(Some fundamental issues of restructuring)
April, the month of Easter and of earthly regeneration following the recession of the harmattan in Tropical Africa and the Arctic entombment of living humanity elsewhere else, is turning out to be a very cruel month indeed. Something very nasty is happening out there. Not since the events preceding the Second World War has the world seen such massive discombobulating. To be sure, a lot of this seismic unease is coming from an America that is threatening to unravel at the seams. At the moment, America resembles a giant reel that is unspooling in a dramatic and chaotic manner, spreading global fear and discomfiture.
Whenever the world’s leading nation is ill at ease, the rest of the globe must feel the pangs and the pains. The cosmic carnage in Gaza, the apocalyptic meltdown of Sudan with the RUF savages sacking and brutalizing even UN-ordained camps leading to a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic magnitude and the slow-motion disintegration of South Sudan, are all major indications of an America so wracked and consumed by its internal demons that it is incapable of lifting a finger for a world order inaugurated by its own visionary forebears. This is not to talk about the Trumpian tariff war which has sent the world into an economic tailspin.
In some quarters, it feels as if the world is coming to an end. But in reality, it is the world at the end of a particular historic epoch. No one is sure of what will replace the current global order. Global hegemonies, like a national hegemonic order, are not replaced or reconstituted overnight. While we are still at it and without a superintending master-nation, it is imperative for every nation, if it is not to disappear without trace in the tsunami, to reexamine its constitutive principles and fundamental raison d’etre with a view to visionary self-assertion in the coming collision of national altars. A livid China that many had thought was afraid of confrontation and direct collision with America has just told off the Yankee hegemons that five thousand years of continuous existence and civilization cannot be wished away just like that. The wily and inscrutable masters of oriental gobbledygook know just how many aces they hold up their sleeves and because of their cultural nous which they refused to surrender to Western imperialism, they are not about to give the game away.
As they say, when you do not have the handle of the sword, you cannot be asking about how your father came to grief. Economically and culturally, if not yet militarily, China appears to have the handle of the sword, and it is going to use it to hurt America where it matters most. For the first time in its history, its soaring and ever expanding middle class is about to surpass the American middle class which is far from being organic and cohesive. The Chinese middle class will be lining up solidly and massively behind a national institution and the idiosyncratic ideology that has delivered them from the clutches of poverty and biblical immiseration whereas the Trumpian ascendancy in America is a reflection of just how fractured and divided down the line the country has become.
Read Also: FULL LIST: Trump mulls shut down of US embassies in Africa
As a wounded America, economically and politically split to its foundation, trapped in the threnody of the Trumpian obsession of making America great again, turns on other nations to offload its angst and frustration, it is the politically brittle and economically fragile nations of sub-Saharan that will bear most of the brunt. Nigeria has already announced that the tariff war and collapsing oil prices are likely to affect its budget plans and projection. This is like carrying a box of matches to a person soaked in gasoline. Unresolved political tensions have already cost volatile and combustible African nations such as Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso considerable economic traction.
The American fiasco is a killer punch administered on an already disoriented opponent. First seek yee the political kingdom and every other thing will follow. We have warned on several occasions in this column that unless the seething multi-ethnic colonial conundrums of Tropical Africa get their political structure and internal configuration right, all economic reforms will come to naught. These things require unusual political will and the courage to dare and it cannot be done by piecemeal cherry picking but by holistic reconfiguration.
Surely and as the Arabian proverb has it, to flee your fate is to rush to find it. Nigeria represents a classic case of economic aspirations without political inspiration which is akin to dreaming in a vacuum or void. Despite the advent of federally inspired bureaucratic reforms, despite the outstanding performance of states such as Lagos, Ekiti, Enugu, Abia, Bornu and Oyo, the politically repressed will always return to haunt us and to impede our path to economic progress and self-sufficiency. This is why in recent weeks significant sections of the nation across the north-south divide have witnessed a resurgence of ethnic violence with several communities foaming in blood after what appeared like a brief remission. The killing plateau of Jos is back in the news with pogrom in Bokkos, Zikke, Kwali District of Bassa and other communities. So are the usual flashpoints of Benue, Adamawa, Zamfara, Bornu, the Abuja perimeter, southern Edo , Oyo, Sokoto, Niger State, Niger Delta and the murderous eastern corridor stretching from Ihube in old Okigwe Division through Isuochi and on to the remote and redoubtable Igbo heartland.
The sensitive issue should now be broached. Perceptive observers should have noticed a nexus between the dramatic resurgence of ethnic violence particularly in the north and middle belt and the escalation of political hostilities against the current administration given the fact that it is not bending hard and fast enough to the hegemonic will of the master-puppeteers of Nigeria politics. Some have vowed that the helmsman is going to be a one-term president (OTP) as a result of his perceived infractions. And we are not even at the proverbial mid-term benchmark. As a result of the dynamics of its ascendancy, the Tinubu administration has faced considerable bitterness and hostility in some quarters. This has made it to expend considerable creative energies responding to wounding and damaging criticism rather than advancing boldly in the theatre of economic and political reform. In some instances the administration has also played into the hands of its enemies by the wide latitude it has given its interpretation of corruption and some of its controversial preferment.
But in a supposedly civilized and modern democratic nation, must we resort to mindless slaughter of ourselves to advance a political cause or just to prove the point that we can destabilize the nation at will? With this murderous veto and voting as an ethnic census looming in the background, those who believe that wholesale restructuring with immediate effect is the answer and panacea to our political difficulties may be missing the point. You cannot restructure a nation without elite consensus. The American Federalist papers went through tomes of ruminations at the summit of human intellect just to get it right. To restructure a nation requires a restructuring mindset. Like democracy itself, resetting and reconfiguring a nation requires considerable national discipline and a pan-national buy-in. Let us confront ourselves with the stark truth. Unless it is by colonial or military veto, you cannot proceed to peaceful restructuring in a fractious multi-ethnic nation brimming with people with a countervailing mindset powered by hegemonic hubris. This should not be restricted to any particular region or people. Just as there is political and religious hubris in Nigeria, there is also economic and cultural hubris.
The history of restructuring in post-independence Nigeria tells a grim story full of apocalyptic portents. So far only once have civilians been able to tinker with the structure of the country. That was in the First Republic and the exercise was shot through with vendetta and political malice. In 1967, Gowon only managed to impose a twelve-state structure on a weary country disoriented by bloodletting and with civil war fast approaching. In an early February 1976 broadcast to announce a further restructuring of the nation into a nineteen-state arrangement, General Mohammed warned darkly that no jubilation or protest on account of new state creation would be tolerated. It was his last broadcast. Barely a week after he was assassinated in broad day light. The attempts during the Second Republic to restructure the country were so unwieldy and impracticable that they never left the bulky pockets of their progenitors before the military struck.
Two other significant attempts to scrutinize the structure of the nation by civilian regimes ended in ruinous consequences for the nation and political self-ruination for the main actors. In the case of General Olusegun Obasanjo (1999/2007), it was obvious that he was more interested in self-perpetuation in office rather than a reconfiguring of the country to enable it operate at maximum strength and efficiency. As soon as the innocuous clause of tenure extension which was cleverly hidden away in a mountain of proliferating sub-clauses was summarily expunged by an alert senate, the remaining over two hundred productive suggestions about improving the lot of the country were frantically pushed aside. The Owu-born warlord became so distressed and inconsolable that he was to spend the remaining part of his tenure perpetrating monumental heists against democracy and the nation in maniacal vengeance. As for Goodluck Jonathan, seized by opportunistic miscalculations, he dithered and dilly-dallied about the recommendations of his own inaugurated conference until he was overwhelmed by superior forces.
The Tinubu administration is in even more precarious circumstances. It is unfortunate that it is at this point when the nation requires a government backed by strong national endorsement that cracks and fissures are appearing everywhere. The ruling party has not been able to improve on its original ratings. Lacking in ideological solidity or political consanguinity, it is held together by a network of patronage and clientelism with its components parts acting with such independence that would have been unthinkable in a cohering and organic party. Betrayed internally, buffeted on all sides by unrelenting hostilities and preyed upon by economic woes, it is hard to see the Tinubu administration commit to a programme of wholesale restructuring of the nation except as a terminal joker. Yet as the nation bleeds profusely from its massive injuries and as international woes undermine Tinubu’s economic gamesmanship, there are many who have come to the conclusion that Nigeria’s legendary run of luck is about to face a most severe test.
