On the crisis of modernity in modern Nigeria
Whenever Nigerians think they can sidestep or ignore the crisis of modernity which has engulfed all aspects of their national life, it hits them from a totally different direction. Like all “modern” countries run along the dictates of feudal and neo-feudal order, Nigeria is embroiled in permanent conflict as the dictates of genuine modernity run headlong into the imperative of sustaining an ancient worldview based on a narrow sense of privilege and entitlement whether in politics, economy or bureaucracy as the case appears at the moment.
Nigeria has become an abracadabra wrapped inside an arabara. In Yoruba lingo, an arabara appropriates as multi-sectorial mystery. The more you look, the less you see; the more you hear, the less you know; the more you think, the less unthinking it all appears. In the night, all cats are black. Stuff happen here all the time, as the Americans will put it.
The question now is: Who will rid Nigeria of this permanent fog, this ethical eclipse, this persistent darkness? Let us say with St Paul again that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
And so, fellow compatriots, thirty years after Admiral Augustus Akabue Aikhomu made semantic history with the infamous distinction between misapplication of state funds and their misappropriation in a graft case involving a certain Colonel Maina, another Mr Maina has appeared from the slimy shadows to put the government nose out of joints.
This time, it is a far more humongous case of stark embezzlement of pensioners’ money running into billions. Abdulrasheed Maina, a fellow on the wanted list of Interpol criminals, was not only furtively brought back to the country to continue his good work, he was given double promotion and alleged state security protection to boot.
If this allegation is true, it is an instance of state sadism and cruelty to the Nigerian people on a scale that has not been seen anywhere in the world. Please recall that in the intervening period between the two Mainas, former President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan also entered the semantic hall of infamy with his declaration that stealing is not corruption. Several years after, local divers are still searching for the Black Box of Jonathan’s transformation agenda.
History continues to surprise with its chilling asymmetry. Recall that Admiral Aikhomu was part and parcel of the Buhari military administration having served as the Chief of Naval Staff. After Commodore Ukiwe’s ouster, he was promoted a full admiral, immediately retired and then elevated to the Vice-presidency of the Babangida administration. Ebitu Oko Ukiwe was removed after insisting that the military council was not consulted before the nation was dragged to the OIC. The proud and stern fellow from Ohafia was offered a ministerial appointment which he summarily rejected.
In a famously brilliant comparison of the two Bonaparte, Karl Marx noted that history repeats itself, first as a tragedy and secondly as a farce. The true import of Karl Marx statement is often obscured by its epigrammatic wit. The French Revolution concluded with Napoleon Bonaparte crowning himself emperor. It was a tragedy for the first populist revolution in modern history.
Several decades later, Luis Bonaparte, Napoleon’s nephew, having genuinely won presidential election, could not sustain himself in office without recourse to a military coup. The original tragedy swiftly mutated into a bloody farce as the second Bonaparte, famously dismissed in a feat of sadistic brilliance by Victor Hugo as “Napoleon le petit”, contrived to turn himself into the emperor of France.
The real import of Marx’s seminal observation is that this was how Napoleon Bonaparte himself would have appeared had he chosen to come back at that particularly turbulent period in French history: a grim and gross caricature of his old self. You cannot step into the same river twice. Napoleon would have appeared a sanctimonious sham, a regressive travesty of his former self. This observation has a peculiarly poignant and cruel resonance for General Muhammadu Buhari in his second coming, particularly as the anti-corruption mantra appears to collapse under the sheer heft of its own internal contradictions.
How then do we prevent this politically challenged and stubbornly insular general from ending up as a grim caricature of his former self? The usual explanation of military depredations is that the army is a product of a colonial army of occupation with predation burnt into its genes and psychology. As a psychological revenge over the expired, an army cannot but loot.
Yet it is now obvious that we have replaced an army of occupation with politicians of occupation who are no less predatory and nation-ravaging in their gluttonous and insatiable appetite for filthy lucre. The politics of occupation is far more dangerous than an army of occupation in its nation-disabling ethics and disdain for the ethos of nation-growing.
Civilian burglary of the exchequer is far worse than primitive plunder because it tends to become institutionalised and entrenched as time goes on. This is the pool of sharks in which General Buhari has found himself, and he has introduced his own sharks for self-protection. Sharks are fighting sharks and the ocean is foaming with blood.
The Maina saga again speaks to a foundational crisis of nation-growing. It is now obvious that after the colonial masters left the old bureaucracy they were trying to nurture based on the western canons of impersonal rigour and rationality quietly relapsed to the old African template of anti-modern permissiveness with its unwritten rules and oral shindigs which allow laws to be violated at will or its sacred tradition to be circumvented with impunity.
At its most extreme manifestation, modern western bureaucracy celebrates its abstract impartiality and impersonal rigour. The law is no respecter of anybody. German literary tradition is replete with instances of how individuals were terrified of its retributive capacity and ability to pursue deviants and miscreants even to their private quarters. In Franz Kafka’s famous novella, a man goes to bed and wakes up only to discover that he has been transformed into a giant insect. Yet as the merciless clock ticks away, his only concern is how to get to work without infringing the law!
We do not make them like this in Nigeria and in most contemporary African countries. In most African countries and given the absence of a genuine nationalist class to grow an authentic nation, the state is viewed as an alien and hostile construct to be violated and desecrated at will. Given this post-colonial political psychosis, ascendant groups go to war to capture the state and national resources become booties of political hostilities to be freely misappropriated and shared among the victors.
And this is where the debate on restructuring comes in handy to haunt us again. However much we ignore its imperative demands, the less likely is it to ignore us. Events unfolding in Nigeria suggest that the national pathology which sees national resources as a booty to be misappropriated and shared even where meagre funds for pensioners are concerned can no longer be resolved at the national unitary level. It may be better at this point of our national development to allow power and responsibility to devolve back to federating zones and communities with the commensurate cultural resources to deal with the national thieving neurosis in their own unique and specific way.
Before our very eyes, the federal administration is crumbling under the weight of its own ethical and moral contradictions. The central administration must now see the wisdom in divesting itself of the humongous resources which have made under-development possible in Nigeria and the route to national perdition seemingly inescapable.
History has a way of pointing the way forward in a most contradictory and unsavoury manner. Who would have thought that it will take the second advent of a man generally regarded as incorruptible and morally upright to open the Pandora Box in a way that has not been possible before now? Whatever his personal failings, we may yet have General Buhari to thank for showing us that we have reached a political cul de sac.
It is useful to point out that before colonization, most pre-Nigerian communities had their own way of dealing with miscreants who appropriated public funds. They were summarily exiled or hounded out of existence. By 1904, the Egba City-state had solved the problems of corruption and embezzlement of public funds in its own unique way. In many Yoruba communities, hostile ditties abound about infamous scoundrels who made away with public funds almost eighty years after.
The other problem confronting Nigeria which confirms a lack of the ethos of bureaucratic modernity is the absence of a culture of resignation by public officials particularly when it becomes an overwhelming public and moral necessity. In many decent and civilized climes, a few of General Buhari’s men and women ought to have found the decency to throw in the towel without being pushed. That they are still there having been stripped of the last shred of credibility is a pointer to the collapse of personal integrity and public rectitude in Nigeria.
Finally, woe betide a nation without a culture of shame and moral responsibility. The kind of shameless betisse dredged up by the Maina family to exonerate and exculpate their scion is a pointer to how low a nation can sink in the Gomorrah of ethical infamy. The old Northern Native Authority which summarily jailed royal princes and recommended haughty but compromised emirs for deposition must be squirming in its final resting place.
