As a prelude to the “democratic” war of succession that will make or mar Nigeria, irrespective of the outcome of the ongoing National Conference, the old west is being gradually militarised. The entire region appears to have been placed on the political equivalent of a war footing. The siege is on. It is the kind of shock and awe military terror that will turn Stormin Norman Shwarzkopf to a whimpering old bugger.
A pincer movement is unfolding with the major strategic objective of paralysing the dominant political tendency in the region, or at the minimum render it hors de combat in the bid to capture power at the centre. You cannot be advancing when your stronghold has been set on fire. Militarily, it is known as a bridge too far.
With Musiliu Obanikoro, the newly appointed Minister of State for Defence, war-gaming from Lagos all the way to the Ilaje coastline, with Iyiola Omisore and Jelili Adesiyan sadistically probing the heart and plexus of the old region in Osun state, and with a column of reaction heading from Ondo to link up with joyous thugs and fifth columnists already in place in Ekiti-land, once again the Yoruba nation is being turned into a theatre of war and strife.
This time around, it promises to be the mother of all political wars. But it is the charge of the light and light-headed brigade, and once again, they shall not pass. After the rubble might have cleared, Nigeria will never be the same again. No politician or political group will ever be allowed to come to the western sphere again with the threat of war as the antidote to peace and progress. Even for a libertarian and seemingly carefree people, there is time for everything.
This is not an idle intellectual speculation, but a conclusion reached after a rigorous interrogation of the unfolding political process in the region. It is either the dawn of a new era or darkness forever. The reasons for this stark conclusion are threefold, and they are historical and sociological in nature. It is proper to delve into recent history first.
After the annihilation and political obliteration of the PDP from the region, the whole place has experienced a period of development and accelerated modernity. It is not a perfect state but the fruits are showing for all to see. Not even personal hatred for the individual actors involved or animus towards the chief motivator can remove the fact. From Benin to Ekiti, through Osun, Oyo, Ogun and unto Lagos, the old West is experiencing a developmental resurgence akin to a religious revival.
The people are grateful for the relative peace and stability that being relatively well-governed has brought unlike many other places in the country that have degenerated into hell-holes before our very eyes. You cannot give what you don’t have. At the federal level at least, the ruling party has shown itself to be ideologically bereft and politically bankrupt. As a party, the PDP is beyond soap and water.
You cannot confront light, however imperfect, with darkness however perfect. In order to make a dent in the evolving political consciousness of the sophisticated electorate of Western Nigeria, the PDP will have to come up with a superior paradigm of development and progress. It will have to come up with a visionary blueprint for the radical amelioration of the suffering and biblical misery which have plagued this land and turned Nigeria into the world capital of cannibal capitalism.
But after fifteen fruitless years in power, it is clear that the PDP lacks the intellectual cadre, the political discipline, the psychological stamina, the moral magnitude and imagination to come up with a transformative blueprint. As its body language reveals, it is obvious that it relies mainly on force and thuggery, when it is not fanning the ember of religion and ethnicity in a dangerously polarised polity like Nigeria. The kind of murderous and misbegotten individuals its primaries have thrown up in western Nigeria shows its contempt for the feeling and sensitivity of the Yoruba people.
The PDP is relying on old tricks where only new techniques will suffice. It will meet more than its match in the old West. You cannot fight a modern battle with ancient weapons, particularly a battle also joined at the level of an intellectual contestation for human consciousness and the greater good of the greater community. Unlike the old guard progressives who were sold on law and order, the hazards of the Hansard and other parliamentary canards, the new generation of progressives cut their teeth on the streets and in the trenches fighting against military despotism.
There is always a tide in human affairs. Anybody who witnessed the dogged ferocity, the relentless commotion with which Oshiomhole, Aregbesola and Fayemi and even the normally urbane and debonair Abiola Ajimobi fought to reclaim their stolen mandate will be living in a fools’ paradise to ever imagine that they will allow themselves to be flushed out of their respective gubernatorial mansions like terrified mice, more so when they have the might of the multitude behind them.
Anybody who mistake Oshiomhole’s gamey gambolling for complacency, Aregbesola’s steely sangfroid and diligent defiance for loss of concentration, or Kayode Fayemi’s donnish demureness for loss of power appetite will have themselves to blame when real political hostilities commence.
It is curious that despite all the information available to him on the disposition of the region, President Jonathan has allowed himself to be sold the impossible betise that all he needs to do is to spring some politically expired thugs on the region and the people will scatter. We hope the federal collaborators and their new recruits take note of this show of love and admiration.
The people of the west have never scattered before bullets. As their tormentors always find out to their peril, when they retreat it is usually to gather momentum for the next determined push against the bastion of reaction. In the history of modern Nigeria, the west has never sought to dominate anybody, but it will resist domination, whether internally or externally inspired.
All the west had tried to do is to extend its vision of modernity and life more abundant for everybody, irrespective of race, region and religion. In this seemingly quixotic venture, it has met impossible and impregnable impedimenta, not to talk of an iron road block, and it has paid terrifying price in the loss of many of its golden children.
But whenever these moderate ideals of human emancipation are brutally suppressed such as happened during the First Republic, the repressed always return with greater vigour and ferocity such as we witnessed in the Second Republic and the aborted Third Republic when an impossible coalition headed by M.K.O Abiola won a presidential election that was summarily annulled. In the Fourth Republic, the very same ideals have turned out to be the most potent threat to a clueless Federal Government.
We cannot try to hang the messenger while ignoring the message. There must be something about this progressive ideal of an emancipated community which must explain their durability and persistent eruptions. What Jonathan and his henchmen should do is to study this ideal of governance, interrogate it intensely and see whether there are no lessons to be learnt.
There is no harm in picking the brains of your political adversaries. As old Abe Lincoln famously demonstrated, there are immense political advantages accruing from converting political adversaries to principled collaborators. The Nigerian project, or whatever remains of it, is too important to be left at the mercy of small minds.
Having said all this, it is also time for our progressives to engage in intense soul-searching and deep introspection about the tortured trajectory of progressive politics in contemporary Nigeria and the kind of progressive ideals they want to bequeath to coming generations. There can be no successful externally induced plot without a successful internal conspiracy.
Yoruba modern history is steeped in internal treachery, betrayals and perfidy. It may be due to the libertarian nature of the people which abhors despotism and unwarranted domination. In post-colonial Nigeria, the cloak and dagger politics have accentuated rather than diminish. This may be due to the epic sweepstakes of a predatory economy. But the question the progressives need to ask themselves is why since independence and up till now, the people who have always given them the worst troubles and headaches are people who have at one time or the other been part of the progressive umbrella.
In the First Republic, the Action Group fractured irretrievable as a result of external plots and internal rebellion. In retrospect, it can be seen that the Action Group was a disaster waiting to happen, being an ersatz and unstable coalition of modernists, monarchists and outright rightwing reactionaries. But a firm lid could be placed on the simmering cauldron as long as there was a strong and charismatic leader like Obafemi Awolowo at the helm.
In the Second Republic, the party fissured as a result of the jostling and jockeying for position among Chief Awolowo’s closest aides and lieutenants. In retrospect, it can safely be said that it was ironically the military bell that saved the UPN from catastrophic implosion. Awo himself hinted at this in his last epistle to the faithful in which he made an allusion to a coming Hegelian synthesis.
Just before the Third Republic could be properly inaugurated, the entire party machinery seceded to the waiting military thus sealing Abiola’s fate. From that moment, the Republic died in vitro, as they say. Now in the Fourth Republic, we are witnessing a wearisomely familiar script with so many falcons deserting the falconer. Take a count of the following and find out where and how they originated: Omisore, Obanikoro, Dayo Adeyeye, the late Wahab Dosunmu, Gbenga Daniel and now the young and youthful Michael Opeyemi Bamidele.
The situation calls for a candid evaluation of the following: the mode of leadership recruitment to the progressive fold, the pattern of political preferment and the process of consensus building among the progressives. It is in human nature for those who have been given undue and premature preferment to develop outsize appetite for power and glory.
While those who are sworn to the progressive ideal as a lifelong commitment to fundamental principles could afford to be sidelined or treated with brutal disregard, it should now be obvious that the political wayfarers and those who have not reached the level where individual ego can be subordinated for communal good would have none of that. Bar a few sublime souls, the anarchic ego is an outgrowth of anarchic and inchoate human societies.
These are the historic demons the progressive leadership would have to grapple with as they seek to protect their political stronghold even while making a bold pitch for the centre. It is going to be a tough call, particularly given the cultural anxieties and markers of political incompatibilities the coalescing factions bring to the alliance. But it is not an impossible task. As for the light Brigade, perhaps it is time to retrieve their history books from roasted plantain hawkers.
