Community matters

THE story of our nation from amalgamation until now is an interesting one for what we have largely considered important versus what we have all but sidelined. Our narratives of development or lack of it, peace and insecurity, health and disease, education and poverty have focused on the state as if it is the sole driver of the engine of our lives.

For the most part, we have sidelined local communities and how they matter to the lives of citizens. Every now and then, this columnist has tried to bring communities back into the national discourse. Because community matters and matters that affect community development are at the heart of our national malaise.

Our penchant for seeing everything good or bad from the perspective of state action or inaction is a relatively recent development. There were times in our history when we held our local communities in high esteem, seeing them as the foundation of the good life for indigenes. They gave us life. They offered us opportunities for education whether formal or informal. They instilled in us cultural and moral values for successful lives.

I grew up in pre-independence era Okeho community. It was closely knit with everyone looking out for the success of every child. As I reminisced in All the Way: Serving with Conscience, Okeho was the epicenter of traditional values which continually torture the heart and soul of the one who ever thinks of deviating from them even long after leaving the community. A kii see (It’s not done) is the brutal warning.

Having such a burden of conscience not only prepares you for a life of devotion to the common good, it is also a powerful force against anti-social or unethical tendencies. Thus, faithfulness to the ethos of community ensures not only the success of individuals in life, it also guarantees social cohesion and peaceful coexistence. After all, every community instills virtually the same core values.

For its grateful beneficiaries, the attraction of community is so long-lasting that no matter how far they venture away from it, it is not out of their mind. They keep going back to their root and they keep paying forward their debt of gratitude. When each is so vested along with like-minded home folks, the ensuing display of the joy of re-membering could be truly inspiring, contagious, and moving. That was my experience two years ago this month when Okeho celebrated the centenary of its return to its original site.

Re-membering, as Ngugi Wa Thiong’o underscores, is the sacred act of recovering and restoring that which has been lost or taken away. Ngugi’s book, Remembering Africa, takes off from the dismembering of Africa by 400 years of enslavement and 200 years of colonialism and neo-colonialism. To re-member is to put together the dis-membered.

The Okeho centenary was a small community version of Ngugi’s vision of African re-membering. It was the re-membering of values and norms of community, which decades of political schism had almost but destroyed. It was the reconciliation of old and young to the tradition of community service that spawned them in the first place. It was the rebuke of a destructive individualistic ethos that had become a threat to the wellbeing of the self and the community. And the response was overwhelmingly positive. It gladdened the heart.

Volunteerism took on a new and inspiring meaning. Old and young sacrificed time, mental and material resources to make the celebrations a success. The major community association, Egbe Omo Ibile, Okeho, which had gone through periods of demobilization by partisan bickering found its mojo and reengaged with the community. Together with Okeho Development Association (ODA), and A Centenary Committee led by a successful corporate leader, the ground was laid for a successful program of events.

What was most gratifying was the determination of young professionals who, undeterred by the modern attraction of individualistic competition, chose communal commitment and inaugurated committees to take on development ideas that they had figured out needed to be pursued. This has translated into communal activism in the quest for developmental projects.

Okeho has no higher institution. In 2016, Oyo State Government approved a campus of Oyo State School of Health Technology. But the community must provide land and classroom blocks. With Kabiyesi Onjo of Okeho’s leadership, the community embarked on the project. The school is now open to students from all over the state. But the Okeho community had to bear the burden of its opening.

In 2017, National Open University (NOUN) authorities considered a request from the community for NOUN Study Center in Okeho. NOUN has a long list of conditions for the approval of the request. including a study hall for 200 students, 100 desktop computers, 100kva generator, fencing of the premises. Again, every segment of the community has been involved in the project with Egbe Omo Ibile leading the charge. A group of young professionals formed a Special Ad-Hoc Committee on NOUN Study Centre, fundraising for the project. In addition to supplying desktop computers, it has also donated a branded Mini-Bus to the proposed institution.

Why do I go into all these? I would like to make two important points. First, the spirit of community, which used to be the driving force of all developmental efforts in the past, is still alive and well. This is especially true of small local communities which are virtually left to their fates by state and federal governments in the race of development.

The two examples of educational projects that I just narrated reveal an important truth. In thIs country, development is not evenly distributed and the inequality that characterizes inter-personal relationships also exists between communities. State capitals can boast of multiple higher educational institutions, dual carriage ways, and basic and specialized health institutions, while rural communities have none. Some communities are more equal than others.

However, while deprived communities can task themselves to satisfy conditions for the location of educational and health institutions, there are other tasks, such as road construction or rehabilitation that they cannot be expected to undertake. And such are at the heart of the extreme poverty they experience. Ibadan-Iseyin road, Oyo-Iseyin road, Okeho-Iseyin Road, Okeho-Iganna road in Oyo State have been in states of abandonment for many years. Yet Oke-Ogun division, which these roads connect to the state capital, is famously known as the food basket of the state. Thanks to the intervention of the Honorable Minister for Works and Housing, Okeho-Iseyin Road is receiving attention and would hopefully be completed eventually.

My second point is that the spirit of community that inspires volunteerism and commitment to common good is dead in our national life and needs to be revived. You may wonder if it makes sense to suggest that the spirit of community is expected to be revived in the national life. Is the expectation not misplaced? If Ngugi can invoke, rightly in my view, re-membering as an approach to reconnecting Africa to its roots by recovering and restoring what has been lost through the violent intervention of foreign invaders, the concept is certainly applicable to Nigeria. For it was the same violent intervention that tore us from our communal roots.

This point was brought home vividly to me in the NYSC camp in Enugu in 1974. One of our guest lecturers drew a distinction between Oru Obodo and Oru Oyinbo (Work of the Community versus Work of the Englishman or Foreigner). Obviously, with the intensity of community development burning bright, Oru Obodo was taken more seriously than Oru Oyinbo. Unfortunately, notwithstanding independence, the state simply replaced Oyinbo in our mental picture. More so, since our different communities see others as aliens and competitors.

But it is more and worse. Many of us go from seeing community differences or from promoting our communities above others. We have come full circle to seeing our own communities as instruments for the promotion of our self-interests. This is why constituency project funds end up in the pockets of individualistic legislators. Unfortunately, therefore, the reality of our historical currents as a nation is a betrayal of the expectation of the dictates of community ethos. We can do much better.