Category: Banji Akintoye

If we refuse to learn a lesson from India, Switzerland, Britain, etc (countries that make a policy of sensibly respecting their nationalities), we shall surely lose Nigeria – may be very soon. The coming national conference offers us Nigerians a chance to change our country’s direction. Will we sincerely and sensibly grab that chance?”

That is how I ended this column last week. I have since been following comments related to the Nigerian situation on the popular media as well as on various internet outlets. I find that the overwhelming majority of Nigerians who have made those comments have serious doubts that Nigeria can chart or follow a different direction ever. The overwhelming belief and fear is that the persons who direct Nigeria’s affairs have fixed the path of Nigeria too powerfully in its present direction, and that nothing can now change that.

Among other things, that means that even if President Jonathan were to put his best efforts into the making of a national conference, no effective outcome can come out of it. Some of the most influential Nigerian leaders from the North are telling us that their sole and fixed objective is to get the presidency back to the North in 2015, and some of them are being honest by informing us that once they have the presidency back in the North, they will never let it go. Certainly, no perceptive Nigerian needs to be educated about the purport of such statements – namely, that certain sections of Nigeria religiously believe themselves to be the God-ordained overlords of Nigeria, that the rest of Nigeria must learn to submit to the overlords, and that the overlords will do anything to assert their will.

Now, into this cauldron of Nigeria’s political life, feed the hideous patterns of inter-relationships that have evolved, and that now exist, among Nigerian peoples. In ways that did not exist at the time of independence, Nigerian nationalities are now inveterate enemies of one another, and the enormity and viciousness of the enmity and hostility are worsening in all directions across the face of Nigeria. Beyond that, almost everywhere in Nigeria, multiple species of hostility are escalating fearfully –hostility between indigenes and immigrants, between persons of different religions, between northerners and southerners, between peoples of the far North and the peoples of the Middle belt, between persons of the Igbo of the South-east and some of the multiple nationalities of the South-south. Sadly, desperate Igbo folks forced to migrate from their battered homeland into the homelands of other peoples are increasingly heard claiming to be conquering those other peoples’ homelands. Even the Yoruba, traditionally known for their acceptance and inclusion of strangers, are now, for the first time ever, heard speaking against some of the immigrants in their homeland. Since the 19th century, Ijaw folks have been migrating into the homeland of the Ilaje-Yoruba people in the creeks and lagoons of what is now southern Ondo State, and the relationship between the two peoples has historically been amicable. But today, the hostility between these peoples is almost touchable, and life in these lagoons and creeks is becoming increasingly dangerous. In general, the language of inter-ethnic communication gets more and more ugly all over Nigeria. Even from the highest functionaries of government, all that one can see, since independence, is special consideration for this or that nationality, and special animosity, spite and insults, towards some other nationalities. The probability is increasing fearfully that this dangerous brew will someday, soon, culminate in a horror-soaked implosion.

As Nigeria was entering into independence in 1960, we Nigerians were mostly buoyed up with high expectations and hope. Today, all of that is gone. Nothing of any importance works. Most of our key highways are in ruins, and horrific accidents on them account for rivers of blood daily. After our government had publicly announced billions of Naira on projects to improve our electricity supply, we are, in most parts of our country, less sure of electricity today than in 1960. Capital is fleeing from Nigeria; even international oil corporations are divesting their investments in Nigeria; and unemployment has simply become an intractable monster. Life has become so uncertain and so brutish that each of us is now focused on instant gratification before we would do anything for any other person. Basic loyalties, and basic sense of duty, are vanishing. The citizen who approaches a public office for the meanest service (like merely obtaining a form) must be ready to bribe public officials first. Fraud and cheating have become our common character, and blood-curdling crimes our regular experience. Public officials and private contractors regularly collude to steal and share funds voted for public projects. Nigeria no longer exists as a country loved by its citizens. The fabric of our society has fallen apart. And in the wider world, Nigeria is now hardly ever mentioned among countries that decent people would want to do business with.

Into this whole situation has flashed, in the past few days, the thunder-clap represented by the letter written by ex-President Obasanjo to President Jonathan. I know that many of us cannot resist the itch to hit at Obasanjo, but the biggest issue about this letter is what it contains. Under what condition would a former Head of State of a country write four different letters to a current Head of State without any acknowledgement? What greater proof can there possibly be that the dissoluteness wrecking Nigeria holds even the highest councils of Nigeria’s life?

Moreover, is it true that our government is listing some thousands of Nigerians for some sort of hostile targeting? Or that our government is training some assassins and sharp shooters against us? Is this today’s face of the culture of assassinations that has produced so many unsolved murders in our country – to mention only a few, of Chief Bola Ige (Nigeria’s Attorney-General), Chief Alfred Rewane (industrialist and democracy movement leader), Madam Kudirat Abiola (wife of Chief M.K.O Abiola, winner of the 1993 presidential election), Dr. Marshall Harry (National Vice-chairman of a political party), Theodore Agwatu (Principal Secretary to the Imo State Governor), Odunayo Olagbaju (member, Osun State House of Assembly), Chief Ogbonnaya Uche (one time Senatorial candidate), Ahmed Ahman Pategi (Kwara State chairman of a political party), Barnabas Igwe (Anambra State chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association), Honorable Uche Nwoke (one time senatorial candidate), Madam Suliat Adedeji (Ibadan woman society leader), Dr. Funso Williams (Lagos State gubernatorial candidate), Dr. Niyi Daramola (Ekiti State gubernatorial aspirant)?

Are these bestialities then what our rulers must practice in order to keep this country together, this country that is obviously not working, this country in which we are all being reduced to abject paupers, and in which we are all being turned into fierce enemies of one another? Why would we continue to allow some people to keep treating us in these sub-human ways?

It is time that we Nigerians firmly demand some categorical change in our situation. If President Jonathan sincerely believes in beneficial changes in the structure of the Nigerian federation (as he should, being a ‘minority’ man), and if he sincerely desires to champion salutary changes in the management of Nigeria, this is the time he must make his definitive statement. After the Obasanjo letter, he cannot afford to continue to keep silent over these mighty issues. If he does not believe, and does not desire the needed changes, then there is no sense in his proceeding with a national conference, and there would be good reason to begin measures for the peaceful dissolution of the troubled Nigerian federation – instead of measures for the president’s controversial decision to celebrate the centenary of the 1914 Amalgamation.

I ended this column last week with a promise to answer some questions today: “First, what is at the root of the Black man’s incapability to hold and properly manage the countries that European colonialists created and bequeathed to us? And second, what does the future hold in store for the Black man in Africa, and for these countries that we are messing around with?”

Usually, we Black Africans attribute the political failure of our countries to the fact that each of the countries bequeathed to us by European colonialists is made up of many different nationalities. But when we say that, we should remember that inter-ethnic violence and horrendous blood-letting are not commonly characteristic of multi-nation countries in the rest of the world. The United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland, and India (after the secession of the Islamic peoples of Pakistan and Bangladesh) are multi-nation countries – the United Kingdom since over 500 years, Canada nearly 300 years, Switzerland some 400 years, and India since about 1950 – and none of them is perpetually wracked by inter-ethnic tensions and conflicts.

So why are our countries in Black Africa almost uniformly different? Why are our nationalities in each country more or less always hostile to one another? The answer is in our chosen method of managing the differences among our many nationalities in each country. That is where we should look. While most multi-nation countries in the rest of the world make it a point to pay due respect to their different nationalities, we in each Black African country try determinedly to suppress our nationalities – in the misguided belief that that is how we can build and unify our countries.

In the United Kingdom in modern times (starting from about 1603), though the English nation has been the largest nationality, the policy and tradition have been to pay respect to all nationalities, especially the smaller nationalities (the Scotts, the Irish and the Welsh). In constitution making, that policy has gradually translated to granting more and more autonomy to each nationality. And when it became the worldwide trend, since about the beginning of the past century that nationalities wish to have separate countries of their own, the government of the United Kingdom responded in a sensibly respectful manner. First they let the Irish, who were the most eager to have their own country, go and found a Republic of Ireland. Then they granted separate national governments to the Scotts and Welsh in the United Kingdom. And when the Scotts decided that they would want to have a separate country of their own, the British government allowed the Scotts to go on and hold a referendum on the matter. That referendum is now scheduled for September 2014. Countless citizens of the United Kingdom live outside their own particular nation in the country, and do business and have investments where they live. Nobody is threatening or attacking anybody. The United Kingdom continues to run smoothly, and continues to be a great world power. The foundation of it all is the tradition and policy of respect for each nation in the context of the United Kingdom.

The country of Switzerland frankly acknowledges, and proclaims, that it is not one nation but a country of many nations – many nations that “consent” to live together as a country. In everything – in constitution making, internal constitution and politics of each nation, composition of the federal government, allocation of resources, etc – Switzerland follows that principle diligently. Therefore, Switzerland is stable, peaceful, and prosperous. Virtually the same is true of Canada.

In India (after the secession of the Islamic northern peoples of Pakistan and Bangladesh), the Indians entered into a big argument about how to organize their country, a country still comprising about 2000 nationalities. Finally, and fortunately, they agreed to pay respect to their nationalities in organizing their country. The large nations became states in the federation, and the small nations that were territorially contiguous were assisted to join and become states. This resulted in 28 states in all. Then the Indians agreed to limit the powers of their federal government to certain common duties, to give a lot of more powers over development and the economy to the states, and to give more to the states than the federal government in revenue allocations (now 85% to the states and 15% to the federal government). Incredibly, this huge country (the largest in territory and the second largest in population in the world) settled down, and began to grow and prosper.

In contrast, how do we Black Africans try to build our countries? For us “nation building” means refusing to accept the fact that our nationalities are real. And that means creating constitutions, policies and traditions aimed at reducing, subduing and suppressing our nationalities. It means loading as much power as possible, and as much resources and revenue as possible, into the hands of our central governments. In some of our countries where there were federations at independence (such as Kenya), our leaders eliminated federations and established unitary governments. In countries where the nationalities began to demand a federation or some local autonomy after independence (as in Ghana, Uganda, etc), the governments forcibly stamped out the voices making such demands. In countries which are so large territorially and so diverse ethnically as to be impossible to govern from any one centre (such as Congo, Chad, Sudan, Central African Republic, etc), the governments over-ambitiously, recklessly, and foolishly, set out to control everything. The consequence, in nearly all our countries, has been inefficiency, corruption, poverty, failure, conflicts , pogroms, genocide, masses of displaced citizens, the largest and most wretched refugee camps in the world.

In our country, Nigeria, it was obvious from the very day of independence that the people who controlled our federal government were not prepared to live with the amount of autonomy that our regions were enjoying. In particular, the hostility against the Western Region was immense – all because the Western Region was capable of developing strongly on its own. From the government benches in the Nigerian House of Representatives, threats against the Western Region were heard almost from day one of independence. Finally, the crusade to crush and subdue the Western Region was started in 1962. And since then, the resolute direction of Nigeria’s nation-building has been to pile all power and resources in the hands of the federal government, and to make all states and local governments impotent vassals of the federal government. The policy of breaking up the largest nations and creating more and more states was designed to make the peripheries impotent and the federal government all-powerful. We even reached a stage at which some of the ideologues of federal omnipotence began to preach that our nationalities are myths and that Nigeria, as represented by the federal government, is the only thing that is real.

This policy of imposing the federal government over everything in our large and ethnically diverse Nigeria has resulted in all sorts of terrible evils –in serious weakness of our states and local governments, deepening poverty, terrible social malaise, crimes, inter-ethnic and religious conflicts, mass killings, foolish claims by some nationalities that they are conquering others, and now a strong possibility that our country will break up.

If we refuse to learn a lesson from India, Switzerland, Britain, etc, we shall surely lose Nigeria – may be very soon. Some other Black African countries are heading the same way. The coming national conference offers us Nigerians a chance to change our country’s direction. Will we sincerely and sensibly grab that chance?

Some United Nations agencies, as well as some other voices in the international community, have for decades been making optimistic predictions to the effect that “the 21st century could be Sub-Saharan Africa’s century” or “Sub-Saharan Africa is showing signs of recovery and growth”. As a Black African, I wish sincerely that these things were true. But, at the same time, as a Black African, I know I must not lapse into self-deception about my own homeland – and that I must not lead any of my people into the folly of self-deception. This is our home and we know it is not doing well – that, in fact, it is in serious trouble.

A few days ago, I spent a couple of hours watching a video on the current situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (or Congo-Kinshasa). The political storm that started in this country at independence, leading to the assassination of its first Prime Minister, to a major civil war, to a viciously corrupt military dictatorship, and then to an even larger second civil war, is by no means over. The rebel forces in this country are countless; most of them entrenched in the distant eastern provinces. The second major town of the Congo, the town of Kisangani in the eastern provinces, is in serious decline. In these places, all there is to see is nothing other than the stark face of poverty and barbarism. Camps of countless thousands of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) tell stories of human deprivation at its most extreme. These eastern provinces are separated from Kinshasa, the capital city of the Congo in the west, by thousands of Africa’s thickest forests. The Congo occupies a territory larger than the whole of Western Europe. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that the government based in Kinshasa can do to bring order to the distant eastern provinces. The only arrangement that sustains the tenuous connection holding this country together is the presence of United Nations peace-keeping forces. If the justification for a country is that it ensures to its citizens life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then the Congo does not qualify to be called a country at all.

But on the political map of Black Africa, the condition of Congo-Kinshasa is not unique in kind; it is only unique in severity. Virtually all countries of Black Africa are in serious political troubles manifesting in various horrible conditions. Somalia completely lost hold on orderly governance in 1991, and it continues to live in that disorder till today. Only last week, the United Nations and the African Union agreed to increase the number of international peace-keeping forces in Somalia. After the earth-shaking horror of genocide in Rwanda in 1994, less and less is being heard about that country, and that makes a lot of people in the wider world assume that Rwanda has stabilized – but the world needs to look out. The military junta that took power after the 1994 genocide has continued to hold on to power by authoritarian means, and even some original members of the regime have had to flee from the country to save their lives – all of which cast a shadow on the future of this country. In Uganda, the military ruler who came to power in 1986 continues to hold on to power, intent on eliminating opposition and dissent by doing everything to weaken and break up the kingdom of Buganda, Uganda’s most developed nationality. Since 2011, Buganda and some other groups have been suing for secession, and confrontation between the government and these groups is increasing. In West Africa, United Nations forces were needed to restore some modicum of governance and political stability in the Ivory Coast in 2011, and that country is by no means showing any appreciable progress towards democratic and stable government. A military coup shattered the fragile stability of Mali Republic in late 2011, opening the gate to a secession move in Mali’s northern provinces, and then the emergence of a base for terrorism in those northern provinces – a terrorist base that potently began immediately to threaten most of West Africa, and that then called into action some serious French military intervention.

The political hurricane goes on and on all over Black Africa, generating horrific destruction, loss of lives, and blood-curdling human deprivation and suffering. We Black Africans are only 15% of the population of the human race, but we consume probably up to 70% of international peace-keeping efforts on earth. Our sub-continent is the home of most politically displaced persons in the world – the largest refugee camps and internally displaced persons’ camps, where deprivation, starvation, sheer barbarous conditions, and death, reign supreme over the shattered lives of countless millions of our kinsmen.

Some Nigerians hate to hear the truth; and they go into all sorts of intellectual gymnastics, and all sorts of romantic nonsense, in their attempts to reject the fact – that Nigeria’s history too is just a page in the destructive rampage of this Black African political hurricane. The Nigerian Federal Government set in motion the Nigerian phase of the horror story in 1962 when they embarked on an ill-advised venture to subdue the Western Region and stop its rapid march to progress. The disaster they set in motion did devastate the Western Region and stop its progress. But the hurricane they thus unleashed has swirled virulently over the face of Nigeria since then, producing military coups after military coups, assassinations after assassinations of important public officials, a sanguinary civil war that took the lives of millions of innocent folks, a long succession of ignorant and corrupt military regimes bent on promoting an ethnic agenda, and total destruction of all sense of proportion, all sense of order, and all sense of decency in the management of Nigeria’s affairs. Today, the chances are that Nigeria will break up – soon, probably very soon. More and more Nigerians are expressing the wish that Nigeria should break up, rather than that they and their children should continue to suffer in the hell that Nigeria has become. Even those politicians who are fabricating situations aimed at preserving Nigeria know that their efforts may soon be simply futile.

When one considers this horrific political history of all of Black Africa, one cannot but ask two important questions. First, what is at the root of this Black man’s incapability to hold and properly manage the countries that European colonialists created and bequeathed to us? And second, what does the future hold in store for the Black man in Africa, and for these countries that we are messing around with? I intend to attempt answers to these questions in my next message.

Chief Ayo Fasanmi, former Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, spoke a few days ago, in an interview, about the National Conference which President Jonathan has initiated. In summary, his opinion is that President Jonathan’s calling of a National Conference is merely diversionary. I am sure that if Chief Fasanmi met me and we talked about this, he would want me to comment publicly on what he has said.

To that end, here is how I would start. I believe that most Nigerians, and citizens of the Nigerian Southwest, who read Chief Fasamni’s reported comments some days ago know him only as one of the NigerianSenators of the Second Republic (1979-83) and, perhaps, also as a major actor in the dangerous politics of the Abacha era. I, however, know him deeper in the politics of our land. I know him as a major actor in a tougher chapter of our history. In my last column (last week), I wrote briefly the story of how we the youths of the Western Region erupted in late 1965, after the powers controlling Nigeria had blatantly rigged our Western Regional election of that year. Well, Chief Fasanmi was our highest man in that fight – a fight in which we, young men and women of the Yoruba Western Region, bluntly rejected the huge insult of the rigging of our Regional election, and pitched our little strength determinedly and unyieldingly against all the powers of the Nigerian state – against the Nigerian Federal Government, our own Regional Government, the Nigeria Police and secret services, and even some sections of the Nigerian Army. As President of the Action Group Youth Association, Chief Fasanmi was the leader of our central command, the coordinator of the minds that shaped and moved that glorious struggle. I cannot let pass the opportunity to say that those of us who worked by his side in that high command remember him forever as an indomitable and dependable warrior and leader, a man dedicated to the highest and best in our nation’s values.

As for the National Conference, I agree totally with Chief Fasanmi that President Jonathan’s sudden conversion to the need for a National Conference is a diversionary political move. I am absolutely persuaded that that is so. The PDP party that brought President Jonathan to the presidency was in shambles. Slowly but surely, it seemed to be stumbling towards total dissolution. President Jonathan’s chance for one more term which he desired seemed to be crumbling. In spite of his earlier statements opposing a National Conference, he and his advisers could see that most of the peoples of Nigeria desired, and would gratefully embrace, a National Conference. So, the President converted – and he announced that he was calling a National Conference.

A major Nigerian party, APC, has been saying for weeks, like Senator Fasanmi, that President Jonathan’s National Conference is only a diversion. I believe that most Nigerians areagreedwith the APC in this matter. I don’t believe that it is difficult to see that President Jonathan saw the issue of National Conference as a political life-line and grabbed it. Even among PDP stalwarts whom I have chanced to engage in conversation on the National Conference issue – I mean those PDP stalwarts who still belong to the Jonathan fragmentof the PDP and who strongly back his re-election bid –many have no illusion that their man’s sudden call for a National Conference was a political move aimed at saving his politicalambition. They say it is a smart diversionary move – and I agree. But it is a diversionary move nevertheless.

However, the biggest thing now is thatwe, the nationalities that make up Nigeria, are desperate for a major change in the manner in which our common country has been crooked up. The situation calls for serious – nay, desperate – urgency. Our so-called Federal Government has become a demolition crew violently wrecking our country. Under its battering ram, our states have become dangerously impotent. Most parts of our country are retrogressing. Even the Federal Government itself admits that 60.9 percent of us Nigerians now live in absolute poverty. More than 75 percent of our youths are unemployed. In the more literate parts of our country (such as the Southwest) countless families are housing and providing for their young men and women who graduated from universities up to five years ago. Recently, I met one husband and wife whose five children are university graduates (two of them with Masters Degrees), all of whom are unemployed. Under these conditions, various species of sophisticated crimes are flourishing in our country – kidnapping for ransom, murder-for-hire, superior electronic frauds, outright terrorism, etc. More and more Nigerians are erecting barricades around their homes, and we are becoming a people living in self-imposed prisons. We are breeding a whole generation immersed in the culture of desperation, crookednessand deep-seated vileness. Nigerian nationalities are, more and more, becoming enemies of one another.

That all these may result in the breaking up of Nigeria is no longer in doubt. No country whose society is being pulverized the way the Nigerian society is being pulverized can possibly live as one country for long. In fact, the greater fear now is this: Even if Nigeria scatters into many different countries, will the human materials now being generated in Nigeria be able to build any decent countries out of the fragments? In the context of Nigeria, is our whole future as peoples not being totally destroyed? Should we not now quickly dissolve Nigeria before Nigeria totally destroys us and all our future – before it is too late?

Therefore, our nationalities as nationalities must seize every and any chance to re-order this country. We have no choice other than to grab the Jonathan National Conference and struggle together to use it to carry out needed changes. We must restructure our federation in a hurry. Either that or total disaster. No third possibility exists.

Since independence, our nations have shown in various ways that they reject the excessive weight being given to the Federal centre in the life of Nigeria. Their reactions and resistance have created various difficult situations in our history. The Ijaw peoples of the Delta have been resisting might and mane, and sacrificing many of their youths, since virtually the day of independence. The Igbo led a secessionist move that provoked a terrible civil war and took the lives of millions of people. The Yoruba have, since even before independence, urged persistently that the Nigerian Federation be properly and rationally structured. Virtually all major political movements among the Yoruba, even if they disagree on other things, have come out clearly in support of a rational structuring of the Nigerian federation. In the course of the 1990s, the Yoruba came close to seeking secession rather than continuing as part of a federation that is destroying its component peoples.

Thus, we Nigerians confront two truths concerning the Jonathan National Conference. The first truth is that President Jonathan’s calling of the National Conference is a diversionary political move, aimed at keeping his bid for another term alive. It is unlikely that he had any other intention beyond that. And the second truth is that we the nations that constitute Nigeria so desperately need to carry out very major changes in the structure and life of our country that we must accept the Jonathan National Conference and work mightily with it.

The ball is therefore in President Jonathan’s court. Irrespective of his intentions for calling the National Conference, he must now work with our nationalities to make the conference an outstanding success. This may be the last chance left for Nigeria.

Every human aggregation, human system, human institution, or long-standing collective human experience, tends to produce its own human type – its own kind of human behaviour, moral norm, and quality of person. Within only a few years, Hitler’s Third Reich turned the German nation, one of Europe’s most creative and most artistic people, into a rabidly nationalistic monstrosity, prepared to inflict limitlessly barbarous suffering on other peoples. The United States, with its history and kind of society, has produced the world’s most open people, most freedom-loving, most respectful of human worth, and most achieving – the greatest country in the history of the human race. Nearer home, the history and culture of the Yoruba nation produced a people whose ideal person is the type summed up by the Yoruba in the concept of the “Omoluabi” – a person who respects the rights, the choices, and the feelings of others, is thoughtful in speech and action, is dutiful and dependable, is freedom-loving and self-respecting, dutifully upholds his family and its image, is willing to give of himself to his community, welcomes and accommodates the stranger, and strongly desires the very best for his community.

In the final analysis, the type of human minds, the type of human values, that a society produces, is its most important product. Countries produce great economies, great technologies and great military establishments. But, in the final analysis, none of these is as important as the type of humans and human values that they produce.

Nigeria has, admittedly, produced measurable value in various directions. Sure, Nigeria has been an embarrassing developmental failure when her enormous natural and human resources are considered, but that is not to say that she has been completely unproductive. The Nigeria of 2013 is way beyond the Nigeria of 1914 in infrastructures, in business growth, in education, and many other fields. However, the Nigerian product that must be ranked in importance above all these other products is the type of humans and human morality that Nigeria has produced. And, in that field, most Nigerians would concede, just as most informed people in the wide world know, that Nigeria is one of the most frighteningly poor and brutish countries in the world. Nigeria has proved eminently capable at generating decline and degradation in human behaviour. Gold is naturally rustproof, but in Nigeria, even gold can rust.

The root of it all is that since independence, the dominant tendency in the highest levels of Nigeria’s leadership and governance has been total impunity in the manipulation and crooking of all things. For instance, rulers and leaders of Nigeria, especially those who control the federal government, and those associated or allied to them across Nigeria, never plan to win elections; they plot only to rig elections. In the circumstance, among officials serving in the electoral commission, as well as among judges serving in the Election Tribunals, utter debauchery is almost universally the norm. As the international observers in the 2007 Nigerian elections noted in their report, the Nigerian Police Force is often a strongly committed accomplice in the electoral crookedness. An American journalist observed one of Nigeria’s general elections in various parts of the country and has written a book describing his weird experiences. On polling day, at about midday in one town, he saw senior government and electoral officials, assisted by armed policemen, grabbing the ballot boxes from the polling stations and taking them away – as the crowd of voters swarmed around them and tried vainly to stop them. The journalist approached the officials and asked them where they were taking the boxes to, and the officials answered that they were taking the boxes to “safe keeping”. A minute or so later, someone in one of the officials’ vehicles pointed a gun out and discharged it, causing the journalist and his photographer and thousands in the crowd to dock or flee for safety. That is how brazen Nigeria’s leaders are in manipulating and corrupting the life of their country.

This culture of brazen criminality among high public officials continues in Nigeria’s elections as this is being written. All Nigerians know that even the most popular of elected public officials running for re-election, even if they have served their constituents satisfactorily, but if they do not belong to the party in control of the federal government, must prepare total war to save their seats in the face of the predictable invasion by the federal rigging army. For some governors today facing re-election in the next year, the vibrations of this invasion have already begun. In all other facets of government, and at all levels of government, the same brazen impunity has become Nigeria’s culture of governance. A commentator remarked recently that in other parts of the world, public corruption means that the public official steals some of the public money under his control, but that in Nigeria it often means that the public official steals all of the money under his control. For the average ambitious Nigerian, virtually the only way to succeed in Nigeria these days is to find some sort of access into Nigeria’s public corruption industry.

All this, allied with the intense poverty which Nigerian rulers and leaders have thus foisted on their country, has bequeathed to the fabric of Nigerian society a culture of generalized uncertainty and insecurity, a psychology of hopelessness and desperation, of compulsive corner cutting, and of cynicism and vicious disloyalty even among the closest of friends and relatives. The average Nigerian abroad knows that if he sends money home for some project of his (like building a house), his closest kinsmen will defraud him – and might even kill him if he comes home afterwards and proves “unreasonable”. Merely to survive, the average unprivileged Nigerian needs to cheat and cut corners, and he has become phenomenally adroit at doing all of that.

Much of the rest of the world, including even fellow Africans, cannot understand the kind of humans that Nigerians have become. According to reports, in Ghana, most Ghanaians are edgy about doing anything with Nigerians. In Kenya, people commonly say with contempt, “Where there is a Nigerian there is a way!”A former United States high official, himself a Blackman, is credited with saying that the average Nigerian is predictably a rogue. In very many countries in the world, governments warn banks and businesses about doing business with Nigerians, and warn their citizens about travelling to Nigeria. Recently, television stations in some countries repeatedly aired a video with the title “How to rob a bank”. It is a sickening series of escapades by Nigerians, in sophisticated 419 mode, defrauding and robbing people in country after country. A commentator suggested in a TV programme that its real title should be “How Nigerians rob the world”. In a book recently published in America, the author wrote: “Nigeria has a terrible reputation. Tell someone that you are going to Nigeria and if they haven’t been there themselves, they offer sympathy. Tell anyone who has been to Nigeria and they laugh. Then they offer sympathy. No tourists go there. – – – Journalists treat it like a war zone. Diplomats regard it as a punishment posting.”

We Nigerians live in a country, under a system that is robbing us of the essence and beauty of life – that is robbing us of our basic humanity, our human decency, and our image as members of the human race. It is an awful heritage.