The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tatalo Alamu

  • A Dead-end Game in Harare

    A Dead-end Game in Harare

    Like an old shaman from the deep African interior, Robert Mugabe is like a cat with more than the proverbial nine lives, seemingly indestructible. The old wizard of Harare had survived impossible odds and taken frightening political gambles. Just when you think he was about to buckle under the pressure, he seemed to have discovered the extraordinary reserves of resilience and energy to push on. Like all old freedom fighters, politics was seen as only the secondary theatre of actual hostilities. Mugabe was not going to be fazed by mere political uproar.

    But sometimes this past week, something seemed to have snapped. Events unfolding in Zimbabwe are so unique that they demand fresh political perspectives. It was an end that was not quite an end. It was a coup that was described as a non-coup by its executors, except that the old regime was toppled, its principal forcibly restricted and his freedom of movement curtailed. The old revolutionary has become a victim of the new round of the “revolution”.

    This is not a counter-revolution as such but a continuation of the old revolution in another form. Unlike the usual adversarial coup in which rival factions of a rogue ruling class duel onto death, this is not your usual coup of hate and violence, but a coup of affection and complicity of ultimate objective. It is the nearest thing to a velvet coup ; a quarrel among old comrades still held together by the old confraternal code and shared vision.

    This is where new contradictions replace old contradictions. What has happened in Harare is not an endgame but a dead-end game. Please permit this new coinage. In an endgame, events conspire to arrive at a swift point of no return. In a dead-end game it is the game itself and the rules of engagement that have reached a dead end and must be reinvented accordingly if the players must survive.

    In the Zimbabwean maelstrom, it is arguable that the old freedom-fighter caste of the ruling ZANU party felt its future endangered and its fortunes at risk as a result of Mugabe’s senile antics. They have after all sided with the old Shona lion in all his assaults against democracy and genuine economic reform in Zimbabwe.

    Even when he had not won elections and the people of Zimbabwe appeared genuinely tired him, the military as a proxy of the old wing of anti-colonial fighters have provided him with the political teeth and military muscles to quell all opposition to his increasingly eccentric and authoritarian rule. This emergent aristocratic caste could not contemplate life under the leadership of a political upstart and pushy termagant like Grace Mugabe who did not have any revolutionary credentials unlike Sally, Mugabe’s revered first wife, or Winnie Mandela. Under Grace, a former typist often derisively referred to as Grace Gucci or Disgrace, the old revolution would have unravelled in a spool of anarchy.

    They were willing to turn a blind eye to their leader and old beloved comrade’s ethical failings and peccadilloes as the affliction to which great men are prone as long as it does not affect their present standing or endanger their collective destiny. But with Mugabe openly and frantically gaming to have his wife enthroned as a successor, it became a bridge too far.

    It is useful to keep this background in mind in order have a clear perspective about what is happening in Zimbabwe. The military intervention in the past week is not a radical push against the established post-Rhodesia order but an attempt to conserve and consolidate the gains of the revolt against the old White-Settler master-class and the indigenous colonial money-bags.

    This is not to condemn the new Zimbabwean ruling class but to appreciate its historical dilemma. Irrespective of their political trajectory and historical evolution, most African countries face the critical problem of transition from the old authoritarian societies to political modernity. In many of these countries, this transition resonates with trauma and tempest. In many of them, the reality of colonial occupation and the need to find an appropriate political structure and governance architecture for the new country is as daunting as it is nation-disabling.

    Zimbabwe is one of the African countries that won independence from the colonial masters not on a platter of gold but on the platform of bloody confrontation followed by protracted negotiations. As we have seen in the case of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Algeria and Namibia, the triumphant indigenous freedom-fighter caste normally maintains a stranglehold on the political and economic trajectory of the nation until modernity is achieved one way or the other. The only exception is South Africa which had already achieved a transition to First World political and economic modernity even as it transited from the monstrous regimen of Apartheid rule.

    At the age of ninety three and possibly older, it was obvious that Robert Mugabe was past his prime physically, mentally and psychologically. The old man was beginning to fall asleep in the wrong places which itself was a metaphor for sheer political exhaustion. His sharp judgement and political reflex could no longer be trusted.

    It is only in surviving African fiefdoms, traditional templates and kingdoms that you will find a ninety three year old ruling. Yet it was obvious that despite his mental, physical and psychological frailties, Mugabe might have concluded that only death could part him from power. He had become a relic and reminder of inglorious history.

    In the event, what eventually did it for Mugabe was an error of judgement and a lapse of political reflex so catastrophic that it is possible to conclude that the old man had lost it completely and was a clear and present danger to his country and ruling Nomenclatura. The sacking and disgrace of the former Vice President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, was akin to political self-immolation.

    Mnangagwa was not your run of the mill political jobber and colourless apparatchic. With the lidded stare of a cold-blooded animal, he was not known as the crocodile for nothing. He knew where all the old bodies were buried. As a sixteen year old, he survived being executed for a train bombing on the grounds that he was a minor. The others were shot by the White Settler minority regime.

    Impressively credentialed as a freedom fighter with links to the military, diplomatic and business community, his sacking must have sent the alarm bells ringing in many post-revolutionary camps around Harare. It was obvious that Magabe was ready to go to any length to impose and install his unworthy wife as his successor. If he can do this to the most impressive political figure in the country after himself, he would do it to anybody. Self-preservation is the first law of politics. It was time to move against the old comrade.

    This is a play of giants and it was quite understandable why there were no crowds cheering last Tuesday on the streets of Harare. The real people of Zimbabwe are quite removed from the power struggle and contention for supremacy among rival factions of the ruling bloc. Yet in many of the slums and the rural areas, Mugabe, despite running the country aground, politically, socially and economically, remains the father of the nation and a much revered icon. There is something Shakespearean about this tragedy, a great and noble man brought low by hubris and political rapacity.

    So why did Robert Mugabe do it in this appalling way, bringing his country to economic and political ruination when a more humane and compassionate template of transition was available next door in South Africa? The obvious answer is that every country is unique in its peculiar contradictions and South Africa is not Zimbabwe.

    Perhaps the key to unlocking the mystery is to re-examine the nature of settler-colonization in the two countries. It may well be that because it was more isolated, less compact and less entrenched than the more politically sophisticated and philosophically coherent culture of apartheid in South Africa, the White-settler community in Zimbabwe felt more threatened and endangered. Hence, the resort to unimaginable physical brutality and primitive violence in the prosecution of the war against native “terrorists”.

    It was said that Robert Mugabe was so appalled by the brutality and personal torture he was subjected to that he became permanently embittered against the old Rhodesian white-settlers. This was quite unlike the attitude of the Boer leadership which took a decision to cultivate and engage with Nelson Mandela despite the overt climate of hostilities once it became obvious that he was going to pay a lead role in post-Apartheid transition.

    But in spurning reconciliation and going after his old enemies, Mugabe has brought his country very low indeed. It was said that after Mugabe’s half-hearted attempts at reconciliation were spurned by the western community, he became more and more intransigent and Anglophobic. Yet like Nelson Mandela, his friend and old comrade, he was a natural Anglophile and was said to have been personally devastated by the annulment of his knighthood by the British establishment.

    Once again, and with the coup of last Tuesday, history has presented the Zimbabwean nation an opportunity to start afresh. Unknown to Mugabe, while he was making a fetish of firing Mnangagwa, the old crocodile was making overtures to the military, business and intelligence communities and offering a template for the way forward in a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe.

    With the velvet coup of Wednesday morning and the easing out of the old lion of Harare, the first stage of the template is all but operationalized. It is the next stage that is bound to bring more turbulence and uproar. For too long, the Zimbabwe nation and the post White-Settler state have suffered a crass entombment by the ruling party and its old freedom fighter caste.

    Voting and counting of vote do not matter as much as those who decide whether the voting and counting will count. It is called the abolition of the electorate. If this old autocratic and authoritarian model is what Mnangagwa and the military authorities in Zimbabwe have in mind, they have surprises waiting for them. It is now time to open up Zimbabwe to political and economic modernity as well as the Twenty First century.

  • Omoruyi Niyi Alonge @ 70

    To the leafy suburb of old colonial Ikoyi and its surviving agrarian enclave for the seventieth birthday bash of Benin nobleman, business mogul, advertising maharaja and secretive real estate player, Omoruyi Niyi Alonge. Only a man of Alonge’s vivid political imagination and relish for relentless litigation could have chosen this forgotten part of Ikoyi as his abode. To get to the house, you have to go through Alagbon, which is not a proposition for the faint-hearted.

    Despite the deceptive airs and easy charms of a pan-Nigerian playboy, Alonge has an extraordinary talent for unravelling political and economic jigsaw puzzles and for securing his personal security. The house itself is built like a Pentagon fortress. If you think a security man is going to open the door to the main living quarters, you are profoundly mistaken. You have to go through a sandy stretch possibly reinforced with natural metal detectors and Edo native disincentives. Alonge must have picked up one or two tips while slumming it out with his beloved Eba seller mother in Mushin during the time of Omo Pupa.

    During the NADECO years in London, yours sincerely grew so tired of following Alonge to his lawyers’ office that he began to excuse himself. All manner of writs and summons were flying all over the place. The advertising guru has a flair for merciless documentation. Nothing escapes his attention, not even the most insignificant infraction. There is a file somewhere for everything and everybody. A substantive Advert Manager of Daily Times at the youthful age of twenty six, Alonge has learnt from boardroom duels never to leave anything to time or posterity.

    We did not hit it off immediately. Our relationship did not begin on a rosy keel. When snooper was hired by a famous magazine as its first non-staff columnist, Alonge let it be known to its founding martyred editor that they had gone to bring in a crazy radical from the university who would guarantee its proscription in due course. Snooper returned the compliment through the same source by declaring flatly that he did not care a hoot about spoilt over-pampered brats in Lagos.

    Thereafter, a chance meeting in London led to a discovery of strange commonalities and mutual affection. The memorable fist-cuff did not materialize. The brotherhood of humanity recognizes no creed, colour or caste. Yours sincerely considers himself Alonge’s younger brother and foul-weather friend, one of the few people who could drag him to the dark confines of his bedroom and tick him off over delicate domestic issues. Often, he calls back to appreciate and to express remorse and contrition.

    Despite his sartorial supermanship and razzle dazzle, Alonge is a man of restraint and utter modesty when it comes to social celebrations. The ceremony was as low-keyed as it can get. It was obvious that the pains and trauma of losing Ehi, his thirty six year old son, in London last year still subsist. Alonge simply gathered a few friends and close associates together under a canopy in his house. There was a short service officiated by the ever youthful looking Bishop Odubogun ably assisted by Reverend Bola Oyeledun, aka Oge, an old political hell-raiser from the University of Ife turned brilliant priest.

    Thereafter merriment and backslapping ensued with Fadeke, Alonge’s spouse, quietly superintending as usual. Needless to add that as we huddled under the canopy, discussion drifted to how Nigeria has destroyed many of its best and most talented children. Particularly brilliant and illuminating, if eerily disturbing was the contribution of Prince Yemi Adefulu. Here is wishing epaa Niyi many happy returns.

  • The Long Twenty First Century

    The Long Twenty First Century

      On the nexus between epochs and leadership

    The twenty first century began with a huge splash and a well-orchestrated flourish. There was optimism and promise in the air. From his Savannah, Georgia yours sincerely monitored the historic event as it unfolded upon humanity from major nation to minor nation. It was a gruelling enactment of hope and faith. The Australian fireworks as it exploded over the Sydney harbour was a virtuoso performance; a glorious tribute to human ingenuity and sheer creativity. It was a good time to be alive.

    But now as the century lurches towards the quarter benchmark, the optimism has been replaced by a torpid enervation; a strange feeling of ennui and boredom, not unlike watching a noisome child with a great future already behind it. You gradually become reconciled to the fact that nothing much has changed and nothing much is likely to change in the foreseeable future. The rich will become richer and the poor will become poorer. The absolute misery index will spiral out of control.

    As conventional warfare becomes passé, we will probably devise more refined and lethal methods of settling international disputes. But real progress will be stalled and for once the possibility that human redemption on earth is not worthy of the selfless struggle and spectacular heroism invested in it by the avatars of history will begin to stare us in the face. The greatest hoax in human history is about to unravel.

    But it was not supposed to be like this. The twenty first century was even touted as the African century. It was rumoured that a spectacular renaissance was underway for the oldest continent on earth and the place where humanity first civilized. A political miracle had just been enacted in South Africa. Nelson Mandela taught the world that a hitherto intractable problem of peaceful racial coexistence can be solved with the old African values of dignity, compassion and empathy.

    Elsewhere in Africa, the news was also cheering and quite encouraging. In Nigeria, the military which had ruled the country longest since independence finally beat a retreat as if it was afraid and ashamed of showing its face at the break of a new century brimming with democratic possibilities. Botswana continued to impress with good governance. Namibia joined the league. A new generation of African leaders were emerging from the shadows to challenge the old narratives of woes, corruption and underdevelopment. It was a good time to be a Black person.

    However in order to be sure that we are not just flagellating ourselves, or looking for failure where there is none, it is important to raise the analytical stakes to rescue the discourse from mere Jeremiad drivel. In the history of humanity, no two centuries have been alike. Epochs take their cue from different historical stimuli and crosscurrents. But we can reach some measured conclusions about the present by comparing the tempo and temper of different centuries with a view to ferreting out the different demons that drove different times.

    In a masterpiece of dialectical analysis, Eric Howsbawm, the great Marxist historian, once described the twentieth century as the shortest century in history.  He was referring to the galloping pace of events, the breath-taking and neck-breaking speed with which history unfolded from the starting block to the finishing line. The moment of boredom was very rare. At the end of it all, it felt like a hundred years that have packed the events of five hundred into its compressed canvas. To appropriate Lenin, one of the epochal figures of the twentieth century, there are centuries when nothing happens and there are centuries when everything seems to happen.

    The twenty first century opened with an act of suicidal daring whose revolutionary malice and elemental violence seemed to have defined the future of domesticated warfare for mankind. The bombing of the twin towers in New York struck at the heart of American imperialist hubris and military hauteur. It goes to show how in the brave new world of globalization and new technologies of destruction, a few ideologically driven fanatics and religious zealots can bring the greatest power the world has seen since the Roman Empire to its knees even if momentarily.

    American response was as fierce as it was fearsome and it has seen off hostile regimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. But the fall of Ghaddafy and Saddam Hussein has also upset the delicate geo-political balance in the Middle East and the Arab world precipitating hordes of refugees promptly arriving at the European banquet. The Arab Spring has not led to the emergence of a new political and social order but has actually led to the consolidation of the old order in Egypt and Tunisia and stateless chaos in Libya.

    Yet these tumultuous events pale into utter insignificance when compared with the unrelenting world disorder and the frenetic pace that characterized the first two decades of the last century. By 1917, the first globalized war was well underway and had stalemated into the most horrific carnage ever known to mankind. In one single afternoon of the Battle of Somme more casualties were recorded than the previous ten wars in Europe combined. In the water-logged or blood-soaked trenches, the victors, or rather the survivors, advanced about a kilometre.

    By 1917, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hapsburg Empire had been assassinated by a Serbian nationalist when his carriage took a wrong turn in Sarajevo, an event that precipitated the First World War and the unravelling of the empire. The Germans had visited Paris twice. America had pummelled Spain, Cuba and Mexico into submission. Japan had humiliated Russia and China in turn. The British were lucky to have escaped a catastrophic upset in the hands of the South African Boers.

    It was as if the old empires, built at enormous and prohibitive toll of bloodshed and human suffering, were now expiring in the same gory circumstances. Between 1905 and 1917, Russia witnessed three major revolutionary upheavals culminating in the Bolshevik Revolution of November 7th when the Socialist vanguard sacked the parliamentary rump of old Russian Empire. According to one famous account, it was eight days that shook the world.

    Between the first revolutionary upheaval of 1917 which led to the collapse of the Russian Empire and the end of the Romanov dynasty and the October Revolution which led to the consolidation of Bolshevik rule, the Soviet council had scraped together the first workers’ ruling assembly in the history of humanity, a feat which had proved impossible in the more advanced and politically sophisticated countries of England, France, America and Germany.

    Consequently, the Russian Revolution was dubbed a “revolution against capital” because the objective conditions did not obey the classic Marxist precept of a mature capitalist society collapsing under the weight of its own internal contradictions. It was an act of pure human heroism and rare self-sacrifice setting its own agenda and dictating its own destiny against the run of play. It was to set the tone for most of the subsequent revolutions in the twentieth century.

    The Chinese Revolution was the revolt of radicalized peasants in a backward feudal society against their feudal overlords; the Cuban revolution was the revolt of an affronted fraction of the elite in alliance with other disaffected fragments against a debauched slave-holding aristocracy while the Vietnamese Revolution was a result of an uprising by a radicalized nationalist elite against their nation’s imperialist tormentors and their local collaborators.

    Yet the objective reality also suggests that in several centuries of strife and struggle, no class has been able to completely eliminate and overwhelm the other. Occasionally, the contention ends in mutual ruination of the contending classes or guarded accommodation. The French, Russians, Germans, Dutch, Portuguese, denizens of the Nordic zones still regard extant relics of their ancient feudal master-class with awe tinged with adoration.

    Just as the workers have not been able to kick out their bourgeois masters at least in Europe, the bourgeois class have also found it impossible to sack the old aristocracy. In England, the resulting historic stalemate has produced a typically British tripartite fudge in which a worker can rise through the ranks to become a lord whereas the lord is structurally and socially discouraged from becoming a worker.

    In the final analysis, it might well be that history tends to assign particular chores to certain epochs which determine their character and complexion and the type of leaders they throw up.  The pressing imperative of the twentieth century was how to manage the final perilous stage of the transition from the age of empire to the epoch of the nation-state and political modernity. It was a fraught task requiring exceptional individuals. The twentieth century was the age of giants.

    From different parts of the world, the twentieth century threw up the richest array of gifted individuals that had ever set to work on the human condition since recorded history began: uncommon politicians, visionary statesmen, profound thinkers, military geniuses, extraordinary writers, paradigm-shattering scientists, masters of daring inventions and towering spiritual titans.

    It was the age of Lenin, the greatest Russian of the last five centuries; the age of Charles De Gaulle, the greatest Frenchman of the last century; the age of Mao Tse Tung, the greatest Chinese figure of the modern time, and the age of Winston Churchill arguably the greatest English man of all times: warrior, statesman, historian and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. If this was mainly in the realm of politics, we only need to consider the posse of other achievers in other fields of human endeavour that graced the twentieth century.

    And Africa was not lagging behind. The decolonizing project and the transition from old African fiefdoms, kingdoms and empires to modern statehood was also a fraught and perilous affair requiring titans and extraordinary figures to manage. For the benighted continent, it was a moment of glory. A continent which threw up  Nkrumah, Nyerere, Leopold Senghor, Amilcar Cabral, Augustino Neto, the old Mugabe, Albert Luthuli, Nasser, Sankara, Mandela, Sam Nujoma, Awolowo, Azikiwe, Ben Bella and Kenneth Kaunda all within the same epoch cannot be regarded as a laggard.

    The problem is that with the passing of the age of empire and the settling of the primacy of the nation-state and political modernity which is often confused with western liberal democracy, we have moved from the age of maximal leaders to the era of minimal leaders, from the epochs of titans to the time of tin-tin people. Miniscule managers have replaced monumental moulders of human destiny.

    This is going to be the lot of humankind until history throws up the next great crisis or challenge requiring extraordinary human ingenuity and the epoch of great people will be upon us once again. Just compare November 1917 with November 2017. Russia was convulsed by a great revolutionary upheaval and Lenin and Trotsky were all over the place haranguing Soviet masses to do the needful.

    In the White House, you had a Thomas Woodrow Wilson, a former college professor and president of Princeton University, visionary statesman and philosopher ruing the crisis of humanity and the way forward. In France you had Georges Clemenceau, a.k.a the Tiger, a fierce French nationalist and exiled freedom fighter plotting how to pile punitive reparations on the Germans, and inside 10 Downing Street in London you had David Lloyd George, the great Welsh political wizard presiding.

    Exactly a century after, you have in the Kremlin Vladimir Putin, Lenin’s spy successor, trying to suppress the celebration of Lenin’s heroic legacy for fear of precipitating a workers’ uprising against his pan-Slavic super-security state. You have in the White House a Donald Trump, a cynical and traumatised crackpot, doing his dimmest best to provoke a terminal global conflict.

    Among the golden nuggets of Trumpese he will be leaving behind for posterity is the infamous drooling that Hilary Clinton conspired to lose the last election simply to get him impeached. As he visits China this week, the Chinese are watching with poker-faced bemusement obviously concurring  that something new always comes out of Americana indeed.

    Elsewhere in Africa, all you need to do is to compare the sterling nature of leadership thrown up on the continent by the decolonizing project in the last quarter of the last century with the current uninspiring miniaturists. There is no contemporary African leader who has seized the imagination of the continent, or who is showing a deep grasp of the crisis of colonial nations and underdevelopment on the continent making a pitch in the process for continental superstardom and immortality.

    Yet it is obvious that the benighted and ill-starred continent is a victim of a catastrophic historic miscue in which the historical currents and trajectory of the west overwhelm its own trajectory blindsiding it from seeing itself as it truly is and the need for urgent recuperative politics by its great scions in order to rescue it from the jaws of underdevelopment and endemic political instability.

    But not to worry. Just as it has happened in the last six hundred years commencing with colonization and the internationalization of slavery, the fate of Africa will be determined somewhere else and with the unusual merciless severity reserved for those who cannot take their destiny in their hands, or manage their own affair satisfactorily.

    Welcome to the long twenty first century, until either Donald Trump or the other roly-poly adult child from Pyongyang loses the plot completely and reaches for the nuclear trigger.

  • The Catalan Debacle

    The Catalan Debacle

    Rethinking the nation-state paradigma

    In a famous war memoir titled Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell, the great British political satirist and matchless master of English prose, paid stirring tribute to the courage and heroism of those who fought and fell on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. It was a particularly nasty war, fought with brutality and ferocity on both sides. An ardent socialist in his youth, Orwell witnessed the grim horrors first hand and was wounded fighting on the side of the Republicans.

    It was a doomed and unequal contest. Although things appeared even at the beginning, Spanish superior artillery, discipline, organizational cohesion and military leadership under the formidable, ruthlessly proficient General Francisco Franco soon proved decisive. Franco was an implacable disciple of General William Sherman’s doctrine of war as hell.

    A general at thirty three, he was the youngest person in Europe to hold the rank at the time. He had been amply rewarded by the Spanish authorities for outstanding bravery and  the cold efficiency he displayed in putting down a local rebellion in Spain-occupied Morocco. It was a dress rehearsal for the Spanish Civil war.

    George Orwell belonged to the finest specimen of men that ever graced the earth. A man of ruthless personal integrity, he was also a moral genius to boot. But he was in addition a shrewd student and perceptive observer of historical currents. He knew that a cause can be just and right but can be lost militarily and politically. He had rued with heroic bravado:  “There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all…”

    Once again, there is katakata in Catalonia. The unending historic duel between the Catalans and their Spanish overlords has ended in bitter defeat again for Catalonia. After weeks of hype and hysteria in which a disrupted referendum that overwhelmingly endorsed separation from Spain was climaxed by a parliamentary vote for secession, the central government in Madrid wielded the big stick by re-imposing central rule and abolishing the cultural, political and economic autonomy Catalonia had enjoyed since the post-Franco thaw. It looks like a perilous gamble.

    In the event, the hunter swiftly became the hunted. With the Catalan leadership fleeing by road first into France before being airlifted to Belgium, the capital of Europe, the rebellion all but collapsed without a whimper. Spain immediately pressed its advantage by slamming charges of rebellion and sedition against Carles Puigdemont and his confederates.

    While in exile, Puigdemont will be furtively looking across his shoulders, haunted by the memory of Lliuis Companys, the Catalonian leader during the civil war, who 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. For now, all is quiet on the Catalan front.

    But anybody who believes that this is the end of the matter underestimates the human capacity to seek freedom in the face of tyranny; the human will to rebel against injustice and institutionalised tyranny and the immanent imperative to seek a better deal for one’s people no matter the tribulation and oppression.

    Freedom is the first condition of humanity and has taken humankind away from his primitive caves to the modern metropolis. According to Unamuno, the celebrated Spanish poet, under tyranny men seek liberty even though under liberty they also seek tyranny. The quest, in its subliminal impulse, is often more important than the quarry.

    The Catalan conundrum once again throws up the most important question for the human community in the post-empire epoch of nation-states in all its ramifications for contemporary civilization. As many shrewd analysts have contended, the nation-state paradigm, like its empire forebear, is not about justice but about order. It is human will and force of aspiration that have shaped and moulded it into what it has become: the most rational organization of territorial space and amenable vehicle for the realization of the human dream for self-actualization.

    Yet like all human constructs and particularly like the old empire-state paradigm, the nation-state came to assume a life and logic of its own giving vent in many communities to notions of the nation as a divinely ordained contraption which must not be tampered with; a marriage contracted in heaven which must not be dissolved even though we all know how they came about.

    Consequently in many nations particularly in nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe, the worship and exultation of the nation came to be imbued with a religious aura which bred the destructive narcissistic nationalism that led to much grief and bloodshed until the Europeans figured out how to contain it within a larger pan-European organization. But just as narcissistic nationalism led to huge wars and unrest in Europe, ethnic narcissism has led to civil wars and much bloodshed in many contemporary African countries.

    There is nothing sacrosanct about any nation-state. Those who thought the sun would never set on their empire ate their word no sooner than they uttered the blasphemy. But apostles of the sanctity and inviolability of the nation-state charter have a major point. Just as empire was not for everybody, the nation-state is not for every Tom. Dick and Harry either. Indeed if all aggrieved and disaffected communities the world over were to be given their own nation, it will be a peculiar and chaotic mess.

    The problem with Spain is that it cannot give what it doesn’t have. The tendency is to view the world from the prism of their own gore-suffused history. As one of the earliest manifestations of the nation-state paradigm together with Portugal, France, Britain and Holland to a lesser extent, 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.

    But the meek and the weak are also entitled to their own dream. This is the troubling question thrown up by the Catalan tragedy as the old colonial notion of the nation-state paradigm begins to fray at the edges. What is the essence of nationhood and when does affronted nationality deserve and translate to sovereign nationhood? In size, economic might, cultural homogeneity, coherence and cohesiveness, Catalonia is a very viable country minus opportunity.

    As this column once observed, the National Question is gradually transforming into an International Question requiring fresh thinking. The stateless Kurd nation is strewn among five countries. Russia is occupying a part of Ukraine in the name of pan-Slavic nationalism. The rogue breakaway nation of Somaliland is thriving and thumping its nose at the international community.

    The old Congo has been abandoned to Kabila le petit who is busy enacting the farcical equivalent of his father’s tragedy. Syria has virtually disappeared except as a war zone. In many countries in the world, particularly in Africa, mutually unintelligible communities stare down at each in a state of permanent hostilities or outright civil war. No one is willing to open the Pandora Box. Humanity suffers prohibitive tragedies as a result of being trapped by its own creation.

    The profound irony is that the UN charter guarantees the right of every nationality to self-determination and by extension self-actualization. But the objective fact remains that sovereignty is rarely ceded internally by a sovereign state except in a situation of war or catastrophic state collapse. This was what happened in the case of old Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, East Timor, Ethiopia, Sudan, India/Pakistan and Pakistan/ Bangladesh. The mass-emancipation of many African countries followed the decolonising wave that swept the globe in the aftermath of the Second World War.

    But when it comes to yielding internal sovereignty, it is clear that old colonial nations such as Spain and Britain, still beset by empire mentality and haunted by colonial hubris, are not for turning. With the Brexit vote showing how internally fractured Britain has become, with Catalonia relentlessly tugging at the Spanish underbelly, there is going to be a lot of caterwauling in these nations for some time to come.

    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 future is already revealing itself in the dewy horizon. A “small” but determined country like North Korea has already managed to alter the uni-polar balance of power. The strength of a country can no longer be determined by its sheer gigantic size. The most amenable places to live on earth are not the loose baggy empire nations but the miniscule compact wonders of Northern Europe including Finland and Iceland. Luxembourg and the autonomous enclave of Monaco have the highest per capita income in the world.

    With the weight of evidence adduced, it can now be seen that the Catalan leaders jumped too early and too precipitously in their bid for total independence without sober consideration for the hostile international climate and the extant balance of forces. In doing so, they have imperilled the relative cultural, economic and political autonomy the Catalonian government has enjoyed since the death of Franco.

    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. In seeking self-actualization and political liberation from their old Iberian tormentors, in pushing for premature independence, they might have consigned themselves to renewed bondage and harsh repression.

    For now, forces pushing for ethnic self-actualization or the restructuring of the governance architecture in Nigeria must take appropriate note and draw commensurate conclusion from the Catalan conundrum. In some nations, for reasons of historical and political antecedents, sovereignty is never lightly yielded.

    In the whole of post-colonial Africa, 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. Except in a few countries, the current nation-state paradigm in Africa is not sustainable.

  • Funso and Jide gone too soon

    It has been a week of double-whammy tragedy. While we are mourning the death of our friend, retired Air Vice-Marshal, distinguished Lagosian and notable philanthropist, Funso Martins, aka Martino, news came of the passing of Jide, the first son and eldest child of the APC grandee, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu. This is a staggering blow to the plexus. Snooper mourns with our friend, leader of people and esteemed political comrade in arms of several decades as well as the stepmother, Senator Oluremi Tinubu.

    Tinubu now joins a pantheon of illustrious and distinguished Yoruba political avatars who lost their eldest children in the course of their political careers: Awolowo, Olusegun; Sir Adesoji Aderemi, Adedapo; SL Akintola, Omodele and Bola Ige, Babatunde. Even in the consuming tragedy, it is a badge of deep distinction and only the deep can call to the deep in these matters. May Allah take the youngster into his commodious bosom.

    For Air Marshal Martins, it is a watery end for an illustrious air warrior. When we all sat together with his beloved wife and Barrister Olufunke Adekoya, SAN, at a Lagos State function a few months back, little did we know that this was going to be the last gathering. For anybody who came in touch with him, Martino was a rare gem of a human being: kind, courteous, courtly and solicitous of your wellbeing, in short the quintessential officer gentleman.

    In Kaduna in the mid-seventies where he was a dashing Flight Lieutenant and later at the old University of Ife where he audited the sandwich course in Electronics for military officers, Funso was the life and soul of a party. May his noble soul rest in perfect peace.

     

  • Still on Zuma’s erection and Rochas’ pains

    These are not the best of political times for Rochas Anayo Okorocha, the feisty and ebullient governor of Imo State. It never rains but pours, as they say. Whatever anybody may say about his eccentricities and political antics, you must give the chap from the land of the great Oriental Brothers full marks for his resilience and sheer indomitability. Rochas is not for turning— or upturning by anybody for that matter. Well, well until the rogue Jacob Zuma came along to overturn the hefty bulk.

    Whoever advised Rochas Okorocha to invite Jacob “zoom, zoom” Zuma for the purpose of beautifying and canonising the South African president with a statue has lured the usually perceptive governor into a public relations disaster. It was an own goal of catastrophic dimensions. Zuma is not anybody’s ideal of a great statesman or exemplary leader for that matter. Even in his own country, Zuma is not regarded as a winning brand.

    A few days after Zuma’s magnificent statue went up in Owerri, firm, erect and athletically upstanding, a column made great rounds with the ominously naughty title: Zuma’s erection, Okorocha’s pains. It is a new figure of speech, when something insinuates something totally different and we propose anayotomy. Needless to add that the article sent up several newspaper boardrooms into fits of hilarious laughter and teary mirth.

    Now, now, fair is fair. Zuma, to the best of our knowledge, does not indulge in this other pastime. The playboy of the South African world enjoys a well-deserved global reputation for not only being heterosexual but punitively so, taking down female preys with the predatory power of a lion on the prowl.

    But this notwithstanding the gossiping class has latched on to the story with insane relish. It was rumoured that while Zuma was here, gubernatorial screams and wailings emanating from the Executive Mansion in Owerri were to be heard every night sending the fear of the lord through the neighbouring enclaves of Owerrinta, Egbu, Ovim and their famous girls’ secondary schools. Okon is already embedded in Owerri.

  • Maina and his manna

    Maina and his manna

     On the crisis of modernity in modern Nigeria

    Whenever Nigerians think they can sidestep or ignore the crisis of modernity which has engulfed all aspects of their national life, it hits them from a totally different direction. Like all “modern” countries run along the dictates of feudal and neo-feudal order, Nigeria is embroiled in permanent conflict as the dictates of genuine modernity run headlong into the imperative of sustaining an ancient worldview based on a narrow sense of privilege and entitlement whether in politics, economy or bureaucracy as the case appears at the moment.

    Nigeria has become an abracadabra wrapped inside an arabara. In Yoruba lingo, an arabara appropriates as multi-sectorial mystery. The more you look, the less you see; the more you hear, the less you know; the more you think, the less unthinking it all appears. In the night, all cats are black. Stuff happen here all the time, as the Americans will put it.

    The question now is: Who will rid Nigeria of this permanent fog, this ethical eclipse, this persistent darkness? Let us say with St Paul again that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

    And so, fellow compatriots, thirty years after Admiral Augustus Akabue Aikhomu made semantic history with the infamous distinction between misapplication of state funds and their misappropriation in a graft case involving a certain Colonel Maina, another Mr Maina has appeared from the slimy shadows to put the government nose out of joints.

    This time, it is a far more humongous case of stark embezzlement of pensioners’ money running into billions.  Abdulrasheed Maina, a fellow on the wanted list of Interpol criminals, was not only furtively brought back to the country to continue his good work, he was given double promotion and alleged state security protection to boot.

    If this allegation is true, it is an instance of state sadism and cruelty to the Nigerian people on a scale that has not been seen anywhere in the world.  Please recall that in the intervening period between the two Mainas, former President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan also entered the semantic hall of infamy with his declaration that stealing is not corruption. Several years after, local divers are still searching for the Black Box of Jonathan’s transformation agenda.

    History continues to surprise with its chilling asymmetry. Recall that Admiral Aikhomu was part and parcel of the Buhari military administration having served as the Chief of Naval Staff. After Commodore Ukiwe’s ouster, he was promoted a full admiral, immediately retired and then elevated to the Vice-presidency of the Babangida administration. Ebitu Oko Ukiwe was removed after insisting that the military council was not consulted before the nation was dragged to the OIC. The proud and stern fellow from Ohafia was offered a ministerial appointment which he summarily rejected.

    In a famously brilliant comparison of the two Bonaparte, Karl Marx noted that history repeats itself, first as a tragedy and secondly as a farce. The true import of Karl Marx statement is often obscured by its epigrammatic wit. The French Revolution concluded with Napoleon Bonaparte crowning himself emperor. It was a tragedy for the first populist revolution in modern history.

    Several decades later, Luis Bonaparte, Napoleon’s nephew, having genuinely won presidential election, could not sustain himself in office without recourse to a military coup. The original tragedy swiftly mutated into a bloody farce as the second Bonaparte, famously dismissed in a feat of sadistic brilliance by Victor Hugo as “Napoleon le petit”, contrived to turn himself into the emperor of France.

    The real import of Marx’s seminal observation is that this was how Napoleon Bonaparte himself would have appeared had he chosen to come back at that particularly turbulent period in French history: a grim and gross caricature of his old self. You cannot step into the same river twice. Napoleon would have appeared a sanctimonious sham, a regressive travesty of his former self. This observation has a peculiarly poignant and cruel resonance for General Muhammadu Buhari in his second coming, particularly as the anti-corruption mantra appears to collapse under the sheer heft of its own internal contradictions.

    How then do we prevent this politically challenged and stubbornly insular general from ending up as a grim caricature of his former self?  The usual explanation of military depredations is that the army is a product of a colonial army of occupation with predation burnt into its genes and psychology. As a psychological revenge over the expired, an army cannot but loot.

    Yet it is now obvious that we have replaced an army of occupation with politicians of occupation who are no less predatory and nation-ravaging in their gluttonous and insatiable appetite for filthy lucre. The politics of occupation is far more dangerous than an army of occupation in its nation-disabling ethics and disdain for the ethos of nation-growing.

    Civilian burglary of the exchequer is far worse than primitive plunder because it tends to become institutionalised and entrenched as time goes on. This is the pool of sharks in which General Buhari has found himself, and he has introduced his own sharks for self-protection. Sharks are fighting sharks and the ocean is foaming with blood.

    The Maina saga again speaks to a foundational crisis of nation-growing. It is now obvious that after the colonial masters left the old bureaucracy they were trying to nurture based on the western canons of impersonal rigour and rationality quietly relapsed to the old African template of anti-modern permissiveness with its unwritten rules and oral shindigs which allow laws to be violated at will or its sacred tradition to be circumvented with impunity.

    At its most extreme manifestation, modern western bureaucracy celebrates its abstract impartiality and impersonal rigour. The law is no respecter of anybody. German literary tradition is replete with instances of how individuals were terrified of its retributive capacity and ability to pursue deviants and miscreants even to their private quarters. In Franz Kafka’s famous novella, a man goes to bed and wakes up only to discover that he has been transformed into a giant insect. Yet as the merciless clock ticks away, his only concern is how to get to work without infringing the law!

    We do not make them like this in Nigeria and in most contemporary African countries. In most African countries and given the absence of a genuine nationalist class to grow an authentic nation, the state is viewed as an alien and hostile construct to be violated and desecrated at will. Given this post-colonial political psychosis, ascendant groups go to war to capture the state and national resources become booties of political hostilities to be freely misappropriated and shared among the victors.

    And this is where the debate on restructuring comes in handy to haunt us again. However much we ignore its imperative demands, the less likely is it to ignore us. Events unfolding in Nigeria suggest that the national pathology which sees national resources as a booty to be misappropriated and shared even where meagre funds for pensioners are concerned can no longer be resolved at the national unitary level. It may be better at this point of our national development to allow power and responsibility to devolve back to federating zones and communities with the commensurate cultural resources to deal with the national thieving neurosis in their own unique and specific way.

    Before our very eyes, the federal administration is crumbling under the weight of its own ethical and moral contradictions. The central administration must now see the wisdom in divesting itself of the humongous resources which have made under-development possible in Nigeria and the route to national perdition seemingly inescapable.

    History has a way of pointing the way forward in a most contradictory and unsavoury manner. Who would have thought that it will take the second advent of a man generally regarded as incorruptible and morally upright to open the Pandora Box in a way that has not been possible before now? Whatever his personal failings, we may yet have General Buhari to thank for showing us that we have reached a political cul de sac.

    It is useful to point out that before colonization, most pre-Nigerian communities had their own way of dealing with miscreants who appropriated public funds. They were summarily exiled or hounded out of existence. By 1904, the Egba City-state had solved the problems of corruption and embezzlement of public funds in its own unique way. In many Yoruba communities, hostile ditties abound about infamous scoundrels who made away with public funds almost eighty years after.

    The other problem confronting Nigeria which confirms a lack of the ethos of bureaucratic modernity is the absence of a culture of resignation by public officials particularly when it becomes an overwhelming public and moral necessity. In many decent and civilized climes, a few of General Buhari’s men and women ought to have found the decency to throw in the towel without being pushed. That they are still there having been stripped of the last shred of credibility is a pointer to the collapse of personal integrity and public rectitude in Nigeria.

    Finally, woe betide a nation without a culture of shame and moral responsibility. The kind of shameless betisse dredged up by the Maina family to exonerate and exculpate their scion is a pointer to how low a nation can sink in the Gomorrah of ethical infamy. The old Northern Native Authority which summarily jailed royal princes and recommended haughty but compromised emirs for deposition must be squirming in its final resting place.

  • Trespassers will be vaccinated

    As the rumpus over military vaccine took hold of the nation’s imagination, there have been many strange developments. They portend a nation at the end of its tethers. The rumour is that the humane syringe is a legitimate weapon of warfare. An old cynic, full of bile and bitterness, was said to have been sighted around Sogunle demonstrating to people how the military injection contraption works like an alternative AK Kalashnikov.

    But if the sight of hysterical women and men yanking their wards from school is not funny enough, try this one for size. On an old farmstead around Agbara, a strange signboard suddenly materialized announcing that trespassers will be vaccinated. Everybody has been giving the farmstead a wide berth. Something new always comes out of Nigeria indeed.

    And a story was told about the late strongman of Ibadan politics, Lamidi Ariyibi Adedibu aka, Alaafin of Molete. When he was told about a plot of land somewhere in Ibadan with the signboard, This Land is Belong to Lamidi Adedibu, the old man laughed it to scorn insisting that he knew nothing about the land. But upon their persistence, Adedibu decided to pay a visit and behold the signboard and an aging farmer crouching nearby. When he was queried by the strongman, the farmer confessed that it was his own talisman against land-grabbing thugs whereupon the late Robin Hood, after convulsing with laughter, generously gave the man the funds to develop his plot.

  • Okon regains his freedom

    To Okokomaiko and its seedy aquatic slums on hilts where Okon is being held hostage by ethnic fishermen for allegedly bungling up the launch of IPON,  the Indigenous People of Nigeria movement. As the launch at Oribande Beach degenerated into a riotous farce in which cudgels and paddles were freely deployed, Okon was seized by irate swamp dwellers who accused him of deliberating sabotaging the launch to prevent full resource control. He was led to a safe house or safe hovel deep in the creeks. Snooper began to fear for the boy’s life.

    These are truly historic times in the country with ethnic entrepreneurs and other enterprising autochthons of balkanization ready to prise the country apart at the seams on a heady march. Once again, the country has entered uncharted waters with healthy relationship among the constituent units at its lowest ebbs since independence.

    With the north adamant about maintaining its disputed demographic dominance, with the core east reviving the old spirit of Biafra in an act of countervailing intransigence and with the west ratcheting up its sixteenth century war structure to fight a twenty first century battle, it is clear that something will have to give.

    In a brief moment of apocalyptic disorientation, there were even talks of restructuring the whole business of restructuring itself. Never in the history of humanity have a people witnessed this seminal confusion. The Tower of Babel would be a much-envied model of clarity and lucid lingo. Once again, the fat lady is about to sing.

    Just before Okon was seized by creek-dwelling hoodlums, Baba Lekki was in a jubilant mood, hobbling about in the historic melee like an untouchable Yoruba generalissimo and telling anybody who cared to listen that as far as he was concerned Okon had solved the intractable National Question. What remained was simply to firm things up.

    “ You see my people”, the crazy old man screamed. “All these useless and yeye professors blowing empty grammar about restructuring, dem don swear for dem. Okon has solved the National Question, period.”

    “And wetin concern woman period for this business? Which kind nonsense be dat one?” a testy and clearly tipsy Arogbo-Ijaw fisherman demanded in a threatening manner.

    “You see if we drive dem mala, dem gambari, dem Ibo and dem Yoruba comot for country, country go know peace. That means say national question don solve itself”, Baba Lekki crowed with drunken self-congratulation.

    “Were ni e”, the tipsy Arogbo Ijaw man began in Yoruba and then lapsed into pidgin English.” All that na wetin dem dey call nonsense correlation in Accounting. National Question is nonsense question. All we want is resource control. Just give us our oil, abi Yoruba people get problem with dat one?”  the mad man screamed as he made to smash a huge plank on Baba Lekki’s head and the old man took to his heels.

    On getting to Okoko, yours sincerely was told that Okon was released earlier in the morning to Baba Lekki and a consortium tribal elders with the stern admonition to go and sin no more. Thereafter, the mad boy was said to have proceeded on a drinking tour of duty around the creeks carried shoulder-high by a horde of urchin admirers.

  • Political Neurosis in Contemporary Nigeria

    Political Neurosis in Contemporary Nigeria

    New Hampshire campaign worker: How is the senator this morning?
    Mary, Senator’s daughter: Oh! Alienated as usual.
    An American Melodrama: The Presidential Campaign of 1968, p.78

    The above conversation was about Eugene McCarthy, one of the most graceful, cerebral and charismatic individuals ever to grace the American senate. Urbane and telegenic to match, McCarthy’s dramatic entry into the 1968 American presidential sweepstakes and subsequent resounding victory at the New Hampshire primary forced the incumbent, Lyndon Baines Johnson, to withdraw from the race.

    But even at the summit of human distinction, there is a pecking order. The main reason for McCarthy’s “alienation” was because the Minnesota politician was in a class of his own: a star among stars and an outstanding senator in an outstanding senate. He was a poet, essayist, scholar and former small-town college professor of Sociology. Many considered him remote, cold, overly refined and offputtingly high-minded.

    Now compare this starry credential with the risible resume of a serving Nigerian senator who is currently making an abject fool of himself in America with his buffoonery and sheer tomfoolery. His antics have gone viral and taken together with his oafish antecedents, they point to a new low in the legislative annals of Nigeria. How could Nigeria have ended up with this legislative brigand?

    It was said that when things got a little bit rowdy in the ancient Roman Senate, Emperor Caligula sent up one of his horses to monitor and regulate proceedings. But at least it was a sane and sober horse—which cannot be said for many of our serving senators. The hoofed one could have done a bit of scraping and kicking, but it maintained a stately composure. Perhaps this is expecting too much from a rogue senate bristling with all kinds of asocial and anti-social characters.

    But it will be unfair and an assault on objectivity to single out our senators. The behaviour of our political class, our traditional rulers, our elite clerisy and our so called intelligentsia points at a more fundamental rupture of our societal architecture. Just as the current country-wide clamour for restructuring is a shorthand or password for a more foundational crisis of nation-growing which cannot be ignored without tipping the country over, the institutional degeneration and disorientation of the Fourth Republic is sign that the country has come to the end of its legendary run of luck.

    While the battle for the restructuring of the governance architecture must proceed apace, it should now be obvious that far more than a political crisis, we are faced with an ontological crisis. Unlike a political, economic or spiritual crisis, an ontological crisis is the very crisis of being and for a nation or a people, it is the crisis of collective consciousness.

    Symptomatic of this existential disorder is a collective neurosis which compromises all efforts at political revival, subverts all attempts at economic reforms even as it neutralizes all efforts at intellectual innovation and legal sanitization. In the moral and spiritual occlusion and the ethical void, it is very hard to distinguish who is who and who is for what. In the relentless homogenization of ideas and ideals, progressives become ex-progressives while former reactionaries begin to sound like new reformers.

    This is the nearest thing to what sociologists call a state of anomie. Anomie is the state of normlessness where the compass guiding a society has fractured, where normal behaviour cannot be expected and where a nation is on the verge of moral and ethical collapse. It is a state of complete alienation and national disorientation. Institutions created for specific purposes assume a life of their own and begin to threaten the very foundation of the order on which their existence and survival are predicated.

    If one takes a look at our principal institutions, particularly the political class, the judiciary, the presidency, the legislature, the traditional order, the state parties and the spiritual clerisy, the alienation and disorientation are so severe that it is a miracle that a vestige of order survives albeit in a very precarious manner.

    In the parties, the falcon can no longer hear the falconer. The legislature is driven by irrational self-interest. The judiciary stinks of moral squalor as the executive sinks into a self-dug hole of sectional infamy even as a gaudy religiosity replaces deep spirituality. This is surely the last snapshot of a society in the throes of anomic suicide.

    God bless Adeoye Lambo wherever he is. In one of his casually thrown insights, the great psychiatrist made the seemingly outlandish suggestion that our leaders should first be subjected to psychiatric evaluation as a precondition for aspiring to higher office. Lambo was ruing the political and economic ravages of military despotism.

    Eighteen years into civilian rule and with the benefit of hindsight, it should be obvious that the seminal healer was confusing a symptom for its own cure. Every form of madness is a product of a specific social formation, just as every Rome must produce its own barbarians. In other words, madness has its own unique method and methodology. There is nothing like universal madness.

    Lambo’s unique contribution to psychiatry lies in his discovery that pathologies and mental disturbances contracted in a rural undeveloped community are best treated in a condition of rural and agrarian bliss rather than being forcibly contained in a modern institution. With its sanitized soullessness, its merciless rationality and institutionalized cruelties the modern psychiatric ward tends to exacerbate rural neurosis rather than ameliorate it. This is the birth of rural psychiatry.

    Observing the terrible impact of western culture and education on many westernized Black people and the resulting human fiascos, Franz Fanon , the great Martinique-born psychiatrist, concluded that certain neuroses are social in origin. If we now transfer Lambo’s unique insight to modernity and post-colonial politics, it will be seen that the pathologies inflicted on Africa as a result of the rupturing of its old order by colonization and the advent of western modernity cannot and will never be cured through the wholesale adaption of western institutions but through the growth of society-specific institutions which take on board the unique history and experience of African people.

    These institutions were not designed for Africa and Africans in the first instance and are the source of exemplary political disorder and strange neuroses. For example, the idea of an all-powerful, almighty presidency dishing out preferment and largesse to cowered subjects in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation like Nigeria is a recipe for untrammelled ethnic aggression and genocidal rage. At best, such an institution ought to be hedged and hemmed in by the countervailing office of a premier or prime minister.

    The bane of Nigeria is that it has been ruled by kings rather than by philosopher-kings. Otherwise, it ought to be clear from the preceding analysis that the problem is even more severe than superficial restructuring or mere devolution of power since it speaks to the political pathology of the Blackman and the greatest conglomeration of Black souls anywhere in the world. The only alternative to a peaceful and purposeful restructuring of the governance architecture of Nigeria is periodic ethnic cleansing and endemic instability.

    It is an engrossing historical irony that while a serving Nigerian senator was making a fool of himself in America, the Dutch premier was arriving at the palace of his sovereign on a bicycle to announce the formation of a new government. He did not forget to secure the bicycle. After liberation from Spain, the Dutch, in order to secure stability and national cohesion, crowned the family of one of its most illustrious freedom fighters as monarchs.

    But even more importantly, western societies have learnt to tame and domesticate modern capitalism by adopting countervailing philosophies of life. The Calvinist doctrine emphasizes thrift, hardihood, iron restraint, delayed gratification, disdain for opulence and the production of wealth rather than its wild maniacal consumption. In Holland, everybody rides a bike.

    It is noteworthy that all non-western societies that have triumphed over capitalism have done so by adapting it to local condition and their timeless indigenous philosophies: Confucianism, Shintoism, Buddhism and other oriental concoctions. This is the secret behind the modern success story of Japan, China, South Korea, India, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia. In Africa and particularly in Nigeria without the institutional bulwark of indigenous philosophies, an under-developing variant of capitalism reigns supreme.

    In such circumstances, the various nationalities resort to self-help and self-medication with the east perfecting a brutal and aggressive mercantilism which is as fierce as it is ferocious in its survivalist disdain for regulation, with the hitherto industrious west succumbing to pirate capitalism and laissez faire indolence even as the old north, contrary to the Dubai paradigm, is embroiled in a historically anomalous struggle to contain capitalism under the rubric of rampart feudalism.

    No Marshall Plan or World Bank munificence can work in such circumstances. Indeed, if one were to take an audit of the humongous amount of petro-dollars accruing to Nigeria sixty one years after Oloibiri, what a story of epic waste and mismanagement it would have been. Without a transformative philosophy powered by indigenous genius, it is impossible to transform a nation. We are merely putting the cart before the horse and repeating Einstein’s famous law of insanity.

    Around the same time that oil was discovered in Nigeria, Dubai was an arid wasteland, Singapore, a dingy colonial cesspool and South Korea a traumatised society emerging from the throes of bitter partition and Japanese colonisation. Yet within one generation sterling leadership and commensurate national philosophy have transformed the countries into glittering spectacles of adapted modernity while Nigeria regressed into a whimpering caricature of a nation-state.

    If General Buhari really wants to make a dent on Nigeria’s arrested development, it is obvious that a bipartisan congregation for the structural reconfiguration of the country’s governance architecture and the fashioning of a national philosophy is inevitable. This is imperative not just for Nigeria but for the Black person. In the absence of this holistic framework, the fight against corruption and efforts to sanitize Nigeria will continue to remind us of a Don Quixote tilting at the windmill, a doomed quixotic quest.