Tag: change

I start this final piece in the series that began two weeks ago in this column with a great emphasis on what I call the limits of journalistic punditry with regard to this column itself and all newspaper and newsmagazine columnists in Nigeria at the present time. We are all pundits, all of us of the clan of columnists that populate the dozens of newspapers and newsmagazines in circulation in our country. I think that on the whole and everything considered, the emergence and rise to high public visibility of journalistic punditry has been one of the most significant cultural and intellectual developments in Nigeria in at least the last two decades. For it is a very salutary cultural phenomenon that hundreds of thousands of literate Nigerians are avid readers of the opinions, analyses and reflections of columnists. This is because the historic moment of the vitality of the town or village square is gone, perhaps forever, at least with regard to the significance of the constituted public sphere of the national community. To express this observation in concrete terms, I for one as a columnist am immensely encouraged by the fact that people read what I have to say in virtually all parts of the country. Moreover, via the internet, this extends to the global community of Nigerians in the diasporas of Europe and the Americas. But notwithstanding this undoubted impact of columnists in the political and intellectual domains of our collective experience as a nation, I return to what I stated at the beginning of this opening paragraph: the limits of journalistic punditry. What does this mean and how does it relate to the issue that I have been discussing in this series?

I shall be very succinct in my response to this question. Almost without exception, most newspaper and newsmagazine columnists – the commentariat – nurse the illusion that what they/we write collectively has a decisive role to play in the fate of the nation, especially with regard to the terrible condition of the masses of the poor and the underprivileged in our country. But this is simply not true; more to the point, it is delusory. Nothing illustrates this claim more than the war on corruption in high places in our country. For at least two decades now, we, the columnists, have been railing ceaselessly and tirelessly against corruption. This started long before the current phase of the war in Buhari’s administration, a phase in which the commentariat has exponentially stepped up its verbal attacks on looters and looting. For nearly two decades, corruption was completely undaunted by our salvoes. And now in the current phase of the war, corruption is striking back; it is fighting hard and seemingly effectively too, in the law courts and in the federal civil administration. If it is the case that we shall not and must not stop waging a verbal war against the looters and their allies, we must at least pause to reflect on this unquestionable limit to what we can hope to achieve. To put this in stark and admittedly rather oversimplified terms, it is time for us to come to the realization that the war against corruption will ultimately not be won in the pages of newspapers and newsmagazines.

Let me rephrase that last sentence: We can hope to have an effective impact on the war on corruption only if what we write as pundits move the masses to act, to intervene – in the war against corruption and in the many other spheres of political and economic affairs that are badly in need of change and reform in our country at the present time. I place emphasis on this issue because it is a very notable and perhaps even defining view of journalistic punditry in our country that all that needs to be done is to write well, to write eloquently and all else shall fall into place. This may be true in those very limited and narrow circumstances in which calls are made to reverse a specific act or policy of the president, a governor, a federal minister, a local government chairman. But on far weightier and consequential issues like the war on corruption or redistributive justice in our country, if what we write as columnists do not move the masses of Nigerians to act, to intervene, then regardless of the vigour or eloquence of our writings, nothing significant will happen.

At this point in the discussion, it is perhaps necessary for me to specify what I mean by the term, “the masses”, together with precisely what sorts of action and intervention I have in mind.In its most widely understood connotation, the term, implies, rather undifferentiatedly, the bottom layers of the socio-economic order, the truly disadvantaged, “the wretched of the earth”, in Frantz Fanon’s celebrated coinage. I admit that in general, this is what the term, “Talakawa”, in the title of this column implies. However, when the term is politicized with expectations of radical possibilities, mass action or intervention applies to any phenomenon that powerfully advances the interests, the collective cause of the truly disadvantaged of any society. Let me put this in simple, concrete language: an action, an intervention by even as few as two or three people that sparks the imagination and interest of the Talakawa in their millions is a mass action, a mass intervention. This is not to deny the fact that throughout history, the most powerful and consequential acts of the masses take place when sizeable proportions of the poor and the underprivileged march, protest, demonstrate or act in their own interests: Soweto; Mao’s Long March; Martin Luther King and the March on Washington; the innumerable occasions when our own departed and sorely missed Labour Leader Number One, Pa Michael AthokhamienImoudu, led thousands of workers and the unemployed against the injustices of both colonial and post-independent governments of our country.

So while not ruling out the possibility, the necessity even of the masses of Nigerians to act decisively across the boundaries of region, ethnicity and religion that are often used to divide them, we end this series with a profile of the sorts of actions and interventions that might serve to advance the cause of the masses, even if they are undertaken by a few people, by a segment of the society, by a band of committed patriots, by a network of professional associations, and by a phalanx of civil society organizations and NGO’s with genuine credentials as honest and dedicated activists.This is in fact what the well-known phrase, “two or three people can change the world” means.

Think, compatriots: the war against corruption and the looters in the law courts will get a tremendous boost if, for instance, the few SANs who have spoken out eloquently against the collusion of influential members of the Bar and the Bench with the looters launch a series of well publicized public forums or “town hall” discussions with diverse segments of the Nigerian society: workers on the shop or factory floor; university students in their dining halls or soccer stadiums; congregations of faith communities of Moslems and Christians in their places of worship; market women and male and female petty traders in the capacious spaces of our volatile open-air markets; even primary school pupils in their playing grounds. In such widely publicized conversations, the obstacles that the looters and their allies are placing in the path of the battle against corruption will be clearly identified and discussed. Needless to say, there will be no need in such forums to mention or publicize the names of the prominent legal backers of the looters, for this will be credibly subjected to the charge of “trial by the mob”. Rather, the judicial blockages to the war against corruption will be identified and x-rayed as first and foremost a process which is manipulated by individuals. Destroy or cripple the process and you incapacitate the individuals who manipulate the process. Apart from taking the battle in the law courts directly to the people, these forums will serve as immensely useful teachable exercises that will give the masses of our peoples a sophisticated understanding of how the process now works against their interests but can and should be made to work in the interest of all.

Think again, compatriots: beyond the specific and currently very pressing battle against corruption in the law courts, almost all areas of our completely run down, dysfunctional and hugely unjust economic and political affairs can in the same manner bedirectly taken by a few people and organizations, acting alone or in collaboration with others, to the people across the length and breadth of the country. I give just a few examples of some of the most crucial crises of accountability, waste, injustice and insecurity in our country: the jumbo salaries, allowances and perquisites of our lawmakers and high public officeholders; the yawning gap between what is spent on maintaining the bloated bureaucracies of our federal, state and local governments and what remains for expenditure on capital projects to expand opportunities for gainful employment, especially for our youths; the terrible state of our physical infrastructures, especially the roads, highways, power generation and supply, public hospitals, clinics and dispensaries; the banking system and the terribly skewed nature of credits and loans to the rich and the powerful as compared with the poor and the powerfulness in their millions.

As is well known, in one way or another, in “peoples’ parliaments” on radio and in “molues”, “danfos”, “maruwas” and “tuke-tukes”, Nigerians of all classes talk endlessly about these crises. The point being made here is that it is one thing to talk forever and despairingly about these crises, it is another thing entirely to launch public forums about them that lay bare to the people how they are manipulated by our political elites, and how it is in everybody’s interest to find ways to end the crises. Indeed, it is of supreme importance to emphasize thatcritical understanding of how our crises can be resolved should become common knowledge to the masses. Armed with such understanding, we write endlessly on these issues in our columns; it is time to take such understanding directly to the people.

I end with only a partial list of cultural and pedagogical instruments that can be mobilized to make these radical public forums very lively and even entertaining to the masses of our peoples: musical performances by iconic figures as a backdrop for, say, a forum for stopping the “ilabe” of the lawmakers; drama sketches to augment forums on the judicial hideouts of the looters; specially commissioned short cinematic docu-dramas on why Nigeria has never exceeded 5000 megawatts of electrical power production in a country of about 180 million; traditional musicians, dancers and acrobats performing in open air markets as both prelude and closing frame for a public forum on how a country as rich in wealth and resources as Nigeria is filled with such unbelievable levels of poverty, suffering and hardship. This all amounts to a peaceful “revolutionary” process; whoever prevents peaceful means of attaining social justice makes the violent, traumatic alternatives that much more probable, alas.

Biodun Jeyifo                                                                                                         bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

We ended last week’s piece in this series with the question as to where the change that most Nigerians at home and abroad are yearning for at the present time will come from if it does not come from the top, from the leaders of the new ruling party, the APC. In resuming the discussion this week with that same question, let me once again admit that that I do recognize that to the APC and many of its allies and supporters at home and abroad, this question may seem premature and unfair, given the fact that Buhari and his administration are yet to clock one year in office. Let me further admit that it has not escaped my reflections on this matter that the enemies of change and progress, especially as they are concentrated in the defeated ruling party, the PDP, might seize on my question for their own utterly recalcitrant purpose of blocking any change for the better that might come from the APC and its leaders.

With regard to this particular worry, I have a redoubtable response: my dedication to the cause of justice, dignity and security of life for the masses of Nigerians in their tens of millions are so clear that nothing I have ever written, nothing that I will ever write in this column will be found even remotely helpful to the PDP, regardless of how desperate and opportunistic the defeated ruling party is in setting itself against change and progress in our country. Indeed, this is the crucial axis of my reflections in this series and it can be stated in a very succinct question: regardless of who their rulers are, what can and should the masses do for themselves in order to bring about change for the better in the current very bleak, very dire conditions that persist even after the political demise of the PDP? Here is another way of putting this same question: how can the masses seize control of their collective destiny in a period when it seems more and more apparent that the end of their hardship and suffering is nowhere in sight?

There is an easy, routine and even somewhat predictable answerto this question and it goes thus: if the masses want change, if they want to see deep and meaningful improvements in their political, social and economic conditions, they must act powerfully and decisively as agents of change; they must not leave it to their rulers to fight for change on their behalf. As a corollary to this dictum, there is also the routine idea that to act as agents of change and progress for themselves and their country, the masses must protest, they must march, they must unceasingly hold demonstrations and rallies, each and all of which will have the effect of indicating to the rulers and the whole world that the people are determined to have change and progress, are determined to take matters into their own hands and are not content to let the rulers act for them, no matter how sincere and determined the rulers may seem. Well, this sounds all too true; moreover, it sounds “revolutionary” and seems very appropriate to present circumstances in post-PDP Nigeria.

But there is aproblem in routinely or mechanistically invoking this unquestionable dictum that the only way that the masses can really and truly assure change for the better in their circumstances is to seize their destiny in their own hands. What is this problem? It is this: the masses do not always step forward to take control of their own destiny; they do not always intervenewhen conditions seem ripe for them to surge forth and seize the day, politically speaking. Moreover, when the masses are complacent when all indications seem favorable for them to act decisively in their collective self-interest, there often arises the tendency of progressive members of the elite to make the grave mistake of blaming the masses for being so submerged in their economic impoverishment and political marginalization that they are content to leave life and death matters of their survival in the hands of their rulers. Insidiously, this often leads, consciously or unconsciously, to blaming the masses for their oppression.Here the dire foreboding in the famous title and lyrics of the late Fela Kuti’s hit song, “Shuffering and Shmiling”come to mind: those that suffer and smile through the terrible conditions of their looted lives are not yet ready for their liberation, for their “morning yet on creation day”, to make an allusion to one of the late Chinua Achebe’s most memorable metaphors for a coming day of deliverance for the oppressed peoples of this world.

I bear witness to the fact that in the last five to six weeks in this column as I have unceasingly called for the masses of our peoples across the length and breadth of the country to show concretely and decisively that they are watching what is going on in the law courts in Buhari’s war against the looters, this thought has been vigorously present in my mind. In other words, as I have pondered the fact that no mass demonstrations, no citizens’ protests, no rallies of concerned professionals and individuals have takenplace to let the looters and their judicial backers know that the country and the masses are solidly behind Buhari in this war, I have had to tell myself again and again that I should not for one second think or feel that the masses deserve whatever they get from their inaction, their seeming reliance on Buhari to do all thatneeds to be doneto recover the identified loot in all its mind-boggling vastness and to bring the looters to much deserved punitive and corrective justice.Here I must make a confession about a thought that has greatly troubled me. This is nothing other than the suspicion that if I have been able to refrain from blaming the masses for not taking any concrete and decisive actions to lend support to Buhari’s war on corruption, it is perhaps only because I have lived long enough to have known my country and its teeming masses at other times when mass protests, rallies and demonstrations were rife and no ruler was treated like a Messiah the way Muhammadu Buhari is regarded today in his war against corruption and the looters. [For the records, let it be noted here that in his first coming as a military dictator, Buhari was far, far from being robed in the overflowing messianic garb in which the Nigerian public has clothed him in his current war against the looters]

The foregoing observations and reflections lead to two probabilities for a reinvention of mass movements and actions coming from below to spark the reform-minded projects and policies of rulers in a country like ours in which radical protest movements seem like shades of a barely recoverable legacy from the past. In the first probable scenario, those who have lived long enough to remember and cherish periods and instances when the Nigerian masses took their destiny into their own hands may seek to reinvigorate the slumberous present with exemplary models of self-mobilization and agitation from the past. I am revealing neither a hidden secret nor a closely guarded conspiracy when I assert here that many individuals and organizations of the Nigerian Left are at the present moment engaged in a profound act of soul-searching that involves, as a crucial part of its agenda, the recreation of the feisty but peaceful protest movements of the past. In the second scenario, the probability lies in the completely unprecedented or unheralded creation of spontaneous acts by individuals and groups among the younger generation that come to the realization that they have had enough and that whatever genuine and meaningful change and progress will come depend on their own determined, purposive actions.The capacity of or for human self-renewal, individual and collective, is infinite and it can be found in all the spheres and levels of life. Those who have never seen or even read of mass demonstrations, protests and rallies may one day wake up and decide that they have had enough of looted, wasted lives – and take to the streets, the courts, the chambers of the National Assembly, the fortress of the Presidency in Aso Rock.

It is far from my intention in these reflections to be romantic about traditions of radical mass movements and protests. In other words – and to be quite honest about my intentions in this series – though I do have a modicum of nostalgia about the period of my young adulthood that was deeply steeped in radical mass movements and activities, ultimately what concerns me most is what is to be done now as we confront a period in which all the signs are there for a radical reordering of priorities in our society but the leaders of the new ruling party seem wedded to a not-so-distant past of waste, squandermania and confusion.And so it is to the challenge of calmly and rationally building civic-minded activities and projects that can respond effectively to the great yearning for change and progress among our peoples at the present time that I will direct myself in the concluding piece in the series next week. Though I will be using the case of Buhari’s war against the looters in the courts as a sort of focal point in my closing reflections, as we shall see what happens or, conversely, does not happen in that war has much to tell us about what to expect and what to do in other areas of our collective existence as a developing and endlessly misruled nation.

Biodun Jeyifo                                                                                                         bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu