On the imperative of modernization

(Political barbarism versus economic vandalism)

According to optimists of ultimate state redemption, Rome was not built in a day. All empires and nations take quite some time getting into their stride. They do not just get up and start walking. On the other hand, it is also known that mighty empires and nations do not always succumb to a single major wound. Like the Roman Empire, they perish from a thousand wounds, a great elephant besieged by a determined pride of lions.

Sometimes in late1984, Dr Lasisi Olusola Soile, a much adored former teacher turned colleague of this writer, came to the office to lodge a stern complaint about the state of the nation. Before one could offer a word of solace, this most unflappable and unruffled of men sank into a nearby chair to continue his jeremiad. “At least the Roman Empire lasted about a thousand years. But in our life time, we have witnessed the rise and fall of Nigeria”, the late scholar rued on.

This was a time when the foraging for essential commodities had turned men of timber and learning into testy and rowdy children on endless queues. Thirty two years after, the queues have disappeared even though Nigeria still runs a primitive economy which does not produce enough milk, eggs and sugar to feed its populace. Essential commodities have become non-essential. The professoriate has been thoroughly pulverized. The nation itself has descended several notches in the ladder of decay and desuetude but it is still miraculously hanging on against all existential odds.

Fortuitously, it was the general from Daura who was in charge of cleansing the Augean stable left by a corrupt and dissolute political class then just as he is currently in charge grappling with a more humongous mess left by a diseased and debauched political elite.  That time, General Buhari came as a youthful, lean, angular, no-nonsense implacable military autocrat whose word was law.

But this time around, it is as an aging, weathered civilian and bloodied veteran of several judicial combats who has gone to hell and back and whose word is no longer law. As this column has repeatedly cautioned the general, you cannot step into the same river twice. A Heraclitean flux is in operation. Time does not stay still.

A few months into his first tenure, General Mohammadu Buhari paid a scheduled visit to the Sokoto Caliphate, the seat of modern Nigeria’s dominant power masters. In royal banter, an exultant and effusive but infirm Sultan Abubakar famously inquired about his august and distinguished guest: “Ina dogo? (Where is the tall one?) Today, many Nigerians are beginning to ask the same question.

But it is not the man from Daura that is actually missing in action. What is missing is a Nigeria that has failed to significantly modernize its political and economic parameters. Given the momentous discovery that the security branch of the executive turned money meant for the procurement of arms for the defence of the territorial integrity at a most critical point of national vulnerability to an all-comers bazaar of political gamesmanship, given the current scandal of padding that has engulfed the House of Representatives and the alleged forgery of standing rules in the senate, it should be obvious that what we are dealing with is a primitive and pre-modern mode of governance that has no equivalent anywhere in the world in its sheer lack of modern rationality with its ethical mooring.

A vandal is a primitive member of an ancient Germanic tribe that exults in willful destruction and wanton desecration. If we categorize those fellows in the creeks who wantonly and willfully destroy pipelines and oil installations as vandals, then what do we call members of the political class, particularly the National Assembly, who destroy our economy through mindless looting and who desecrate our politics through electoral violence and the violation of the sacred legislative rule of procedure?  It is a case of economic vandalism cancelling out political barbarism.

This is why the cries for restructuring are a coded signal for the swift modernization of the nation’s economic and political categories. Such a modernizing imperative is not just about outer “structure” but must entail a stringent internal restructuring and the structural modification of the character and psychology of the Nigerian political class which will make them amenable to the institutional rationality which undergirds the governance structure of all modern societies no matter how they arrive at political and economic modernity.

Whether we choose to restructure first or we choose the more revolutionary imperative of comprehensive modernization which will sweep away all the cobwebs and limpets of feudal anachronism and political barbarism from this land is now beside the point. We just cannot go on like this without the turbulent contradictions overwhelming the creaking structure. If care is not taken, it is actually the uneven nature of political consciousness among different sections of the country which we wish to will away and the sharply differentiated modes of economic production among the diverse components of the country which may eventuate in a violent and forcible restructuring of the nation.

As it is at the moment and no matter the veneer of modern governance,  the Nigerian political system is largely powered by a primitive will to corner and accumulate power for its own purpose without the will or the urge to use such power to re-engineer the society or a visionary impulse to ameliorate the sorry plight of hapless citizens, while the economy is driven by a primordial and anti-modern will to appropriate the entire fiscal patrimony and resources of a country for ignoble reasons.

This combination of political barbarism and economic vandalism explains why the Speaker of the House of Representatives in a twenty first century Nigeria can blithely and openly declare that budget padding is not a crime. Let Malam Yakubu Dogara, who is said to be a lawyer, be informed that although budget padding is not a crime and is consistent with established practice in the most advanced democracies, it is flagrantly criminal for a few representatives to gather together to pad a budget after it has been assented to by the entire house.

This is criminal forgery and an attempt to oust and usurp the authority of the house reeking of felony and treason. Can anybody imagine what the civilized world will make of this shameless bêtise? It is improbable that the speaker of the American lower house having been implicated in such criminal perfidy will not summarily fall on his sword.

But we must not leave the real ailment to procure treatment for its ephemeral and superficial manifestations. This infraction is a mere symptom of a deeper malady and must have been going on for quite some time until the advent of the rogue whistleblower. Illegal padding is symptomatic of uncoordinated and slipshod budgeting which is not tied to definite national planning or a visionary economic grid. It is opaque, chaotic, open-ended, whimsically arbitrary and lacking in rigour and rationality. It is what the Yoruba call “ wa mu tire” or “bosikona”  budget, a shorthand for the political economy of primitive accumulation.

If the presidency cares about the reputation of the government and the ruling party, it should steer clear of this messy matter. It is not for the government to aver that it has not uncovered any evidence of padding. That is presumptuous, pre-emptive and an open contempt for the law-enforcement agencies. It is an unfortunate usurpation of the rights of a critical arm of government and it bodes ill for the much storied crusade against corruption.

With tempers flaring on the streets, on the social media and in desperate homes about current economic hardships and with sundry groups taking up arms against the fatherland, this is a critical moment for the Buhari administration. It may also become a defining watershed for an administration that rode to power on the cusp of much goodwill and national euphoria. Trapped between the political expediency of regime and party survival and the ethical imperative of doing what is right and proper for the nation, APC has opted for grim self-preservation.

Yet the only lesson taught by this is that in bitterly divided and polarized countries, the struggle for restructuring is an important plank of the battle for modernity. But while restructuring, shorn of unprincipled opportunism, is basically an intra-class contention in which a hegemonic faction of the ruling class faces relentless pressure to share power and responsibility from marginalized and probably more visionary fractions of the superintending class, the battle for modernization is an inter-class power struggle in which the whole society rises against the control of its political, economic and spiritual destiny by an oligarchic cabal.

This struggle against absolute sovereignty, enacted in different theatres across the globe at different points of history and with society-specific means, has been the most important step humanity has taken toward the modern and modernist society. It shows why modernization is not synonymous with absolute westernization although in Africa given the mode of colonial rationalization some modes of westernization are inevitable in the construction of modernity.

It is often left to individual societies to find the inner strength and resilience to confront their internal demons in the journey to self-actualization. After the Russian Revolution Vladimir Putin has had to confront the rogue oligarchs. In China after the triumph over the feudal warlords, the battle for the liberalization of political and economic space began even as Mao himself lay prostrate inside the Forbidden City. In South Korea, the entire populace rose to subdue the oligopolistic chaebols and the rampaging generals. Ditto for the Philippines, Indonesia, Nepal, Cuba and the Latin American political volcanoes.

In any society where meaningful steps to modernity and political rationality have taken place, the people have never been passive objects of history but active subjects and participants in the perpetual drama of human existence. In post-independence Nigeria all the meaningful steps taken towards emancipation and the journey to self-actualization have taken place when the entire society or significant sections rise in fury against their tormentors. This can be seen in the battle against civilian autocracy in the First and Second Republics, the intellectual siege against military despotism as encoded in the struggle to entrench the will of the people after June 12, 1993, and the struggle against a corrupt oligarchy and nascent ethnic hegemony culminating in the historic election of 2015 which dethroned a ruling mafia.

No matter what anybody says or thinks, the election that has brought General Buhari is an important milestone in Nigeria’s journey to self-actualization. But a milestone is not a terminus. It is only a crucial and historic reference point in a long slog to freedom. In General Buhari himself we see a classic manifestation of the contradictions and cunning of history: a man who was part of an oppressive band leading a vanguard of the oppressed. History is still unfolding and it is not over yet. This is why the retired general and the APC must undertake a constant reality check. The only favourite of the forces of modernity is relentless modernization.