SIR: Why have we refused as Nigerians the giant of Africa and the hope of black race across the world failed to tame and harmonize our diverse resources in natural endowment? Why do we run abroad as doctors, scientists, writers, academics for enhancement and visibility on a global fissure? Until we answer all these posers realistically, our commissions are purely the ranting of the pot saying the kettle is black or vice versa on the actors of Chatham House.
The Chatham House has become a replica of Lancaster House where we had partied our way into a temporary independence from the British lords with the colonial officers’ presidency as “masters of ceremony “. It is within this premise that the existing colonial president predicted albeit prophetically, that six years down the line, the flag freedom nations would collapse. From Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Uganda, Mozambique, Angola; enter the period of militarism that completely eroded whatever form of civility we imbibed from colonial tutelages.
Chatham House, shorn off hypocritical posturing of many analysts is a metaphor for our collective inadequacies in past colonial Africa, more so in Nigeria. Our rule of law is still held in abeyance, the press rather than being a “watchdog” had become the posters boys of the establishment. Opposition is cleverly stifled and only those who chorus “Hosanna” catch the mice of our leaders who are buccaneers in office.
Why have our leaders with a very few exceptions not be large-minded enough to catch the big fishes in opposition parties and civil society to build a sanitized society where the British, the Portuguese, the Americans, Chinese and Indians would envy and flood Nigeria as co-competitor for world economic order, but as dumping ground for Western and Eastern wastes?
If the truth needed to be told, the concept of colonialism – however unsavoury to the heart, especially having regard to the postulations of African radical theorists like Walter Rodney, Frantz Fanon, and others – that opened up the civil institutions and inclusive space that ramified as a challenge to the western imperialist design. Whatever may be their inadequacies, the western capitals Like London, New York, Paris and others still offer a scintilla of hope and fruitfulness for the flowery of open discussions, open dialogue, institutional accommodation, ethnic and religious accommodation than prevailing post-colonial African states!
The first point of mass mobilisation against the intolerance of the civilian government of the first Republic was promoted in London to a Nigerian audience. It was that feat championed by the opposition in contrast to the intolerance of the coalition government of the day that accorded the abrogation of the Anglo-Nigerian Defence Pact among other inconsiderate policies of post-colonial Nigeria.
The Europeans might have done a lot of havoc by the concept of slave trading, colonialism, capitalism and imperialism but what have we done to bring ourselves into higher ideals of collective integration, cultural sense of justice to all, religious tolerance, ethnic accommodation, fair and equitable distribution of resources to all that would enable us to outsmart, outperform, and outshine the departing colonial lords? While our pre-colonial history was arguing with “might was right” with the ethnic alienation and bitter conquest of one another, our post-independence experiences have shown without any iota of doubt that six decade of their departure, we have not collectively enacted a cohesive core values among ourselves that would prove to the world the very evils of colonisation and allied concepts we are ever ready to condemn.
From the annulment of MKO Abiola’s election to the killing of Ogoni activists, up to the present non-state actors’ claim to negotiate state sovereignty, we have not gotten the necessary inbuilt mechanism of patently resolving our internal crisis of amalgamation with fairness and justice.
Nigeria would fare better had colonial lords stayed with us for long or the reasonable future. An opinion poll will confirm this thesis, these myth and realities on “Chatham House” adventure.
•Omotayo Ishola,
Ilorin, Kwara State.