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| Options For Nigeria's Political Development by Ephraim Emenanjo Adinlofu
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OPTIONS FOR NIGERIA’S POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT What I am about to articulate and submit on Nigeria’s socio-political problems is not new to social commentators . The views have been articulated before now and mine is just an added impetus and a reinforcement of those obvious positions. They are still bandied about in the Nigerian press. However, before I proceed, I will like to prick the conscience of Nigerians who are docile about events in our country by quoting Franz Fanon ; "each generation" [of Nigerians] "must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission,’’ and either "fulfil it , or betray it". Any Nigerian, who is worthy of that name Nigerian, ought to be appalled of the political situation in the country. The presidential election’s judgement, which is riddled with contradictions, has further compounded my fears about this BIG-FOR-NOTHING country. What Buhari and Atiku got from that judgement was a questionable legal justice but not social justice, and it serves both of them right for going ahead to participate in that election. We all knew, except INEC and PDP beneficiaries, that there was no election, in a true sense of the word, conducted in 2007. It was an arrogant election, conducted by no less a person but a colourless professor. It has turned out to be the worse in the annals of Nigeria’s history. Again, we may have accepted it and agreed to move on AS USUAL but the dubious circuit show continues with no remedy in sight. Blinding corruption and mind blowing electoral fraud now go in tandem in Nigeria. They have become an inseparable Siamese twins.
I was a sceptic of the late chief Obafemi Awolowo’s thesis in the sixties that " Nigeria is a mere geographical expression." This was later aptly supported by General Gowon after the counter-coup of 1966 that toppled and killed General Ironsi . At the instigation of the northern oligarchy at the heat of the time, Gowon had said that "there is no basis for Nigeria’s unity." A statement he later swallowed having successfully ceased power from Ironsi. Of course, we all know that "ideas are products of circumstances and that such ideas depend on conditions prevalent at a particular time". The critical question is this: can these ideas, mooted in the 1960s, still stand the test of our present time? Today, Nigeria is a country without a soul; without a political and economic direction and with a shameless political class. The corruption level is though undulating but there is no doubt according to some writers, that the value has been rising since 1960. Most of our politicians now have black belt in corruption and corrupt practices. The leadership and, surprisingly enough, the follower ship are rooted in the practice. It is a big business in Nigeria with international collaboration. Like any other business, people invest in corruption to make profit and not losses, thus the calibre of people involved in big corruption scandals are the mighty political gladiators. You step on their toes, they simply crush you with effortless ease. For now, what remains of corruption in Nigeria is for it to be quoted and gambled on, in the stock market. It is very, very bad indeed and I keep on crying for my beloved country. This is why the fight against corruption in Nigeria, in whatever format, is a fight for justice and development. And permit me here to paraphrase Franz Fanon ones more from his epic book : THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH , that "Every" Nigerian "onlooker," to this heinous chain of events that is being perpetuated and sustained with impunity by a privileged thieving political elites, "is either a coward or a traitor." Or both, if I may add! In 1966, Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu and colleagues struck because of corruption and, the damaging electoral malpractice of 1964 in the western region { please read WHY WE STRUCK by Major Ademuyuga}; in 1975, General Murtala Muhammad and colleagues struck because of corruption in Gowon’s regime; in 1983, Abacha, Babangida, Idiagbon and Buhari struck to topple the inept and overly corrupt civilian government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari; in 1985, General Babangida and Abacha struck again to overthrow Buhari and pursue their own selfish agenda and, in 1990, Major Gideon Gwazar Orkar struck but failed, to topple one of the most evil, corrupt and monstrous regime that ever visited the country and that is, the duo of Babangida and Abacha. Put differently, since 1966, most of the regime’s change swan-songs were hinged on the quest to fight corruption. And today, 42 years after, these fights have not yielded sufficient and tangible result. The masses are still worst off. According to the EFCC figures, more than $400 billion have been looted out of the country between 1958 ,when crude oil was first found in Oloibiri in Rivers state, and 2007. This is an alarming figure! So, where lies the solution to this contagious social disease called corruption which has become a complete anathema to our development? Must Nigerians continue to live in pretence? What reasonable options are we left with to fighting corruption and resolving some of the contradictions inherent in our present social arrangement? Is Nigeria pregnant with conflict and sitting on a keg of gun powder? I have decided to join the fray by proposing the following five options. In as much as I have no powers to enforce any of the options, I will leave the public to play the good judge. Our deaf politicians can take note if they truly love the nation or at worse read and then play to the gallery. My propositions, which may sound hypothetical to some Nigerians, are as follows: OPTION 1: I propose that the country should return to its former regional
formation and that each region should be allowed to use its resources to
develop at its own pace. Each should contribute certain percentage of its
generated revenue to the federal purse. Each region should be run by a
Premier with a regional assembly of elected members and regional police.
The only slight modification here is that the states in each region will
remain and operate with their elected civilian governors and state OPTION 2: I propose Jerry Rawlings approach in Ghana. This approach is pregnant in time and space. It is an incubated historical possibility with differing ideological connotation. I remembered quite vividly that this approach was at a point in the Nigerian academia subjected to divergent theoretical interpretations. To understand this approach and praxis, I will like to posit these probabilities. What would have been the present state of Nigeria if Majors Nzeogwu and Gideon Orkar have had successful change of those corrupt governments? Would they have pursued a-people’s oriented economic policies having cleansed the Aegean stable of corruption or would they have returned the country to the status quo they had sought to overthrow? To these pertinent questions arose in my mindset two possible conjectures and they are: First, having both executed bloody coups, I boldly submit that they would have revolutionized the whole system by wiping off the corrupt leaders, make a clean sweep and then carefully hand over to a set of progressive minds. This was what happened in Ghana from 1979 under the able leadership of an Air Force officer, Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings and in Libya, under the continuing leadership of Colonel Muammar Gaddaffi. Today, no matter what negative arguments social commentators may like to put across about both regimes, Ghana and Libya are better off than most African countries. The foundation Rawlings laid, borne out of enormous human sacrifice, has now stood that country in good stead. And same goes for Libya. The intellectual and philosophical influence on Gaddaffi is found in his book entitled: THE GREEN BOOK. Now, if I may aver here, what theoretical and practical approach did Rawlings and Gaddaffi apply to their countries’ problems? Well, it is on record that both of them overthrew corrupt leaderships. Rawlings overthrew General Akuffo while Gaddaffi overthrew a king who thought he was ruling a kingdom. Second, they pursued a-peoples’ oriented economic policies. What they did was to simply PROBLEMATIZED the whole country, and not some selected aspects of the problems, and ruthlessly cleansed the WHOLE. They pursued "social justice" that will endear the people, ignoring bourgeois technicalities, legal booby-traps and unnecessary formalities inherent in seeking "legal justice". To problematize a social problem besieging a country is a revolutionary principle and a situational practice. This principle, where ever it is applied, is executed without pity. Another probable fallout of Majors Nzeogwu [1966] and Orkar’s [1990] coups would have been to fall back on the status quo that they had sought to change. In that case, they would have to ISOLATE the problems that necessitated their coups, solve the problems, that is, corruption and, electoral malpractices. They would conduct fresh elections to hand over to patriotic citizens and either retire or return to the barracks. This simplistic approach is called the PROBLEM-SOLVING paradigm. This is the bourgeois approach suited only for the advanced capitalist economies. Historical antecedents show that this approach does not and cannot work in third world countries. In his books THE PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED and EDUCATION FOR CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS, the late Brazilian professor, Paulo Freire, after a long research , had advocated that third world countries should use the holistic or problematization approach towards solving their socio-economic problems. Will a Rawlings or a Gaddaffi ever emerge in Nigeria? Your guess is as good as mine. History is not mathematics and Nigeria’s history is full of surprises. OPTION 3: The other alternative before Nigerians is the revolutionary approach. A revolution led by the oppressed and not the oppressors, can help sanitize the system. Having been betrayed by a useless political class, that is daily fighting over the spoils of public office, the people decide to take the bull by the horn. The totality of the people are involved. History is replete with examples. In 1917, in the former USSR, when hunger, misery and poverty became unbearable, the people summoned courage and marched on to the Czar’s palace. The soldiers and guards were ordered to shoot at the approaching crowd. They could not, because they were afraid of the surging crowd of hungry-looking people, instead the guards melted into the crowd and join the popular revolt of the masses. What happened to the Czar and the ruling monarch is now history. They are since dead in their graves. The people stood up, said enough is enough, took to streets and visited death to the opulent homes of the insensitive ruling feudal lords and their collaborators. This is a classical example of social justice. With the level of compound corruption, monumental electoral fraud and other inane inanities, it is shocking that Nigerians have refused to revolt collectively. What happened in the western region during the elections of 1964 has comparatively, paled into insignificance to what happened in the 2007 elections. The 2007 election was catastrophic and farcical. This can only happen in Nigeria. No wonder the late icon, Chief Tai Solarin, referred to Nigeria as "a big elephant with the head of a salamander." Again, the 12th June 1993 election which was and still is up to this day, the best election conducted in the horn of Africa, was annulled with impunity by our self proclaimed "evil genius" called Babangida and Nigerians just stood by and watched as if they had no choice. There was no revolt except some pockets of reaction. Why the apathy towards a popular culture? Why the feeling of inertia towards a popular upheaval? When will the people glory in their own power and drink from the water fountains of their own creation? I take solace in this option on the established scientific fact that "revolutions are historically conditioned". It will come when the concrete material conditions and suffering of the masses has reached its nadir.
OPTION 4: If we cannot go back to our regional parliamentary system; if our Rawlings and Gaddaffis have refused to emerge from the Armed Forces because of too much pepper soup in the barracks ala Alozie Ogugbuaja; if a revolution has refused to erupt out of the iniquities, evils, and sheer wickedness in the present amalgamated Nigeria, then there is the need for each agitating region to participate in creating a crisis situation in the country. This will destabilize the polity and make the political class uncomfortable and perhaps lead them into having a rethink on how to sincerely run a seemingly just country. Nigeria is a concrete social reality and a concrete social reality requires a concrete analysis. Poverty, hunger, misery, primitive accumulation and worse of all, corruption and persistent electoral fraud, are all concrete Nigerian realities. They are not mythical. They have to be confronted by us concretely-- workers, students, market women, Nigerians in Diaspora, peasant farmers, intellectuals of the oppressed and the rest of the downtrodden, otherwise we will be finished as a nation. The politicians have no mercy and have no modicum of conscience when it comes to looting and sequestrating public fund, why should the people spare them. The Niger-Delta struggle was borne out of internal contradictions generated in our dubious body polity. The movement started [?] off from where the Oodua Peoples Congress {OPC} have left off. It is my conjecture that the {OPC} should continue with its agitation and struggle towards a better deal for the children of the legendary Oduduwa. I also submit that The Movement For The Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra {MASSOB} should not relent in its struggle. I posit that {AREWA} in the Northern part of Nigeria should also continue with its agitation for a fair deal for the North. All these social forces have sincere aims and objectives and their attacks is on lord luggard’s shaky creation--Nigeria. Every ethnic group and tribe has a stake on corporate Nigeria. It is their fundamental right. There is therefore the need for these coalition of forces not to abandon their struggles until a true federalism is borne. That all representatives of these regional forces were present in the East, to mourn with Mr. Ralph Uwazurike {MASSOB} leader, over the death of his mum, shows that there is a unity of purpose. Based on these premises, I postulate that if the OPC, MASSOB, and AREWA and other fiery ethnic groupings like the middle belt movement {MDM} were to adopt the Niger-Delta method of armed struggle and a pincers-movement approach, the country would be grounded and we would reach the equilibrium point in good time. At that equilibrium point, all stake holders would be interested in genuine dialogue. Besides, sacrifices have to be made for Nigeria to move forward. OPTION 5: The best of all is to keep our fingers crossed and hope for a peaceful disintegration of the country to its former regional formation or to outright separate independent states. This might at worse be borne out of internal agitations, propaganda, conflicts, arm conflicts, insurrections, riots, students and market women demonstrations etc {see OPTION 4 above} or, at best be borne through socially engineered peaceful processes. Again, history is replete with such examples. The old Eastern European bloc and the former communist Soviet Union have all disintegrated into smaller independent countries. The former member countries of the Soviet Union had broken away, regained their independence and are presently growing at their own pace. There were no wars or trumpet of wars. Most got it on a platter of gold. Among them are namely; Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Liechtenstein. In the former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, have emerged independent countries like Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia, Kosovo and the Czech republic. As strong as the Soviet Union was between 1950 and 1988, who would have thought that by 1990, the union will disintegrate and collapse like a pack of cards and peacefully too? Anyway, that is history. And history is not mathematics. As far as human nature is concerned, one cannot foist on a disunited people, an assumed consensual marriage of convenience that is devoid of any iota of love and respect. This is simply sowing the seed of discord. Recent research by Professor Mike Onwuejeogwu showed that Nigeria has, apart from the three major tribes, about 500 ethnic nationalities and not 250 as is often been bandied about by government officials. The three major tribes and 500 ethnic groups have different languages, dialects, cultures, traditions and MORES. However, if a union of convenience refuses to converge, the alternative is to call for a referendum and perhaps peacefully stay apart and grow apart. In Africa, this has become a ding dong affair. If it is not genocide in Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, it is ethnic and tribal cleansing in the Sudan and Kenya. Or a recurring religious riots in the northern part of Nigeria. The tell tale continues with no visible end in sight. The Nigeria’s case was aptly put across by Ogaga Ifowodo in his poem entitled: "God Punish Lord Lugard"! It is an interesting read.I rest my case. Those who have ears, let them hear.
By
Ephraim Emenanjo Adinlofu
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