Last week, a major political event passed without Nigeria and the Yoruba political society feeling what ought to have been its tremendous impact. It was the thirtieth anniversary of the passing to glory of the late Ikenne sage, statesman, philosopher, economic genius and political visionary, Obafemi Awolowo. Unarguably the greatest Yoruba son of the last century, Awo was also without doubt one of Africa’s most intellectually talented political figures of the post-colonial era.
The Ikenne remembrance was attended by family members and a band of fanatical devotees which included surviving disciples of the late political titan particularly the Afenifere grandees, many well wishers, stargazers and political wannabes. But it was an occasion shorn of the pomp and pageantry normally associated with political power in Nigeria.
Although it can be argued that the Awo brand remains the supreme political talisman in the Yoruba political world, it must now be obvious that a brand does not remain the same forever in terms of power and potency. It must undergo qualitative changes in the volatile and combustible world of politics, even as it must test its strengths against emergent brands, sometimes in an oedipal struggle between fathers and children.
Three principal reasons can be advanced for the muted remembrance of the late titan. First, as Awo retreats into remote legend with the tribe of those who have come into actual contact with him dwindling fast, it is the potency of his ideas and vision of Nigeria as a prosperous and egalitarian nation that matter most. Second is the gross politicization of the brand which has seen it worsted in the struggle for political power with more vibrant and more politically alert emergent brands. In the brutal world of Nigerian politics, loss of power often comes with loss of prestige and principality.
Thirdly and finally, the Awo commemoration was quiet because of critical developments in the nation. For those who can see, it is obvious that a dark cloud has descended on the Nigerian political firmament. It is full of portents and sinister foreboding. For those who can read political horoscopes of impending disaster, this one is palpable in its astral malignancy. Like a band of merry somnambulists, Nigerians are sleepwalking to a major political catastrophe with eyes wide opened.
First is the harsh reality of presidential ailment which in an abiding climate of kleptocrats and political cut-pockets has put a lid on purposeful governance and productive politics. This has in turn sparked off a nasty and barely disguised succession battle the like of which nobody has seen in this clime before. Compared to the Umaru Yar’Adua succession debacle, this one promises to be the mother of all political hostilities.
This obsession with politics as a zero-sum game played out in the mischievous attempts by some elements in the presidency to “coordinate” and coerce Acting President Yemi Osibajo out of full presidential power and responsibility through sheer semantic brinkmanship. The whole drama speaks to the quandary of an idle and unproductive political elite which does not believe in economic self-actualization but which sees access to power as a life and death struggle for personal enrichment.
The second development is actually more worrisome in terms of the scale and scope of its possibilities. This was the statement widely created to the Chief of Army Staff, General Tukur Buratai, that some elements in the civil and political societies were already approaching military brass hats with the possibility of calling out the troops for a military intervention. In a curious but instructive development, the British High Commission in Nigeria also weighed in frowning at the thought not to talk of the possibility of military intervention at this stage in Nigeria’s political development.
The dour, taciturn Buratai is not known as an officer with an ambition beyond his professional purview. He enjoys widespread reputation as a courageous commander on the battlefield and off the battlefield as a serious, apolitical professional soldier. But his sudden outburst against civilian interlopers needs to be subjected to more stringent scrutiny and rigorous evaluation to establish its veracity. This is not the time to fly a kite or to throw up a red herring as a smokescreen in order to foster something dark and sinister on the nation.
As a military phenomenon for disorganizing and reorganizing state power, coups have become globally passé, the relic of an authoritarian past in which autocratic tyrannies rule the roost. The last military coup in Nigeria took place twenty four years ago when General Abacha sacked the Shonekan travesty and installed himself as the maximum ruler of the nation. Subsequently, the close involvement of the Nigerian military institution in the political ruination of the country has cost the Army its national prestige and respectability.
Twenty four years after, Nigeria is still grappling with the dire consequences of the annulment of the June 12 1993 Presidential election and the cost to national unity and cohesion. Despite the advent of the Fourth Republic, it is clear that all is still not well with the nation. The National Question has certainly taken a turn for the worse and rather than binding national wounds elections have actually exacerbated them and opened up national fault lines.
Given the self-demystification of the military class, the implosion of its messianic conceits and the intellectual interrogation of its constant deployment as a power proxy by a dominant section of the Nigerian ruling class, it is strange that anybody would still be thinking of using military advantage to influence the outcome of political struggle as it has been done in the past.
But nothing can stop the politically desperate and it is impossible to legislate against coups. In Third World countries and societies transiting to full democracies, nothing will stop a coup whose time has come or a coup that is an own goal against the run of play. Consequently and given the parlous state of the country, those who may be pushing for a coup may be pushing for the last putsch in Nigeria.
Given the fractious state of ethnic relations and goodwill even among Nigeria’s major nationalities despite a nominal alliance between two of them, any coup day announcement irrespective of origin or bequest is likely to trigger an exit clause among the other nationalities leading to a precipitate disintegration of the nation. Nobody should quibble and equivocate about this.
In this regard, a nation is like a human organism. Once its grievous wounds are left unattended to over a period of time, it will die a natural death. This is why the greatest nations on earth are constantly tinkering with their constitution, working towards what the Americans memorably call a more perfect union. This is why this ceaseless striving towards perfection often involves tinkering with the political alchemy of the nation itself in a way that throws up a new type of leadership such as it happened in France recently to the echoes of a glorious national catharsis.
As it is at the moment, Nigeria reminds one of a badly wounded elephant cut to pieces but still shambling and lumbering towards an inglorious finale as it emits a fearsome rumble. The Nigerian political elite have neglected to bind the wounds of the nation or dress its suppurating gashes. Now it has gone fearfully septic and everybody is waiting for the end.
One man who would have viewed developments with a dark frown was the late titan from Ikenne. Awolowo understood that a nation is a permanent project to be kept in a state of constant repairs. More than any other politician of his age, Awo wrote copiously about how to improve the political architecture of the Nigerian conglomerate and how to return the nation to the path of genuine federalism. He was shunned and scorned.
But as he ponders the state of the nation from beyond, what would have puzzled Awo the more is the fact that we are back to fifty years earlier and to an event in which Awolowo himself played a significant national role as the leader of the Yoruba and as a broker and binder. In May 1977, the nation had its back to the wall and had to choose between forcible restructuring or forcible break up as insisted upon by the then Colonel Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. Awo swung it and his people in favour of a united Nigeria.
Fifty years after and thirty years after his translation to higher glory, Awo must be wondering whether it was all worth the epic sacrifice in the light of subsequent events, particularly the rigged elections of 1979 and 1983 which terminated his own political career, the annulment of the 1993 presidential election, the death of Abiola in prison, the imposition of Obasanjo, the wastage of Bola Ige and many other Yoruba icons, and the current political melodrama involving none other than his own grandson-in law.
But it must also be understood that for Awo, it was a hard and bitter choice, between the devil and the deep blue sea and between two sets of political predators. If Awo viewed the northern predators with disdain mixed with wary apprehension, he was even more scornful in his distaste and disapproval of the hegemonic pretensions of the eastern leaders who appeared more interested in subjugation than cooperation and cohabitation in a truly federalized nation.
Fifty years after, the nation is back to square one and exactly the same spot with the loudest clamour for secession once again coming from the east, with the north exercising executive power and with the west acting as strategic arbiter in a political duel onto death. Perhaps on further reading and reflection, Awo could have come to the conclusion that it is not worth anybody’s while to keep a country, however rich and promising, together in a condition of modern political slavery and permanent economic servitude.
People make history but not under the conditions and circumstances of their making. Given their own royalist antecedents, the Yoruba tend to view the feudal time-warp in the north with far more sympathy and understanding than their turbulent compatriots to the east. Yet their progressive politics and belief that history cannot be arrested makes them natural allies of their eastern co-nationals.
In the last fifty years, the cost of this in-between and go-between political sensibility of the Yoruba people have been particularly prohibitive turning them and many of their illustrious scions to targets of hostility and canon fodders of recent Nigerian history. This cannot continue. A nation cannot exist on a foundation of political injustice and economic tyranny without something giving.
The time has come once again for western Nigeria to play a decisive role in the destiny of the nation. Unfortunately for the people, unlike the time of Awo when one single exceptional individual had a pan-Yoruba mandate and the mantle of authority and legitimacy, there is no such thing at the moment. At the moment, the Yoruba political world is marked by rancor and infighting.
But if a political consensus appears to be crystallizing in the horizon, it is that the Yoruba, no matter the alliance at the centre, will no longer allow themselves or their most illustrious children to be used as sacrificial lambs for the perpetuation of a depressing racket like Nigeria. Snooper is old enough in this game to know that once the Yoruba people reach a consensus, their leaders must find a way to align themselves with the dominant mood of an ancient nation. “ Since I am their leader, I must follow them”, Winston Churchill famously rued. Interesting and dangerous times are here again.
