When President Olusegun Obasanjo said a few days ago that young people should wrest power from old politicians, he was creating a new myth about governance of the country
Some definitions or explanations of the two concepts undergirding today’s piece are in order. Myth according to Webster dictionary refers to “a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone; especially one embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of society, or an unfounded or false notion, or a person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence.” One thing that is common to all these definitions is that myth is a verbal construct that can stimulate and even sustain a people’s belief, regardless of whether the myth has any verifiable truth value.
Arodan is a Yoruba cultural practice that sets out to achieve nothing other than distraction of its target. It is a language game in which the sender of the message sets out to deceive the receiver. He/she tells the receiver one thing and tells his own collaborators another thing hidden from the message receiver. The receiver is thus made to move in circles while trusting the sender of the message who, of course, does not trust him but does not make this known to him or her. In other words, the sender deliberately creates a world of diminished truth or even falsehood which the receiver hardly apprehends in his or her own innocence. Arodan game is driven by the desire of the person in authority to hide something important from his or her messenger, such as when parents want to be left to have privacy from the children or when parents and guardians desire to limit probing questions from their children and wards.
When President Olusegun Obasanjo said a few days ago that young people should wrest power from old politicians, he was creating a new myth about governance of the country. Many credulous citizens, especially young ones have already started to discuss this myth on the social media. Some have quickly said on the social media “déjà vu.” When a few days later, the Sultan of Sokoto affirmed that Nigeria does not need any restructuring more than ensuring that the federal government develop all the dams in the country and pass them to states to run for the sake of farmers in the states, he too was creating a new myth about how to improve Nigeria’s chances to achieve sustainable unity and development. Believers in diversification of the economy away from fossil fuel as the magic wand to transform Nigeria into a modern nation-state may also have started jubilating about a dam in every state while born-to-criticise Nigerians may also be giggling and saying, “have we not heard this before?”
Nigeria from its infancy as a nation-state had never been short of facile theories and mantras. Shortly after independence in 1960, the ruling group believed that existence of an opposition party at the federal level was inimical to national progress and unity. The Action Group suffered blows from the two ruling parties then but official or formal opposition to the federal government was weakened substantially. Soon after, a new mantra came on the political and social landscape in the form of a unitary governance model that turned the four regions in 1966 into hundreds of provinces designed to be ruled from the federal capital. This did not last, as those who cried foul about the intention of Decree 34 to distort the country’s federal system gradually re-designed the country into 36 provinces (or states) and 774 local governments, created to live off proceeds of petroleum sale.
President Obasanjo’s theory about the imperative of young politicians taking over from old ones is not a new theory. During the military presidency of General Ibrahim Babangida, his advisers convinced him that the problem of the country had resulted from the dominance of old politicians on the political landscape. Consequently, the myth of New Breed politicians gained popularity across the country. Consequently, old politicians were schemed out of consideration for office while new entrants were supported to come in. It is those who came in as new breed that have struggled between 1992 and now to stay in power as lawmakers, governors, senators, etc., until they also seem to have come to their wits’ end to the point that Obasanjo sees nothing about them apart from redundancy. It is those individuals recruited into politics who have now aged into insignificance or irrelevance to Nigeria’s destiny to the point of making President Obasanjo to call on youths to wrest power from them.
Unlike myth in other contexts, myths generated by political leaders in Nigeria: military, civilian, and traditional hardly succeed in sustaining belief or consciousness in the audience for long. This lack of traction has induced frequent creation of mythical narratives in the country. The ruling groups are often quick to recognise when an existing myth has expired in terms of potency and do not waste time to create new ones. The good thing is that there is always a small group of citizens who refuse to be deceived by myth makers. It is mostly when there is an indication that some citizens are perceived by members of the ruling group to have lost confidence in claims attached to such myths that they too quickly go back to the drawing board to throw up new mantra.
Myths created in the past include the belief that Operation Feed the Nation created under General Obasanjo’s military administration was the panacea to Nigeria’s economic problems. As if Nigerians did not understand the words in Obasanjo’s policy, Alhaji Shehu Shagari came up with Green Revolution and Ethical Revolution. Both revolutions failed to happen and oil boom made green and ethical revolution unnecessary. In the days of humble Yar’Adua and Jonathan, Branding or re-branding Nigeria was the myth that took the attention of rulers and citizens until that also gradually disappeared.
But the two myths that may soon eclipse all others are Proliferation of dams and Disrobing of old (older?) politicians by young ones. These two myths are new. One sets out to facilitate farming by making water available for irrigation in all parts of the country. With dams in every state, it is expected that food security will keep everybody occupied and satisfied. Coming from the Sultan, a highly revered monarch, the call for replacing demand for restructuring with demand for dams to drive agriculture is likely to stimulate new theories about Nigeria’s unity and development. Similarly, President Obasanjo’s call for a new generation of political leaders is already having traction in the social media. But the youths are not likely to feel unduly elated by this new theory of governance. Many of them know the importance of getting good education and having good jobs to preparing for political careers. More generally, most citizens are aware of the game of mythmaking as a device to change the prevailing argument or discourse about governance. They are also aware of the use of arodan to distract citizens from focusing on how to make Nigeria reclaim its achievement orientation that has been destroyed over the years by exaggerated role of petroleum in post-independence re-design of governance in the country.
The time that the nation seems poised to search for solutions to its fundamental problem—running a country best suited for federalism as a unitary system— is not the time to proffer simplistic solutions. Driving politicians out for youths to take over the political space or developing dams for agriculture smack of over simplification of the issues at hand. Certainly,
Nigeria needs the wisdom of old and young politicians to make it better. It also needs more than dams to prepare it to make more contributions to the world, not just as supplier of raw materials but also as producers of technology, the way India, South Korea, Brazil, United Arab Emirate, and others are already doing.
