikedife, who wonders whether the country was about celebrating failure or success, Nigeria is yet to attain economic independence, national unity and therefore improper to celebrate a ‘mere existence of a country’. However such observation ignores the longevity factor as well as the fact that nations do not build themselves. They are built and developed by people especially the ruling elites and being able to live together for 100years is no mean feat. The purpose of milk in mothers is to enable them to feed and nurture their babies healthily. The baby whose mother fails in her primary duty of feeding could have stunted growth, but should be grateful all the same for survival and long life. Nigeria is a like a baby that has not been nurtured well since birth and yet survived to be 100 years old in spite of all odds. Her problems are largely post-natal-the negligence and ineptitude of the ruling elites. So blame the elites for our poverty and economic backwardness and not 1914.

In similar vein other writers such as Okoko have argued that the 1914 amalgamation is the bedrock of Nigeria’s problems, including ethnic antagonism, insecurity, infrastructural decay and lopsided federalism. How? To Okoko the antagonism that we frequently experience among the various ethnic nationalities is as a result of forced amalgamation. Thus we should ‘rather concentrate our efforts in forging a united country’ (The Nation centenary celebration 30/1/2013, p. 43). Again this is a human failure wrongly ascribed. The arguments are illogical and the anger misplaced. How can one lonely event of a hundred years old be held responsible for today’s problems such as insecurity, corruption, infrastructural decay, intolerance? Shameful: Nations are what men make them and antagonism is an attribute of man and not of geographical space.

To Idowu Akinlotan, the centenary celebration is a warped project as amalgamation is a’ humiliating part of our history which irreparably damaged our self esteem’ (The Nation, January 7, back page). To Ropo Sekoni, it is a ‘bold attempt to commemorate the nation’s colonization’ (The Nation, 10/2/2013:16). To Segun Ayabolu, who sees the whole thing as a “centennial delusion”, the amalgamation was ‘the commemoration of military subjugation, cultural alienation, psychological disorientation and humiliation as well as economic emasculation of the well structured and organized communities that preceded the colonial conquest’. He, however, recognized that the amalgamation is an ‘undeniable important historical event’ (The Nation, 23/2/2013: back page). To Tunji Adegboyega, who believes that Nigeria once worked within the framework of amalgamation, he was not too sure whether to support or not the idea of celebration. All he knows is that the country once worked but not working fine again and were the idea to be subjected to a referendum, most Nigerian would have rejected the celebration of 1914(The Nation, 10/2/2013:17).

The position of these authors can hardly be faulted except to note that what we are actually celebrating is not 1914 per se but the gift of life- 100years of togetherness as a ‘people’ the jerky or ugly circumstances of birth notwithstanding. Besides what makes it impossible to rebuild and firm up our self-esteem, build better institutions since Independence and why has prevented the country from working fine today? Let’s call a spade a spade. The problem here has largely been with the Managers of the country especially since 1960. They reversed the progressive gear and dampened the nationalistic and patriotic spirits for which citizen were better known before the attainment of Independence. The 1914 event is not as evil as often painted. While it has its many blessings, it serves no useful purpose to wish to white-wash our history or ignore its ugly aspect. The importance of history is its objective account and sound knowledge of the past and attendant lessons for the present. History teaches that one can be born low and poor and yet grow to be great and to enjoy long life and celebrate birthdays if one likes celebration.

In a three- part article, published in The Nation that ended in its edition of March 14, 2013, Dapo Fafowora gave a historical account of the ABC of what one probably needs to know about the amalgamation, detailing its origin, thrust, problems etc. He left no one in doubt that though the amalgamation was not deliberately done to advance the interest of the Natives, it non-the-less remains an important milestone in the history of the nation. However I did not see how Amalgamation per se destroyed indigenous political and administrative system that was alleged to be ‘far more democratic and accountable’ than the colonial. This is because the African system and its leading operators had been put aside by the colonial conquerors long before the amalgamation of 1914. At least the partition of Africa of 1884/5 came before the amalgamation of 1914 which created Nigeria as we know it today. Still I agree with his view that the 100th birthday of Nigeria should be celebrated but not for a whole year. The government can review the program to make it smarter in order to avoid a boring, snoring party.

According to Tatalo Alamu, there is a tinge of intellectual slavery in the whole event (The Nation..10/2/2013:3). To him, the 1914 amalgamation is not a ‘Nigerian event because the Natives did not give Lugard their mandate’. It is therefore not worth celebrating ‘by the descendants of those who were herded in like human cattle’. The ‘celebration and commemoration of one’s own enslavement is a classic instance of mental colonization and the most depressive example of Afro-Saxony in recent political history. By the same token, the Japanese ought to commemorate the arrival of Commodore Perry on their shores and the Chinese the seizure of Hong Kong’ In a subsequent edition of The Nation, Sunday, 21/4/2013:3) he shows the debilitating impact of mental/ intellectual slavery on society in form of ‘inferiority complex’. According to him ‘intellectual subjugation is the worst and most deadly form of conquest because it leads directly to spiritual, economic, cultural and political enslavement. With his old religion gone, his culture subverted, his traditional institutions decimated, his mode of knowledge production devastated, the African, unlike the Chinese, the japans and Indians requires a complete make -over to even minimally function’.

The logic of the argument here is sound. However while I find the intellectual-slavery thesis useful to understanding what went wrong since creation day, it does not remove the fact that Nigeria somehow has lived a long life of 100years and that such longevity is a thing of joy. Would it be proper to ask a man say of 80years not to celebrate his birthday just because his mother was wicked or suffered much pains to deliver him in controversial circumstances? Suffice to add that we live in a competitive world where one man’s meat is another person’s poison. Japan may not like to celebrate some aspects of their history but Nigerian has chosen. It is a matter of choice and perception. Given our peculiar circumstance of many tongues where not many gave the country a chance of survival, one hundred years of living together in a tough, slippery, political terrain such as Nigeria is worth the drums of celebration. It is a remarkable feat where others such as India and Sudan which equally experienced colonial amalgamation failed.

•Abhuere writes from Uromi, Edo State

A Review of Lest We Forget: The Memoirs of Ambassador Oladapo Fafowora

 

It is a great honour and privilege to review the memoirs of one of the most stellar diplomatic products of Nigeria’s post-Independence history.

The ambassador is a walking encyclopaedia of that tortured history and perhaps one of its most memorable victims. But despite the occasional bumps and bureaucratic hiccups, it was good and glorious while it lasted. To have become the ambassadorial representative of one’s country at the United Nations barely at the age of 40 is a rare feat even among diplomatic high-fliers. But to be peremptorily retired and recalled three years after and 17 years to full retirement age must be considered a diplomatic tragedy.

The ambassador’s career illustrates a classic Nigerian paradox which has continued to haunt the nation till date. The very system that recognises and rewards talent and excellence is also the same system that recognises and punishes talent and excellence. It is a Janus-faced system that is capable of good and evil in equal measure.

All human societies are prone to errors of judgement and procedural mishaps in their preferment systems .But civilised societies build and develop institutional frameworks and safety nets to protect their public service against the frailty of human nature and its tendency to arbitrary tyranny. Almost 30 years after the ambassador’s arbitrary retirement, the Nigerian public service remains a Homeric killing field in which the best and the brightest are routinely sacrificed at the altar of mediocrity and mendacity.

One can then understand the occasional bitterness and bewilderment and the abiding trauma that lace the ambassador’s photographic recall of events. But it is not all a tale of woes. There are happy moments and joyous events recollected with perfect tranquillity. The ambassador is an illustrious scion of an illustrious lineage.

Once he is able to put behind him the trauma of a truncated career, Fafowora takes a hardnosed and insightful view of our failings as a nation and the concomitant foreign policy fiasco. The thesis is simple. In the long and short run, a nation’s foreign politics is conditioned and determined by its internal politics. Chaotic internal politics always lead to chaotic foreign policies. The colour and complexion of external affairs are a reflection of the colour and complexion of internal affairs.

With its rich anecdotes, its hilarious encounters with saints and sadists of power, its unforgettable and finely crafted cameos of living and dead personages, this memoirs is a tour de force of institutional memory. Only a glutton for punishment would wish to become a victim of the ambassador’s perfectly weighed putdown or his pithy and pitiless summations. A few old heroes are disrobed. Emperors walk naked. Unfortunately, some of them are no longer around to answer to the ambassador’s scathing denunciations. All in all, this memoirs will come in handy for our foreign policy planners plotting a way out of our foreign policy conundrum.

Let me say right away then that this memoirs is destined to become a classic of its genre, a towering contribution to diplomatic literature and a rich mine for students of cultural history, particularly of the westernised Yoruba elite thrown up by colonisation and christianisation. The old Lagos colony comes alive in this memoirs and through its prism we are able to catch a historic glimpse of its Victorian, Georgian and Elizabethan phases.

My favourite is the unforgettable cameo of the old fabled Lagos millionaire, Pa Da Rocha, promptly appearing on his balcony at 1pm everyday to throw two shilling coins at passers-by. According to the ambassador, there were rumours that Da Rocha was actually long dead and that it was his ghost dispensing the munificence. But this did not prevent Fafowora and his fellow pupils of CMS Grammar School from partaking in the free for all scramble for the old Brazilian benediction.

It is stuff from magical realism. It appears that we have had ghosts for a long time in this country, but this one was a good and generous ghost. There was also the story of the late venerable musical impresario, Art Alade, arriving in school in a gleaming and glistening Jaguar car while his principal made do with an old banger. But the iron-willed disciplinarian would not be fazed by such display of opulence.

Fafowora writes the English language with felicity and facility. There is a fluency and fluidity about his prose which hint at a natural flair for writing. When this is added to a racy and riveting narrative style, it is moveable feast indeed. There is a master story teller, a raconteur of exceptional ability, at work in this memoirs.

If the ambassador’s grasp of historical details is astonishing, his power of recall is a tad short of extraordinary. Fafowora vividly recalls events from childhood, and not even memorable pounded yam meals at the feet of his adoring and doting grandfather in Ilesha escape his attention. What a great professor of History lost to the Nigeria academy! The utter clarity, the limpid simplicity and uncluttered writing remind one of Norman Stone, the former Cambridge professor of Modern History and the celebrated AJP Taylor, the great historian.

In the event, the loss of the Nigerian academy was the gain of the Nigerian nascent post-Independence diplomatic community. It was a career that blazed forth like a comet resulting in two glorious ambassadorial rescue postings to Idi Amin’s Uganda and later Turkey. It culminated at the UN as ambassador and Deputy Representative of Nigeria’s mission before it was plucked down in orbit by malignant forces.

Fafowora does not mince word about those he felt were responsible for his plight, which saw him suddenly thrown out of the Nigerian Mission at the UN and to the abyss of joblessness in a foreign land. According to him, the main culprit was the late Ambassador Lawal Rafindadi who was a mere cipher clerk when Fafowora was already a top official of the Nigerian embassy in London.

Rafindadi was ably assisted by the late General Joseph Garba who appeared to have coveted Fafowora’s job beyond the bounds of decency and decorum. Mention must also be made of the top Nigerian diplomat and former academic who wrote Fafowora a profuse letter of appreciation and thanks after enjoying the ambassador’s warmth and hospitality in New York. But almost in the same breath, the fellow also wrote a damning letter about the ambassador to the federal authorities.

Although the new military authorities admitted that a mistake had been made, its ranking echelon was said to have claimed that the government had put the matter behind it. The moral and mortal error of military arrogance is that injustice can never be put behind. It will always surface on the front burner, an open sore of the nation.

It has been said that an ambassador is a person paid to lie for his country abroad. Also, in a famous diplomatic dogfight, General Alexander Haig, the late American Secretary of State, was said to have dismissed Lord Carrington, his British counterpart, as a duplicitous bastard. To which the British earl snootily replied that there was always going to be a problem when you put boy scouts in charge of diplomacy.

This ambassador is neither duplicitous, nor is he a boy scout in diplomacy. Fafowora has refused to lie about the ugly realities of his country. There is a refreshing candour about this memoirs which occasionally does not sit very well with the classical canons of diplomatic reticence. Anybody on the wrong side of the famous Ijesha tongue would know that it is not an ordinary bruising affair. Future generations of Nigerians will remain grateful to the ambassador for exposing with merciless frankness, the hollow ritual of Nigeria’s foreign policy.

Had the ambassador been a better politician and a more accomplished insider operative, perhaps his fate would have been different. But throughout his career, Dr Fafowora insisted on doing what was right and proper even if heavens should fall. In following the laid down procedures and regulations, he was as militant as he was uncompromising often courting the ire of his affronted superiors and influential subordinates alike. The chancery is not a place for hostage taking, or for taking chances for that matter.

There is an almost obsessive insistence on honour and propriety which often make Fafowora to sound like a moral crusader rather than a wily diplomat. In fairness to the author, he had the likes of Simeon Adebo to look up to as iconic avatars of the tradition. An excellent technocrat of immaculate integrity and unimpeachable character, Adebo was often spotted by eagle-eyed superiors who rewarded him with higher portfolios .and each time, the great man turned in an even more superlative performance. But it is unlikely that our ambassador has not heard that the distinguished public servant died a broken and disappointed man.

It is time to examine the cultural and historical milieu that threw up this remarkable diplomat. The family took its name from the ambassador’s great grandfather who is rightly regarded as the modern primogenitor of the Fafowora clan, even though the original lineage could be traced back as far as the 15th century. Like many contemporary Ijesha family names, Fafowora is a nom de guerre adapted by the modern founding father.

Fafowora distinguished himself as a warrior in the protracted Ibadan-Ekitiparapo war which had drawn in all of Yoruba land. He was known to have been fierce and uncompromising in war. Such was his total commitment to warfare that his own son and the future ambassador’s grandfather was already a twelve year old boy when he was taken to meet his father for the first time at the Ikirun front. The boy chose to remain with his father at the war front where he tended to his horses.

With the end of war and demobilisation, the great warrior took to farming and business and became an instant success. The son took after the father, even surpassing him in superlative wealth. His entrepreneurial daring and love of adventure took him as far as the Badagry coast and in particular Oke-Odan where he promptly eloped with his sweetheart, a local princess and the ambassador’s paternal grandmother.

Here we see new class formations in process and the modern Yoruba hinterland elite in progress. The old warrior class had transformed itself into the nucleus of the new merchant class. Further travel and exposure brought cultural refinement and civilisation which was almost synonymous with westernisation and the adoption of the Christian religion.

As a son of a wealthy and influential father, the ambassador’s father in 1934 became the first student of Ilesha Grammar School with the magical number 001. He eventually finished at CMS Grammar School in 1938 in the same class as the famous Williams brothers. His son, the future ambassador, followed his father’s footsteps and became a pupil in the same school in January 1954 at the age of 13 and graduated with solid results in 1958.

The inevitable contacts and collisions between the new Yoruba hinterland elite and the old coastal elite of Brazilian émigrés, returnees and recaptives produced its own great social ironies and explosive contradictions which should be of interest to our sociologists and cultural historians. Gentrification, with its hints of snobbery and exclusion and the attendant stratification of society were also underway.

The ambassador’s maternal great grandfather was a Famuyiwa, a hardy Ijesha man who had been stranded on the Ileke coastline as a result of the protracted Yoruba civil war of the late 19th century. His son who trained as a clergyman promptly adopted the name Williams. But when the ambassador’s father, who had by then made his way to Lagos as a promising civil servant, asked for the hand of the beautiful Williams daughter in marriage, it was initially frowned upon by the Williams’ clan as an act of great social temerity by an upcountry bumpkin.

It was the resulting union that was to produce the future ambassador. A blissful and idyllic childhood was brutally punctuated by the death of the mother who succumbed to cancer at the age of 38 in December 1954. The young Dapo, who was barely 13 at the time, was left to provide an emotional shield for his younger sister and infant brother. Far into his manhood, particularly in dire straits, the ambassador recalls the tragedy with pain and an acute sense of loss.

Yet it is also likely that it was this defining event that steeled his character and forced early maturity on him. It probably also fuelled his determination to succeed in the face of all odds. This was to stand him in good stead as he scraped through secondary school without a permanent address. It also saw him through the Nigerian College of Arts and Science and the University of Ibadan where he emerged with top honours in 1964.

It was however as a budding diplomat that the future ambassador faced his stiffest test of character. The sparks started flying almost immediately after he joined the Foreign Service. The training officer in the ministry, in what the ambassador described as an act of “deliberate negligence”, locked up all the correspondence pertaining to an earlier admission he had secured to Oxford University and went on leave. The offer lapsed, but when the Civil War broke out some months later, the same officer was among the first to defect.

Secondly, Fafowora discovered early enough to his chagrin that official quarters in the Foreign Service were not allocated on the basis of seniority and rank but on the basis of region and creed. The ostensible reason for this flagrant favouritism and discrimination was that officers of northern origins, being in unfamiliar territory, would find it more difficult to secure accommodation than their southern colleagues. But as the ambassador would later rue, there is no evidence that this policy was reversed in favour of southern officers when the nation’s capital shifted to the north.

It would appear that all the internal cleavages that have hobbled Nigeria’s march to authentic nationhood are reproduced at the level of External Affairs. These are the cleavages of ethnicity, religion, regionalism, gender and class. Those who find themselves outside the magical circle often learnt of their posting or promotion from far junior officers who belong. It was in the same manner that Fafowora learnt of his first ambassadorial posting to Uganda.

During his mission to Turkey, the ambassador was directed by the home office to comment on the desirability or otherwise of Nigeria joining the OIC. Based on his awareness that Nigeria is a secular state, Fafowora urged caution, advising that our observer status be maintained. But an ambassadorial colleague serving somewhere else was unimpressed, insisting that Nigeria was an Islamic state and that the process for full OIC membership should be expedited.

If Fafowora thought that this was a mere difference of opinion, he was profoundly mistaken. Years later, his ambassadorial colleague could barely conceal his hostility, pointedly referring Fafowora to the original affront as the basis of his intense irritation. To slight his colleague even further, the ambassador not only refused to vacate the quarters he no longer needed, he handed it over instead to a far junior officer. Such was the nature of political and religious animosity..

Added to all this is perhaps the more fundamental problem of the mode of decolonization. The mode of decolonization also affects the mood and tone of Foreign Policy. Nigeria’s independence was gained on a platter of gold rather than at the altar of heroic sacrifices But Ghana which had a more turbulent trajectory in which Nkrumah moved from prison to presidential palace always had a more robust and vigorous foreign policy than Nigeria. Indeed in the early days Nkrumah viewed Nigeria as an imperialist poodle and there was no love lost between him Alhaji Tafawa-Balewa who was a staunch conservative at home and an imperialist ally abroad.

Almost thirty years after and perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, Ambassador Fafowora’s premature exit from service has a ring of inevitability to it. A Foreign Service already devastated by ethnicity, religious bigotry, gender discrimination, post- civil war stress, regional polarization and the bitter division between career diplomats and political placemen now added the virus of Intelligence officers planted to write damaging reports about their colleagues and superiors rather than mounting external surveillance. An implosion was bound to follow.

It was the last-mentioned virus that proved fatal to the ambassador’s career. He was summarily retired along with many other illustrious and distinguished colleagues in what he describes as a night of long knives. The climate of national hysteria and confusion that followed the termination of civil rule provided the perfect cover for what is nothing but ethnic and religious score-settling. Almost thirty years after, the mind still boggles at the scale of mischief and malice. Yet the nation has failed to draw the appropriate lessons.

The ambassador’s subsequent incarnation as the director General of MAN, his foray into Yoruba cultural politics and his political appointment as a Special Adviser to the government of his native state of Osun are beyond the immediate purview of this review. His account of this phase of his life is as illuminating as it is filled with insights. But after his stellar Foreign Service career, it is an anticlimax of sorts. It merely shows that for a man of exceptional talents, there is life after diplomatic death.

This is a powerful book whose pulsating echoes will reverberate in the sanctuary of power for a long time to come. It is a bold and courageous intervention brimming with daring and sheer audacity. Like his Ijesha warrior forbears, Fafowora has thrown his hat in the ring.

But behind every exceptional man there is probably a more exceptional woman. In ending, I must not fail to single out for particular praise the ambassador’s wife. She has stood like a Rock of Gibraltar behind her husband as an exemplar of self-sacrifice, duty and devotion. The couple was taken to the airport in an ambulance on the day of their wedding which also coincided with the first coup. This is not just an ambassador’s memoirs. It is also a love story at its most sublime, and at a time of political and diplomatic cholera. Let us now rise in honour of this exemplary Nigerian nationalist and Yoruba patriot.

I thank you all.