Biodun Jeyifo
I confess: even if the title of this piece does not exactly reveal the irony, the absurdity even, in the suggestion that any country in the modern world could be younger than any generational cohorts of its citizens, I wish to make that intention very clear, very explicit. For if we follow too closely and rigidly the “postcolonial canard” that Nigeria is (only) 60 years old, it does mean, doesn’t it, that the two generations of Nigerians born respectively between the 1920s to the 1930s and between the 1940s to the 1950s, are older than their country? But I doubt that there are any Nigerians of any generation that feel, deep down, that they are older than Nigeria. I most certainly do not think or feel so, even though I belong to the generation of those born between the 1940s to the 1950s, well before independence in 1960, the presumed or putative year of our “birth”. On this note of confession, this note of a disclaimer that I am older than my country, permit me to make a second confession.
What is this “confession”? Well, here it is. With perhaps the single exception of the year 1960 itself, I have never joined in celebrating October 1 as a day of any special significance. Indeed, I joined in the celebrations in 1960 because I was young, I was in my first year of high school and independence felt very good, very exciting and very “cool”, as adolescent Americans might put it. And also because on that day of October 1st of that year, all schoolchildren in the three regions of North, East and West were feasted generously at government expense. I should perhaps inform compatriots of younger generational cohorts reading this piece that prior to 1960, we schoolchildren had also been feasted annually on “Empire Day”.
But the feasting on October 1, 1960 felt very different from all or any of the previous feasts on Empire Day because it had “independence” attached to it. We sang a brand-new song or anthem different from the one we had always sung in praise of The Queen and her far-flung Empire. And we had a new flag and a new iconography of rulers, potentates and dignitaries. In other words, October 1, 1960 came with an excitement, a euphoria that had been missing in the feasting and celebrations of Empire Day.
When and how did the excitement and the euphoria about “independence” in relation to October 1 end so quickly for me? Frankly, I do not have any precise dates or thoughts with regard to causes and effects. It is almost like asking me when and how I stopped being mindful and celebrative of my own birthday anniversaries. The fact is that for this question, I have no answer beyond the rather lame explanation that I simply do not mark or celebrate my birthdays because it is not my habit to do so. [Disclaimer: I had no hand, none at all, in the huge celebrations that marked my 60th and 70th birthday anniversaries, though of course I remain forever grateful and indebted to the friends, comrades, colleagues and students who made them possible]
I will of course not “dodge” this question, for I do have an answer for it. However, I must inform the reader that this “answer” became clarified for me only gradually, indeed almost imperceptibly over the course of several decades. What is this answer? Well, simply put, I gradually began to see in our celebration(s) of October 1 a great gap, a great dissociation between, on the one hand, freedom from our past colonial bondage and, on the other hand, responsibility for our eventual failure to fill the empty bag of our “freedom” with mastery in our dealings and entanglements with the outside world, more precisely the rich and powerful post-imperial nations of the global North. Expressed differently, this means that for me, every celebration of October 1 came to smack too much of our failures in establishing real freedom, mastery and dignity as a nation and a people, at home and also in the wider world. In other words, although I cannot ascribe a specific date to it, I do know that in the course of time, October 1 became for me so emptied of meaning and significance that I often barely noticed when it came – and went!
Which is why I began to be affronted by the imputation that, thanks to the reification of October 1, 1960, Nigeria is younger than all of us who were born between the 1920s to the 1930s and the 1940s to the 1950s. But we do know that our country is much older than that! We do know that long before 1960, the various peoples and nationalities in what is now Nigeria had achieved both failure and breakthroughs in establishing peaceful and productive relationships amongst themselves and the outside world. And we also know that under differing conditions, this is an unending historical process in the light of which the literal and additive calculus through which Nigeria is adjudged to be (only) 60 years old is an absurdity, especially given the fact that most of those 60 years have been devoted to what Chinua Achebe described as trying to find out when the rain started to beat us.
I do admit it. Much of what I have in mind here has been widely and amply discussed under the framework of what is known as postcolonial disillusionment. Now, I should explain that in my professional life of nearly half of a century as a scholar, much of my teaching and research focused on this world-historical phenomenon of postcolonial disillusionment. Indeed in one of my books on this grand theme, I coined the phrase “truthful lie” that became an instant hit and in which I discussed many developments like the manifold cultural effects of the “flag independence” that the British gave us in 1960. Indeed, I have an inclination to now apply this concept to the imputation that Nigeria is (only) 60 years old: compatriots, it is nothing but a truthful lie!
As I do not wish to offer a rehash of all I have written and taught on this vast subject in this piece, what I wish to engage here is what I would call the necessity for a second independence or more graphically, a Second October. The independence that came with October I, 1960, has turned out to be empty, contentless. We must now struggle for a second independence, a Second October. When this Second October comes, call on me, compatriots, and I shall be at the feasting and banqueting hall! Or more to the point, let us all work in unity for that second independence and then we can have a celebration that is not an empty ritual, like Nigeria at 60!
How should I express the coordinates of this Second October? I look for a short, pithy way to express this and I must confess that words fail me and intuition doesn’t seem adequate to the problem posed to it. I think, think very hard and all I can come up with is this: We, Nigerians and Africans, live in the world and the world ought to be a place fit for us to live in. Do you get my point here, compatriots? In nearly all the jeremiads that are routinely written and spoken like a secular catechism every October 1st in our country in the last sixty years, we encounter the grim fact or datum that neither in Nigeria itself nor in most places in the world are Nigerians, with notable exceptions, accorded a dignified and livable existence. This is very bad, compatriots, isn’t it. Well, yes, except that this is not a uniquely “Nigerian” phenomenon as it is true of more than a half of the population of the earth: for most people on the planet, their countries of origin, birth or nationality are like refugee camps and they flee from their homelands, they are not welcome as migrants or immigrants in most of the other countries and regions of the world. Thus, on account of this sobering fact, we must say that Nigerians are the most representative, the most paradigmatic of the terrible spiritual desolation of most of the denizens of planet earth.
Let us explore this proposition soberly and equably, compatriots. These days, the phrase, “Nigeria is the poverty capital of the world” is very widely used, both in Nigeria itself and in diverse areas of the wider world. But aren’t “poverty capitals” found in most parts of the world including even the United States, the wealthiest country on the planet? And suffering, great and almost unassuageable suffering? Don’t we find it as prevalent all over the world as we find it abundantly in Nigeria? And, to take the flip side of this phenomenon that Fela Kuti famously called “shuffering and shmiling” that seems to be a uniquely and sublimely Nigerian phenomenon, don’t we find it all over the world? The thing that gets me the most is the predatoriness of rulers toward the ruled, which in my view, is the single most consequential development of governance in the period inaugurated in October 1, 1960, the “First October”. I have travelled a lot and with few exceptions, every country I have visited in the world has its own forms and expressions of this constitutive predatoriness of rulers over the ruled. Doesn’t this make the predatoriness of our rulers, admittedly the most notorious in the world, also a paradigmatic condition of governance in many of the nations of the planet?
Beyond these illustrations and clarifications, let us keep the essential proposition that I am exploring in this piece in mind. For this reason, permit me to restate it. Since 1960, October 1 has served as a sort of ritual moment in which to reflect on what is wrong and what is right – mostly what is wrong – with the country, especially its rulers. As a matter of fact, it would not be overstating the case to assert that after 60 years, this ritual has come to serve as perhaps the most authoritative act or expression of sovereignty that we have as nation. Typically, the President and Commander in Chief gives a speech to mark the occasion and no matter how dissatisfied Nigerians are with the contents of the speech, the very act or ritual of delivering it on October 1 is regarded as a supreme expression of our national sovereignty. However, if at one time – perhaps within the first six years of independence – October 1 and the President’s Speech did fulfill that expectation, who can contest the fact it has been clear for at least the last four decades that it has become clearly apparent that both the Speech and the Day constitute empty rituals.
Take the case of Muhammadu Buhari’s October 1st Speech given only a few days ago in which there was much heat but no light. A dire hint that fuel subsidy will soon be removed once and for all and a heavy burden of sacrifice will, once again, be placed on the masses, at a time when most Nigerians are reeling from the economic depredations of Covid-19. But did you find any indication in the Speech that the burden of sacrifice will also fall on the predators in the executive, legislative and judicial arms or institutions of governance? Did you read that salaries and emoluments, the most bloated and unjust in the world, will be reduced? Did you, compatriots?
- Biodun Jeyifo
bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu
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