ANNIVERSARY ESSAY- Nigeria: Yesterday, today and tomorrow

By Joseph Edgar….

Today, October 1, Nigeria will go through the usual ritual of an Independence Day ceremony. The President will come out and in his usual monosyllabic appeal deliver a scripted speech that will tell us why we should remain as one entity and cap it up with a listing of his achievements and that of his administration with an eye towards 2019. The speech will finally, inevitably, end with his undiluted resolve to fight corruption to the end.

But the wounds that have continued to fester and stifle our cohesive nationhood
will remain and countinue to deepen the fault lines that have made us as a people remain totally apart along ethno –reigious lines. Never have the cries for a separation and outright balkanization of the country been more strident than today especially with the antics of the Nnamdi Kanu-led IPOB. Today, all groupings within the nation are crying for marginalization and seeking a separation or, for the moderates, a restructure of the polity to achieve, amongst others, a devolution of powers.

We did not get here overnight. All sort of theories and explanations have been attempted to explain the growing pain and alienation of the people. We have been told of how the divide and rule tactics of the colonials created deep seated distrust amongst us leading to the civil war in which over 6 million lives were lost and a series of military interventions which further eroded the socio-political fabric of society, and leading to an imbalance of power essentially amongst the elites but sold to the argely unlettered population as an imbalance amongst the ethnic colouration that make up the structure known today as Nigeria.

Read also: The Jaundiced Idea of ‘Copsocracy’ and the Hallucination of Treasury Looters

This false ethnic explanation of the structural imbalance in the system has been sold very effectivey that today the main crux of the matter which is that of poor leadership and inherent tunnel vision outlook in leadership has been pushed so far into the back burner that we tend to forget the fact that the effects of these poor leadership is spread all over the corners of the nation without any particular ethnic group reserving a monopoly of its consequences.

So for the people , the poor state of infrastructure that constitutes the South eastern part of the country, for example, can only be because of the alleged plan of the Hausa-Fulani cabal’s official policy of marginalizing the Igbos for whatever reason, forgetting that the Northern region that this cabal traces its origin also has a worse infrastructural debacle.

The question now is, how did we get to this level of so much mistrust especially on the back of the globally acclaimed ‘’no victor no vanguished’’ declaration by General Gowon immediately after the civil war.

Nigeria unexpectedly after the civil war commenced a massive rehabilitation and reconstruction project which was empowered by the oil boom that perfectly came in at the period. This rehabilitation was not only in physical reconstruction but also through a massive social incision which saw an Igbo naval officer emerge as the governor of the most important state of the federation-Lagos. A deliberate policy of reunion which saw the Army take back Igbo officers who fought in the civil war was initiated, though with its own problems which saw general complaints as to the loss of military rank, abandoned property, especially in the Rivers axis.

However, as everything Nigerian, this policy effectiveness lost out to a great illiterate mythical machine which spewed out folktales that effectively took the strength of facts and was passed down from generation to generation to the point that it has now manifested into full blown distrust of each other. Stories abound of how stock fish and used clothes were banned by the Awolowo-led Finance Ministry simply to punish Igbos for their role in the civil war. The fact that these decisions could have had other more serious raison détre was lost on a largely illiterate population and the government itself, being totally detached and not understanding the importance of the gutter press turned the blind eye and failed to counter this thereby leading to what we are today battling.

At the beginning, we had three larger than life leaders and the obvious fact was that amongst the three of them, ironically Nnamdi Azikiwe of South eastern origin was the only one who had a semblance of nationalistic outlook. The other two were nothing but regional jingoists and these coloured their policies and political outlook. You could see this in their reaction towards policies that would affect the nation, for instance, the reaction of the Northern delegtes in the declaration of the 1956 self rule.

But then again, one can totally ignore them because at that point we practised an almost pure form of regionlisaton and federalism which empowered the regions and threw up a weak centre. It is this arrangemet more than fifty years after that some watchers are today crying for.

The politics of that era continues to bedevil today’s politics, especially with the confusion that the military incursion into politics brought upon on a nation with fierce and separate nationalities, forcing a passable federal system which allowed pseudo workable regional based system of government.

The military role in our nation more than damaged the socio-political fabric of a fragile political contraption. It forced on us policies that were aberations and unnatural which furher deepended the distrust especially as the full beneficiaries of the military incursion into politics seemed to be from one part of the country. So appointments, policies and all sorts were not totally thought out before being forced down our throats.

A light hearted example is the citing of the Delta State captal in Asaba allegedly because of the possible influence of the then first lady who happened to come from that part of the state. The fact that Asaba was not the natural choice was lost on the military demagogues and this exacerbated the continued distrust as Nigerians were now treated as a conquered people. But the earlier mentioned gutter press interpreted this as another example of the Hausa/Fulani hegemonic intents rather than a myopic decision taken by a dictator who was then our leader.

Therefore, from the fight for self rule till date, we have been faced with a failed generation of leaders. Apart from the bright eyed young men who fought for our independence, thankfully through the very peaceful means of dialogue and negotiation, we have been dogged by a series of some of the worst level of leadership that any people can wish for. From the ill-advised first military coup which threw up the hapless Ironsi junta and immediately accelerated us towards a deadly civil war, through the various military incursions down to a lost terrible civilian joke that was the Shagari Presidency, we have been saddled with a generation of poor-visioned and ill-motivated leadership.

Let me dedicate a paragraph to the IBB years of the locust. This was eight years of continuos tyranny perpetuated by one man’s rudderless outlook at nation building. Everything was coalesced towards his perpetration in power leading to an almost permanent damage to national psyche. All that we are facing today could be traced back to that era and the events and issues, post-independence, can also be funneled towards those eight years. In short the IBB years can be seen as the nexus and core of all that is wrong with our federation. On his feet, I will drop the cause of our national malaise. Our yesterday, today and tomorrow were totally incapacitated in those years.

Our future lies with a new breed of leadership. A leadership that would change the course of national discuss away from the jaundiced ethnic-based conversations towards a much more acceptable debate on economic and socio political emancipation along economic crucibles aimed at the total emancipation of peoples. Only the next generation can deliver these and we are beginning to see these in other areas of our national life, especially inter-ethnic marriages, and the professionalism in some large economic organizations where merit, and not where you come from, is the considering factor. With the continuous natural decimaton of what Soyinka has called the wasted generation, we will begin to find our Eldorado and the true journey towards an all inclusive statehood will commence.

As I end this treatise, I shut my eyes even as I hope that I will wakeup to a season that would usher in a new spirit of true national unity. Only a new way of thinking and an elaborate deliberate and gradual infusion of next generation leadership will achieve this. God save Nigeria.

 

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