ByTatalo Alamu

 

As Nigeria continues to unravel at the seams as a result of hegemonic over stretch and feudal overreach, dystopia and its associative nausea have become overwhelming. Even those who thought the nation was their great grandfathers’ estate are beginning to have a second thought. The enemies they have spawned are camped right outside the gate of their preferred fortress.

As a sense of anomic siege overpowers everybody, one must give a thought this morning to those titans who gave up their life toiling at the shrine one nation and one glorious destiny. What will Herbert Macaulay, Raji Abdallah, Bello Ijumu, Mazi Mbonu Ojike, Bode Thomas and all those great colonial-era journalists who demanded for liberty or death be thinking in their graves?

Those who have been consumed at the great altar of human sacrifice are simply too numerous to mention. Now that we have arrived at Golgotha, or The Place of Skulls, we wonder what these avatars would be thinking of what has become of their labour and the nation they sought to breathe life into from the colonial laboratory of artificial insemination.

Lord Lugard’s marriage of convenience between the promising southern lad and the northern lady of means has become a union of inconvenience.  Without the promised inheritance, John Donne and Anne Donne have become undone. Feudal profligacy has met its match in bourgeois prodigality. Never in the history of the nation and not even in the run up to the terrible civil war have there been so much stress, so much tension and so much murderous strife. Before our very eyes, the centre has become decentred.

Without formally announcing the commencement of another civil war, the entire country has been placed on a virtual war footing. But unlike a regular civil war with its definable fronts and acute symmetry, this is an asymmetrical warfare of all against all with shifting fronts. It is the Waterloo of regular generals and fixed military commands. Nobody in their wildest nightmare would have imagined that it would end like this. It is history mocking at us.

While we are still at it, a strange and unnerving lexicon has found its way into the animated Nigerian discourse of self-determination this past week. Uti Possidetis juris spoke to the impossibility of just walking away to self-actualization from the colonial iron cage that is Nigeria with intellectual fanfare and without a big fight.

This column is not unaware of the fact that some radical vanguard of the movement for self-determination have pooh-poohed the whole concept and dismissed those behind it as agents of feudal reaction. This is nothing but panicky overreaction which must be avoided. There is enough give-away in the piece which ought to convince any fair-minded person about its solid scholarship and progressive leaning.

Nations, whether Westphalian or post-Westphalian, are not meant to be dissolved just like that. There is enough explosive rigged into the structure to dissuade just that, particularly if you lack the firepower to blitz your way through the cobwebs of international conspiracy against internal self-determination and separatist agitators in a constituted nation.

Actually for those who are familiar with International Politics, there is nothing unusual or unfamiliar about the doctrine of Uti Possidetis juris. It is a reaffirmation of the founding ideology and organogram of the modern nation-state paradigm. It is anchored on the abiding belief that international order and global stability is superior to justice or the national question.

Victors have a right to do whatever they like with their conquered territory as long as the balance of force remains in their favour. Might is always right, or to echo Hegel’s famous validation and justification of the Prussian military state, whatever is real is rational and whatever is rational is real.

Throughout human history, defeated people and nations may huff and puff, or they may shout at the rooftop about their plight, but they cannot do much about the right of their conquerors to rule their conquered territory as they deemed fit and right. Should the conquered succeed in turning the table against their tormentors by force of arms or other means available, it is all well and good. Let them just get on with it without disrupting the global order and peace in the process.

It is no doubt a harshly conservative doctrine without any iota of humanity or much empathy for the plight of the oppressed or dehumanized. But it sought to view the world as it really is and not as it ought to be or as it might be eventually.

This is why no eyebrow was raised when the imperial Soviet military juggernaut annexed and incorporated many nations at the end of the Second World War and why nobody batted an eyelid when the forcibly annexed nations decoupled themselves after the union expired with the collapse of Socialist Russia.

And this was why the British were said to be so appalled by the asinine stupidity of the victorious revenge coupists of July 1966 who were shouting “araba” or secession even after they had succeeded in demolishing the status quo which had been briefly wrenched from them by the majors’ mutiny of the earlier January. Why would they want to leave when the entire country had become their oyster? Fifty five years after, the nation is still in bondage to the feudal-military complex.

Uti possidetis juris means “as you possess, so may you possess henceforth”. This is the legal incubus and sanitary cordon thrown around the world by the emergent western powers just before the rampaging Ottoman Turks finally expired at the gates of Vienna after carrying all before them with their ferocious cavalry. It was ratified by the Treaty of Westphalia and later consecrated by the Treaty of Utrecht.

Henceforth possession was based on secular authority which was in turn based on balance of power rather than religious suzerainty. It was a staggering body blow to the whole notion of empire and marked the beginning of the modern world of nation-states. Later as the Ottoman Empire began to unravel, a British statesman famously quipped that Turkey was the sick man of Europe with inheritors waiting to share its prized possessions.

Force, rather than intellectual persuasion or fine logic, was all that mattered, such as happened when French artillery put paid to the Italian city-states or when Russian firepower expelled the Ottoman Turks from the Crimea. It was the same logic at play when Britain seized Gibraltar from the Spaniards after a brisk offensive in 1703. America, a former colony itself and reluctant late comer to colonization, did its bit by snatching the Philippines from an exhausted Spain.

In the modern world, we have seen Margaret Thatcher forcibly extricate the Falklands from the Argentines. Till date, Argentina still emotionally refers to the islands as The Malvinas to no avail. In a burst of Slavic hyper-nationalism, post-Soviet Russia enacted the feat of its forebears this time against the Ukrainians by forcibly wresting the Crimean chunk of Ukraine territory without the international community batting an eyelid.

It should be obvious that despite the cessation of the empire-state, the original colonizing impetus behind the old nation-state formation continues to dog Africa even in its post-colonial phase, either as a weapon of internal colonization or a means of external domination. As we have said in an earlier piece, the tendency is to view nation-foundation from a colonial, instrumentalist and supremacist mind set.

Rather than creating a harmonious community of equal citizens, the nation is forced to congeal and cohere around a master-nationality which must wield absolute power. Let them get on with it even if a few heads are smashed in the process. After all, the meek will never inherit the world.

We can compare this pre-modern martial mind-set with the way and manner more humane and civilized nations deal with the problems of internal quests for self-determination. The old Czechoslovakia nation dissolved into its component republics of Czech and Slovakia without a shot being fired in what is widely applauded as the Velvet Revolution.

Consider for comparison, the self-assurance and dexterity with which a non-imperialist country like Canada resolved the separatist agitation in its Quebec region in favour of relative autonomy and Australia’s near perfect federalism. Old colonial master-nations with their imperialist hubris carry ancestral baggage which make it very difficult or near impossible for them to respond to modern realities.

The imperialist hubris is at the heart of Nigeria’s endemic crisis of nationhood. For agitators of self-determination, particularly the much troubled and disaffected Yoruba nationality component, it introduces what we have termed in an earlier intervention as the Catalan conundrum, the profound psychological unease of belonging and longing for something else at the same; a state of permanent siege in all its cultural, economic and political denominations.

What then is the Catalan conundrum? For as long as anybody can remember, the people of Catalonia have wanted out of the union with Spain. There have been periodic uprisings which have ended in blood and tears with zero political gains. The Castilians to the south are not about to budge because the military odds are overwhelmingly in their favour.

During the Spanish Civil war, they captured Lliuis Companys, the Catalonian leader. He was taken from German occupied France before being tortured and shot in a prison yard in Barcelona. Companys had passed up many opportunities to leave France because his son was sick in hospital in Paris. When it comes to Catalonian separatists, Spain does not take hostages.

The profound irony is that while all these confrontations were going on, the Catalans inched their way towards full autonomy through graduated reforms. More importantly, the Catalans took advantage of geography, their proximity to a more civilized and advanced region of Europe and their tremendous human and cultural resources to build their region to the most prosperous, most liveable and most civilized region of Spain.

Of course in terms of size, shared language and habitus, economic might, cultural homogeneity, coherence and cohesiveness, Catalonia is a very viable country. But the old colonial incubus must stand in the way until something gives or the agitators succumb to the politics of exhaustion. There are intriguing parallels to the Yoruba problematic.

The international community will not come to anybody’s aid if and when ethnic groups in internally embroiled nations come to blows, except to protect their national interest. Britain will continue to defend Nigeria in its current configuration while tipping a hat in the direction of human rights victims.

France, on the other hand, has been unapologetically in favour of the balkanization of the British-created leviathan. Internal struggles and legitimate quests for self-determination are too disruptive of the international order and the global hegemony inaugurated by the Treaty of Westphalia.

Actual possession is all that matters in the eyes of the “world”. Have artillery and maxim guns and will travel. When the morbid King Leopold of Belgium seized a huge chunk of Africa and named it the Free Congo State, nobody raised an eyebrow until the human carnage and ensuing racket became an international menace.

The other route is through creative rebellion which requires intellectual and political nous. Given a few years or some decades down the line, Barcelona would have become so economically powerful, so technologically and culturally preeminent that it would have virtually decoupled itself from the rest of Spain. As the current Catalan disaster has demonstrated, pushing for full independence without the military wherewithal can only lead to harsh repression and the rolling back of earlier gains of political autonomy.

The only ray of hope in all this is the fact that the expiring Nigerian post-colonial state is not the modern Spain state which is primed to punitive exertion in the defence and consolidation of its territorial possession. Unlike Spain, the Nigerian state as currently constituted cannot even protect itself not to talk of the entire nation. Unlike the old civil war, it is the echoes of non-state artillery that are currently booming.

Nigeria represents the most classic instance of colonial nationhood with a dominant master-nationality at the end of its historic tether, still militarily and politically rampart but without the economic, technological and intellectual pre-eminence to sustain hegemonic order.

If its sheer incompetence and aggravating lack of modernist nous does not lead to catastrophic state collapse, it may eventually provoke revolutionary discontent within its own ranks which will put paid to the nation as it is. One is near certain that in some western political laboratories experiments are being currently conducted about what to do with the sick man of Africa.

Tatalo Alamu

 

Oh dear, oh dear, it appears the heat in the presidential kitchen may be getting to our boy and former student, Deacon Femi Adesina.  Yours sincerely has not sighted Femi in the six years since he assumed office, but one can reasonably surmise that he is in excellent spirit and fine fettle. Unlike the delightfully roguish Garba Shehu who relishes the role of offensive playmaker for an embattled presidency and its numerous foes, Femi is a stalwart of defence with occasional forays into enemy territory.

But we live in strange and confusing times where actual reality is more colourful and spectacularly surreal than the most outlandish fiction. Current infamy often erases past distinction. Sometimes there are eerie parallels between two totally different historical epochs which give one an unnerving feeling of Déjà vu. Often, two totally dissimilar historical figures end up sharing the same fate even as thunder strikes in the same place twice.

No one can separate what is real from what is demonically imagined anymore. Take for example, the new phenomenon of fake news. If all the energy and brilliance expended on dis-imagining the nation can be used to re-imagine it!!! But the purveyors of fake news tell you that it is a legitimate assault on illegitimate reality. Tyranny is a distortion of reality. Distorted reality demands and deserves further distortions of reality until everybody comes to their senses.

Last week in what appeared to be a last-ditch attempt to fend off hostile interlocutors, the presidential spokesperson alerted the nation to a plot by disgruntled religious and political leaders to convoke an illegal confab to overthrow his principal. They were trying to achieve what they could not achieve through the ballot box. The statement bears quoting at length:

“Championed by some disgruntled religious and past political leaders, the intention is to eventually throw the country into a tailspin, which would compel a forceful and undemocratic change of leadership. Further unimpeachable evidence shows that these disruptive elements are now recruiting the leadership of some ethnic groups and politicians round the country, with the intention of convening some sort of conference, where a vote of no confidence would be passed on the President thus throwing the land into further turmoil”.

The internal tensions and semantic stress in this statement, not to talk of its logical inconsistency, is a testament to political disorientation. Femi should read his own statement all over again. First, eventuality is not the same thing as immediate actuality. Second, “some sort of conference” is not the same thing as a real conference.

In any case, since when has an illegal confab obviously without the blessing of either the military or the national assembly become the preferred route to terminate an obviously beleaguered regime? What will be the effect of such putative vote of no confidence on the polity except to add to the growing concerns about the state of the nation?

Femi is far too accomplished to be caught at this level of pepper soup joint punditry and  beer parlour blathers. If it is a prelude to a clampdown on the perceived enemies of the government as a result of increasing popular hostility, the government does not need such convoluted tales as this. It has after all taken some extremely tough measures in the past without resorting to diabolic stunts.

Yet as we have hinted above, there is something so strange and unnerving about this whole episode and how it recalls the original Beer Hall Putsch that convinces us that there may be a major political allegory unfolding. There is often a deeper lesson to be learnt beyond the surface trivialities and superficiality of a statement particularly by those who serve as transmitters of the message.

The Germans are known to be very stern and serious-minded people with a tendency to take themselves too seriously often leading to perceptions of humourless arrogance. It is an irony of their modern history that such a significant development should come to be known as The Beer Hall Putsch. But the Germans loved their beer and their numerous beer halls. It was in one of these that fate conjoined Adolf Hitler and his adopted country.

Adolf Hitler was born an Austrian, a German-speaking nation of the same genetic stock. He had been completely down on his luck. Twenty four in 1923, he could not be said to have done anything with himself apart from being invalided out of the First World War as a lowly corporal. It was a sore and sensitive point for him and whenever the occasion suited Winston Churchill, a master of psychological siege, he would refer to Hitler as Corporal Schicklgruber, his old Austrian name and military rank.

After the war, Hitler joined the security force as a police spy. His assignment was to spy and report on the German Workers’ Party. But he became completely captivated by its message which was a quaint admixture of fierce, implacable nationalism and savage denunciation of capitalism. Gaining rapid acceptance and ascendancy as a result of his oratorical skills and organizational ability, Hitler persuaded the party to change its name to National Socialist Party. Thus was born the NAZI moniker.

The Germany in which all this was taking place was not any better than Adolf Hitler, the former Austrian vagrant. For country and adopted citizen, it was a rendezvous of two gifted but frustrated desperadoes. Germany was also completely down on its military, political and economic luck. Convulsed by revolutionary concussions, it had earlier abolished its monarchical institution and a king who was widely believed to be suffering from dementia and hereditary mental incapacity.

But this was not enough to reverse its desperate luck on the military and economic fronts. Battered and pounded into submission by Russian and French artillery, Germany succumbed to a humiliating technical knock-out in the hands of the Allied forces. The ensuing Treaty of Versailles marked a new low in the history of the emergent German nation.

The punitive reparations left the economy in ruins, the people shattered and devastated and the national outlook bleak and unpromising. The Weimar Republic was widely reviled and dismissed as an expensive joke. Chafing under the yoke of the new American economic imperialism and political disorder at home, most German people believed that it was a question of time before something gave.

This was the situation on the morning of November, 8th, 1923 when Hitler stormed the Beer Hall with about six hundred armed NAZI volunteers to terminate the Bavarian government hoping that this would trigger a nation-wide uprising that would bring down the hated Weimar Republic. Hitler had secured the support of Ernst Ludendorff, a war hero and arguably the most respected German general of the time. The stern, no-nonsense general duly arrived at the Beer Hall in military frocks.

The whole thing ended in a fiasco as the military police opened fire on the frenzied mob killing about sixteen of them. Hitler fell to the ground with a dislocated shoulder. It was said that General Ludendorff walked through the hail of bullets with a contemptuous swagger as if he was taking an early morning stroll. The truth may be more prosaic. No soldier or military personnel would dare fire on Germany’s most respected living soldier.

Ludendorff was later to dismiss Hitler as a coward for daring to run away vowing never to have anything to do with him again, a promise he kept till the bitter end despite rumours to the contrary. For his pains, Hitler was jailed for five years but later released as a result of his growing popularity and prestige after serving only one year. It was in the enforced seclusion of the prison yard that Hitler found the time to write his famous book, Mein Kampf, translated as My Struggle.

Hitler took to heart the hard lessons of the Beer Hall debacle. He renounced any residual faith in the military path to political glory vowing from that point on to gain power through democratic means and the parliamentary route to political stardom. Military coups are for political amateurs. Thereafter, he commenced a relentless and single-minded assault on Germany’s enfeebled democratic temple culminating in a dizzying rise to the chancellorship in 1933.

The former Austrian corporal had turned the table on the greatest German generals of his generation using them to gain power in a Faustian pact which left no room for mercy or mercy-killing. Once in power, Hitler used the army to deal with his loyal red-shirt colleagues in what is known as “The Night of the Long Knife”. The casualties included Ernst Rohm, the only man known to address the Fuhrer in the familiar “du” expression.

Thereafter, Hitler was to turn on the military itself, systematically brutalising and eventually destroying the high caste German Junker military aristocracy ineluctably leading to another ruinous global war for the German people within a spate of thirty years. For the doughty Germans, it was a spellbinding rollercoaster which ended in utter destruction of the German society.

The saturation bombing by the Americans virtually obliterated many German cities and left the people desolate and disconsolate. If anybody had told the Germans that there was something worse than the Treaty of Versailles, the person would have been shouted down. It can however be argued that the Germans have also made their point in a rather costly and bloody manner, leading to two world wars and much universal trauma for the human species.

It is important that in a multi-nation world, people of diverse cultures must be accorded equal respect and understanding. Similarly, champions of hegemonic supremacy in multi-ethnic and multi-religious nations who subject other factions to serial political humiliation and economic subjugation, flagrant nepotism and unfair discrimination must accept that they are merely stoking the fire of inevitable bloody confrontation.

No one is interested in political scaremongering but it is important for functionaries of the Nigerian state to keep their ears to the ground in order to appreciate the forces that drive political dynamics in the country. In the past three weeks, there have been loud calls for the president’s resignation on the grounds of his perceived inability to function properly and in accordance with the rigours of presidential office in a volatile nation.

There are creeping rumours of senility and dementia. Whatever be the reason, these calls are unprecedented to say the least. Despite their rambunctious nature, Nigerians are generally sensitive to and understanding of crippling ailments.

It must be General Buhari’s past infractions or current insensitivities that must be driving these increasingly strident calls for his resignation. This is what his close advisers ought to look into. How a man who was widely admired if not exactly loved has become an object of public ridicule and scorn ought to bother his aides.

As if this was not enough, there are now open calls for the military to take back the power they relinquished about twenty one years earlier. Luckily, the military authorities have themselves denounced the idea. But the fact that the idea was mooted at all and by respected citizens shows how deep the rot is.

Whatever will be will be. Nothing can reprieve a society fated to a terrible destiny, particularly one captured by stone-deaf feudal predators. Rather than rooting for a violent military intervention, Hitler chose the route of a parliamentary putsch to gain political ascendancy. But a coup is a coup.

The German society that threw up Hitler, despite its military prowess, was a deeply feudalistic nation riddled by class, caste and racial inequities and led by a hopelessly ineffectual and corrupt breed of politicians. Tragedy was inevitable. It was left to a resentful, hate-filled Austrian to drive the contradictions to their logical conclusions even while under the illusion that he was furthering the glory of his people.

It is an old German allegory for contemporary Nigeria. One is sure that almost three and a half decades after, Femi is still able to distinguish between latent and manifest contents of texts as borrowed by Literary Theory from Freudian psychoanalysis of dreams.

Tatalo Alamu

 

A few hours after it was made known that heroic government troops had invaded the fortress where some Kaduna school kids were being held and liberated them by fire and by force, Okon jumped into snooper’s room totally breathless with his eyes almost popping out in insane excitement. Yours sincerely was totally flustered by this early morning invasion of his privacy. But the crazy boy was in no mood to be lightly dismissed.

“Oga, you see now, I get power pass all dis dem palm wine prophets and tombo journalists. He done reach twelve years now since I see and I say am say for Niger Delta na government dey fight government. Even dis Boko Haram palaver now you no see say na government dey fight government? Dem dey quarrel over budget. You no see how dem Gumi man dey walk in and him dey walk out like dem magician? Dem go do amnesty after dem don finis dem Central Bank and Ibo boy don disappear”.

“Okon, shut up if you have nothing sensible to say”, snooper screamed at the mad boy.

Since the Niger Delta crisis intensified, Okon has been preening and prancing all over the place, claiming to be part of a patriotic secret organisation committed to a peaceful resolution of the bloody imbroglio. Sometimes, he would shamble into the house past midnight reading to himself what he called a confidential communiqué on the matter. After Gbaramutu was sacked, Okon sauntered in in the early hours of the morning looking like the real devil’s advocate. Snooper decided to sit the mad Calabar boy down before he got into a major trouble.

“Okon, what is all this Niger Delta nonsense?” snooper asked with disdain.

“Ah oga no be nonsense at all. Na government dey fight Government “, the mad boy retorted.

“Meaning what?” snooper snapped.

“Oga, abi you no sabi say Tompolo’s first name be Government? So na government dey finish government. But we wan separate them rogues becos he be like if say one government wan destroy dem government boy and you know say when asinwin man with obonge blokos dey fire one’s mama for inside room, you go dey cry with am, that’s all”, Okon submitted.

“What is happening in Gbaramutu?” snooper asked.

“Oga, Gbaramutu don become Gbarayamutu. Yoruba people no help us now but if to say na  Abiola or dem Awolowo dem for don kaput government now”, Okon retorted.

A few days after this, Okon sauntered into the living room. “Oga I wan reach Patani to attend Congress of Creek Chiefs”. Two days later, Okon crawled in with fever in his eyes and his belly fearfully distended. Before he collapsed, the mad boy moaned. “Oga, he be like if say dem don poison dem food. I hear one gogogodo man dey shout, yaisa, yaisa to them yaro cook. Dem give me a whole goat to chop. Dem say dem dey do capacity building. Awuf dey run belle ooo”.

   First published in 2009 and now upgraded.

 

By Tatalo Alamu

It is Mayday in Nigeria. It is just as well that General Buhari has finally roused himself to ask for help. The nature of that appeal for help is itself plainly controversial and steeped in ignorance of international protocol and procedure. But that should not detain us for now. Mayday is the ultimate distress signal; a situation of dire emergency which requires immediate attention. It is a phonetic mimic of the French expression “M’aidez”, which means “help me”.

As Nigeria continues to unravel, it is now clear that nothing short of a drastic resolution can save the day and arrest the spreading anomie. Despite the din of battles and the echoes of multiple hostilities across the nation, we contend that a congregation of cognoscenti, a gathering of wise people, can still save the day and avert total disaster. It is this gathering that must fashion how we will live together henceforth, or how we are to proceed on our separate ways.

Read Also: Making Nigeria great today: Invitation to nation building

Twenty one years after the Gideon Orkar eruption, Nigeria continues to flounder in a cesspit of political, economic and social inequities. The young major’s solution to the crisis was a peremptory dissolution of the nation. Orkar has now spawned many siblings and dangerously out of military cantonment and containment.

It is a measure of how much lower we have sunken in nation-building, state-validation and elite cohesion that Orkar’s final solution in all its ungainly and unwieldy severity now appears to many of our compatriots as the most attractive option. It is a depressing moment to be a forward-looking Nigerian. A Yugoslavian combo seems to be loading.

This morning in exploration of the possibilities of a meaningful dialogue, we turn over the column to a committed patriot and ardent fan of the column who recently turned seventy. There is a lot to agree with about these septuagenarian ruminations. But there are also one or two areas of critical divergence.

However, If there is any semblance of rationality still remaining in the country, it should not be difficult to agree that it is better to think our way out of problems than to shoot our way through them. Given the provocations of the past six years, it is difficult to blame those who have learnt to pray and to keep their gunpowder dry at the same time. Happy birthday once again to Dr John Abhuere.

By John Imonbhio Abhuere

Between 2013 and 2020 the call for the restructuring of Nigeria by the elite heightened. This was in the face of mounting socio-economic problems such as insecurity, unemployment, corruption etc. which made life very uneasy and unsure in most parts of the country. Thus it was not surprising that debaters of restructuring touched on all aspects of the nation. A galaxy of ‘eminent Nigerians’ contributed to the debate.

I reviewed the debate and planned a book for it now at advanced stage of completion. As part of my 70th Birth day celebration I wish to offer some thoughts and reflections on Nigeria as contained in the planned book. Towards this end, it is my pleasure to invite all the citizens especially the political elite to the real task of nation building which has been largely abandoned  since the  dawn of independence and to make due  sacrifice in the national interest of the solid unity and do meaningful development the greatness of the country.

Generally, the debate proved to be interesting, highly productive, revealing and instructive. On the whole, the  review of the debate shows the mistakes made in the past including the regional path taken and  reveals the need to concentrate more  attention today on nation building which had been abandoned for too long a time.

History serves as the basis of evaluation and it points to the need for heightened efforts in nation building as opposed to region building which had been the vogue in Nigeria over the ages. It was clear that regionalism has been an act of regression and its path and pursuit by leaders has been largely responsible for the dearth of patriotism, nationalism, altruism and the prevalence of hatred, distrust and disunity of Nigeria today.

As explained in the book, Regionalism should be rejected because of its many sins. Its time had passed and it was highly disruptive and counter-productive to national unity with its divisive, hermetic, misanthropic and apartheid values and orientations.

On the surface the debate looked chaotic with divisive tendency but beneath it one can see a common string binding almost every one to a common cause of rescuing our dear country from the path to perdition. Broadly it showed a people travelling on different routes but to the same destination-house of leadership, management, governance and justice. Nigerians love their country and want it to be great.

There was a collective concern for the progress and unity of the country and expression of disappointment with the slow pace of development, prevalence of underdevelopment, insecurity, poverty, and corruption across the land and the non-fulfilment of the dreams of independence many years after its attainment. The review suggests the need for positive action and to change gear from emphasis on region building to nation building. The road taken in the past was full of many unnecessary thorns that should be avoided today.

The elite may shout the other down, provoke each other to a duel but most of them want to live in one big, united Nigeria and they have inner yearnings for the nation’s greatness. However, just how best to do this has been the problem. Here there has been a plethora of opinion including the advocacy for the return of the country to its pre1967 Regional Structure which was discarded with good reasons in 1967 under the military leadership of General Yakubu Gowon.

History and empirical evidence do not support a return of such structure. This is one of the reasons for our appeal for shift of emphasis and attention from narrow regionalism to broader nation –building. It is informed by the lessons of history and observation from a review of the debate.

For instance there has been the abandonment and the non-fulfilment of the goal of independence including modernization/development of society, the polarization of the country along tribal, ethnic, regional and religious lines as result of regional ideology, lack of executive capacity and political will to build national unity, fight and eradicate poverty, corruption, insecurity, underdevelopment, discrimination which created a deep well of discontents in the country over time.

Other ugly developments include the relegation of the role of the state to the background thereby denying the country the use of its strongest weapon in the arsenal of development for nation building, low citizenry participation in the development process and cries of marginalization which account for lack of community support of government’s programs.

There has also been prevalence of a culture of inept leadership, ineffective management, bad governance, and inequitable justice which cripple projects from taking off, trigger crisis and the waning of nation-building values such as patriotism and skills such as management for nation building which account for the stagnancy of development and the deepening of the development crisis in the country.

In short, there has been development hunger which had not been satisfied for a long time thereby leading to the near loss of hope confidence and faith in the country.  The first step to greatness would be the filling of identified gaps here.

Nigeria has all it takes to be great including material, human, structure, constitution but lacks the right caliber of elite to propel her to greatness. With quality leadership, effective management, good governance, equitable justice, respect for the rule of law and supremacy of the constitution Nigeria can made to take a comfortable seat among the rich nations of the world.

The abandonment of the task of nation building for region building was a costly mistake at independence which is at the roots of most of the crises today.   The neglect of the genuine cause of national development and unity of the country has been responsible for the hostile, hermetic, apartheid and misanthropic orientation of the country. The irritating lack of executive capacity, the unwillingness or reluctance of the elite to do the needful for growth, unity and development of the country demand a change of direction.

Before elaboration on some of the issues, notably the danger of regionalism, the unmet desire across the country, the imperative of the role of the state and able leadership, effective management etc. let me make some points clear. No society is conflict free. Any society that runs unjust system will rock. No structure or constitution is perfect. Much of the success of a structure or constitution depends on the capacity, vision and commitment of the elite.

There was no unanimity on the subject matter- restructuring or how best to restructure the country or on the way forward for Nigeria. For instance, there were those who believe in regionalism- precisely to return the country to its pre1967 structure (Orjiako, Anyaoku et al). They appear to be the most vocal among the debaters. There were those who just wanted fiscal federalism (Tatalo Alamu,…) State Police and Local Government autonomy in place and confederation(Afe Babalola).

There were others who think that doing meaningful development was the answer to Nigeria’s many problems (Idika Kalu…). There were many more who drew attention to the huge human failing over time and thus call for able leadership, effective management, good governance, equitable justice, fair play and equality of all before the law and respect for the tenets of the constitution as the solid way to go (Sule Lamido, Abhuere …).

The lack of elite’s consensus or agreement on restructuring suggests the wisdom and need for compromise, caution and above all to pay due attention to national interest in amending the Constitution. We must guide against the imposition of some ideas-no matter how vocal their sponsors on the country to avoid resistance and attendant avoidable tension in the polity.

Also the fact that every society has its conflicts and much of the progress of society rests on the shoulders of the elite who serve as leaders, managers, makes imperative the need to empower the man and upgrade his skills and competences for leadership, management, governance, justice and moral probity.

While there were apprehensions that all was not well with the country, that Nigeria was seriously sick and thus in need of proper healing, none of the debaters reviewed proposed a break-up of Nigeria or dissolution of the country. Whatever the murmur in the disappointment with the retrogression of the country, the opinion moulders of the country reviewed in the debate still want the country to remain as one entity but she should be better led and managed in order to be a united, developed, prosperous and progressive nation –state.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

There are other observations on the restructuring debate. Most of the Debaters did not pay much attention to the reason for the failure of the original goals of independence beyond structural constraints. These goals most of which today remain largely unfulfilled include modernization/ development, democracy, freedom, justice and better life for all. The role of the state was also not well appreciated.

The leadership responsibility of the elite in forging and promoting national unity and development was grossly underestimated by many-where at all. Not many seem to appreciate the fact that the relegation of the state to the background and elite’s failure in leadership, management, governance, justice and morality constitute the greatest obstacle to nation-building in Nigeria. Wrongly most of the reviewed contributors to the debate seem to believe that the moment some structures in accordance with their imagination of life were laid or a new constitution was written and introduced the country would start bouncing back well.

Such belief is however wrong and misleading. Wishes do not turn to reality unless worked on by man. It ignores the power of man to make or mar any structure. In particular, it fails to appreciate how the Nigerian elite’s mismanagement of diverse culture, bad governance, and injustice had hindered the progress and unity of Nigeria so far.    For very strange reasons, the human weaknesses and failures which really held back the progress of the country were not given due attention by contributors to the restructuring debate.

Rather there was a kind of obsession with structural and constitutional reforms Meanwhile elite’s poor performance of the leadership, management, governance and justice role  which had done grave harm to the polity and had  actually been  responsible for the crisis and backwardness of the country was ignored. It was the continuation of the old mistake of wrong focus by the elite.

There were many voices raised for restructuring and different routes advanced to reach it by the elite. However a careful consideration shows them to be leading to the same destination – the need for a better country through able leadership, effective management, good governance and equitable justice for all citizens. As we found out most of the reasons advanced for restructuring including the call for pre 1967 Regional structure reflect elite’s failure in leadership, management  governance, justice and morality.

This makes the call for regionalism curious. Apart from the disastrous failure of the regional structure in the past which made it to be disbanded, why not call a spade by its name and treat identified ailment with the right medicine?

But curiously instead of finding ways and means of dealing with these nagging issues of leadership, management etc. and improving   performance here, the advocates of regional structure turn to blaming the present structure and the constitution thereby making one to wonder if they truly understand the problems of the country today. Because of such wrong focus, misdiagnosis and mistreatment, the national ailments have remained a source of big headaches. .

REDEMPTION FROM THE PATRIOTIC, EXEMPLARY LIFE OF FREEDOM FIGHTERS

The debate also showed example of where help for redemption could possibly come and that is from the exemplary patriotic life of the freedom fighters for independence in nation building before 1947. History shows them to be far more patriotic, nationalistic and altruistic than the ruling elite who took over the baton of administration from the British in 1960. Generally they showed greater understanding of nation building and displayed a superior position on national issues to that of the inheritors of power.

The organizations they formed before that time such as the first political party Nigeria National Democratic Party, Nigeria Youth Movement, NCNC, Nigerian Union of student, nationalist movements were national in orientation and intention. For example in spite of differences of tribes and tongues, culture,  their newness or strangeness at the time they came together as members of one country, they were able to organize themselves as one people for a common cause of fighting for freedom.

It was observed that the freedom fighters were motivated more by collective interest than individual interest, the spirits of national unity and patriotism to set out on a journey to fight for independence of Nigeria on behalf of all the ethnic groups on equal basis as Nigerians. While unity and development were the driving forces, they seem to see the country in Augustinian sense or definition of a polity as being ‘a multitude of rational beings united around a common agreement on the objects of their love’ (Garrard and Murphy 2019 p40)1.

In the bid for a better country today, the political elite must return to the pre1947 period of the freedom fighters when patriotism, nationalism, honesty, tolerance, love and national interest were the dominant values. The fighters for freedom simply saw themselves as Nigerians –even though tribes and tongues differ. For success, today’s leaders need to drink from their wells of wisdom and knowledge, tap from their vision and  imbibe their values of patriotism, nationalism, altruism and high sense of justice for all- values now almost extinct today in Nigeria.

To the freedom fighters, Nigerians were one people of the same country no matter the ethnicity, geography, tribe or religion. But this contradicts the view and approach of the inheritors of power from the British. For them Nigerians must always be defined and treated according to their tribes, ethnicity religion and regions of origin as defined and negotiated by our founding fathers no matter how unpalatable.

Consequently, they began to sow the seeds of discord and disunity through regional structures and values and pursue divisive policies based on hermetic, misanthropic and apartheid consideration.  Thus there is intense hostile ethnic groups’ consciousness today.  But as history teaches, such ethnic group’s consciousness of today as in the Yoruba Nation, Igbo nation, Hausa/Fulani nation, Ijaw nation etc. is a later development.

It was largely a post-colonial phenomenon which came up especially after the Richards constitution of 1947. As the literature review shows, before then, Nigerians largely identified themselves with their specific home towns or communities of origin more than the entire tribal/ethnic groups. Thus it was not strange for instance to see two Yoruba towns engaging in warfare or undermining each other in the 18th and 19th centuries (Jide Osuntokun 2020a).

The meaning of this is that with able leadership, effective leadership, good governance and equitable justice and meaningful development across the country- in short positive nation-building the sharp edges of tribalism/ethnicity can be severely blunted to level of impotence.

• John Imonbhio Abhuere, FNIM, FNIMC, Oven of Ebelle, former Director NYSC Founder/Chairman, Centre for Child Care and Youth Development, Abuja.  

By Tatalo Alamu

The end is shrouded in secrecy and mystery. Idriss Deby died the way he lived. No one is sure whether he fell to enemy munitions. Or he succumbed to friendly fire in a deadly conspiracy of the Praetorian Guard. The fact that the military promptly terminated the democratic charade in progress is a telling tribute to the phenomenon of elections without democracy in Africa.

No one has raised any eyebrow, certainly not the international community or the African Union and the congeries of surrounding nations who viewed his departure with mournful trepidation. Surely there must be a structure first before we can begin to talk of its superstructure. A nation must be before it can mean anything. Having supervised four fathers to sons transitions in “post-colonization” Africa, the French are not about to discard a winning formula.

It is just as well then that last year the fawning Chadian parliament proclaimed Idriss Deby Itno as Marshal of the Field. A marshal of the field he was indeed. But when the end came earlier this week, it was all too reminiscent of the typical African palace putsch. After replacing his father, Kabila the younger went on to rule the old Zaire for almost two decades before he ran out of plots.

So forget about the democratic façade. Chad has been in turmoil for the past fifty something years, ruled by a succession of warlords. But for the few fitful years after independence which culminated in the assassination of its founding father, Ngarte Tombalbaye in 1975, Chad cannot be said to have known genuine democratic rule.

Idriss Deby Itno belonged to this storied tradition of battle-hardened warlords who have held Chad by the jugular for most of its postcolonial history. It is a story of cruelty and savage infractions. One of Chad’s former rulers is known to have arranged to push a rival in the direction of the rolling propellers of a helicopter for onward transportation. Deby’s predecessor in office, Hissene Habre, aka the devil of Samangudu, is serving time in a Dakar jail for gross human rights violations.

Idriss Deby himself was no spring chicken among this august assemblage of human vultures. In the run up to the last presidential election, he sent his troops to the home of his leading opponent and at the close of business they had murdered his aged mother and young son. For thirty one years, the former pilot ruled his country with an iron fist and a streak of vengeful intolerance.

Yet whatever his authoritarian failings, his managerial shortcomings and intellectual incapacitations, Deby was by a long stretch the most militarily capable and gifted of all the warlords that had ruled Chad. His military exploits have become the stuff of legend. He was a warriors’ warrior. He was not a pepper soup general. A man of exemplary personal bravery, he led from the front and could often be seen in the thick of battle rallying his troops and directing proceedings.

Having been forged in the furnace of fierce battles, Deby became the ultimate desert warrior. It was alleged that having collected a black eye from Deby in the battle for Aouzou Strip, Moammar Ghadaffi was so impressed by the Chadian’s military skills that he promised to assist him to become his country’s next ruler. The opportunity duly came in 1990 when Deby tore through the desert from Darfur in a characteristic three-week blitzkrieg which ended at the N’djamena presidential gate.

Deby left his country neither economically developed nor democratically viable. But he left behind a battle-hardened, well-motivated fighting force that has become the bedrock and driving spirit behind the struggle against radical insurgency in the Lake Chad Basin as well as the Sahelian subcontinent. He had a particular aversion for crazed druggies parading as freedom fighters.

In the event, Deby’s military significance and political relevance transcends the borders of his poor and arid semi-desert country. He was a virile symbol of pan-African possibilities in the era of continental and global volatility.

Rather than clutching to their rash of colonially bequeathed but militarily vulnerable and politically unviable nations as if they are personal fiefdoms, African rulers must view Idriss Deby’s sub-continental roaming and trans-border derring-do as an omen of the immediate future. At the end of it all the entire colonial cartography of Africa would have been forcibly remapped.

In order to better appreciate the political clairvoyance of the Idriss Deby moment in the postcolonial transformation of the continent, it is useful to recall where he was coming from. In a political portrait of the desert warrior published on this page only last year, this columnist noted thus and it is useful to quote at length:

An event scantily reported but of great significance occurred this past week. In a multi-national trans-border military operation which makes nonsense of territorial integrity and the whole paradigm of post-colonial nationhood, Idriss Deby, the Chadian strongman, swept into Nigerian territory to give the Boko Haram insurgents a staggering body blow.

It was a grim replay of the events of thirty eight years earlier when the then Major General Muhammadu Buhari as the GOC of the Third Division, against the presidential directive of his Commander in Chief, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, also struck deep into Chadian territory to pursue some ragtag militiamen fomenting trouble around the Lake Chad precincts.

At that point in time, Nigeria could boast of an army with three well-provisioned and well-armed divisions making up arguably the sleekest fighting machine in the whole of West Africa. On the other hand, Chad could boast of four thousand five hundred soldiers up from the four hundred and fifty men comprising solely of demobilized veterans of French military campaigns in Vietnam and Indo-China that made up the Chadian army upon independence from France in August, 1960.

But the table has since turned and by the time Idriss Deby was done last week, scores of Boko Haram fighters and their commanders lay dead and dying in scorching sand. Shekau, their monstrous and bloodthirsty leader, was literally gasping for breath while begging Idriss Deby for a respite. But the Chadian strongman was having none of that nonsense from the berserk brute.

In a terse broadcast, Deby ordered Shekau and his demoralised troops to surrender or be summarily eliminated. In all this, the main regret of the warlord was that Nigerian soldiers were nowhere to be found to hold on to their territory recovered so that he can continue his march deep into Nigerian territory to flush out the insurgents. Deeply humbled as a fighting force, the Nigerian military command could only make some feeble noise about fighting on in some adjacent territory even as the territorial integrity of the nation lay in tatters.

But by the end of the week, the noise of gun battle had receded. All was quiet again on the Ubangi-Chari front.  Around Wednesday, a triumphant Chadian military convoy clattered through the rusty streets of the capital.  There was no further word on Boko Haram and Shekau.

If anybody had thought that the slippery and coldly calculating Deby was interested in saving Nigeria from military humiliation or political disintegration, such a person is a neophyte. With his military machine poised to punitive exertion by decades of relentless fighting, Deby could have gone all the way to Abuja if he had minded. But that is not part of his calculations.

It has been noted by security experts that the death and departure of Idriss Deby has punched a massive security hole in Nigeria’s internal and external security arrangement. This may turn out to be a vast understatement. To be sure, the intrepid but wily Deby was not averse to gaming Nigeria particularly when the giant neighbour was down on its military luck.

Only a fool will not help himself to the stew of a man being hotly pursued by violent masquerades. But overall, and as it can be seen from the above excerpt, Deby was far more interested in acquiescing at Nigeria’s current political arrangement than in adding it to his own country’s already benumbing difficulties.

In the coming months, Nigeria must get its political and military act together. If Chad succumbs to centrifugal forces, if the swarming rebels unleashed from Libya overwhelm a stunned and disoriented Chadian army, and if Deby’s four star general son is found out to lack the grit, charisma and military nous of his outstanding father, the ensuing collapse of the Sahelian buffer zone may lead to a security nightmare for a Nigeria already shaken to its foundation by a plethora of internal woes.

By Tatalo Alamu

But for the fact that the Honourable Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, aka Okunrin Rau, is an old friend, we would have reminded him of the late Gbolabo Ogunsanwo’s famous outburst that a ministerial toga is no excuse for mandibular walkabout.

As usual, the implacably combative minister was in his “up and at em” mood which leaves no room for hostage-taking this past week. While warning his audience to steer clear of those fanning the embers of secession, Lai noted that many of the professors calling for the dismemberment of the country might end up as bread-baking journeymen in Togo if the situation takes a dire and nasty turn.

A former professor slaving and sweating away in the scalding red hot tomb of a primitive bakery is not a laughing matter at all. And in the former German enclave of Togo, too? We hope that Debo Adesina, Nigeria’s new envoy in Togo, is taking note of the hordes of professorial illuminati that will illuminate Togolese bakeries as the Lugardian inferno consumes everything back at home.

But what beats the imagination and is a source of perplexity is the fact that Lai’s fecund imagination could come up with no other profession to conjure his apocalyptic scenario but the image of a professor in back-breaking peonage in a faraway land. Is this a tear-away from the new pedagogy of the intellectually oppressed or its pirated edition? We will venture an answer shortly.

Meanwhile, we can assure the venerable minister that if Nigeria were to unravel, there will be Nigerian ministerial beggars on the streets of Monrovia, absconding gubernatorial shoe repairers in downtown Ouagadougou and cashiered senatorial loafers wandering about the dark alleys of Conakry well ahead of professorial bread-boys. There may even be former distinguished Nigerian envoys slumming it out in some public toilets in torrid Bujumbura. It has already happened to Mobutu’s envoy in Poland who was living in a public toilet until he was mugged.

It is possible that Lai Mohammed has not quite lived down his days as a campus journalist at the then University of Ife. Yours sincerely should know. A favourite pastime of those naughty boys of yore was taking a dig at their professors.

There was a particularly savage putdown of Sam Akpabot by the Bullet magazine. The clever garbling of his name as Mr Abiokpat did not fool anybody, not the least the university authorities. The affronted musicologist began protesting from the rooftop until the editor was rusticated. He had to relocate to Liberia to earn his degree eventually.

The late Professor Ade Adegite, an extremely brilliant lecturer of Chemistry, was a regular guest of the students’ papers that christened him “Dr Child”. The rumour mill had it that the nickname originally came from the Vice-Chancellor, Hezekiah Oluwasanmi, himself in sarcastic appreciation of the social escapades of the Sussex-trained don. He couldn’t care a hoot. On a typical day, the great man could be seen on a leisurely prowl of the female hostel puffing away at his Benson cigarette.

If the honourable minister could find time from his onerous ministerial duty in these times of pantamic pandemic, yours sincerely promises to send him old editions of The Cobra, Spitfire and Bullet circa 1973/ 1974 to lighten the burdens. May be that will take his mind off fighting ancient and recent professorial demons.