Reflections on Nigerian Nationhood-Part 2, By Abdulwarees Solanke

3. AMNESTY FOR OUR ENEMIES

It cannot be denied that there is anomie in our land. When a nation, more than 50 years of attaining nationhood, still thinks of national dissolution, rather than rebirth; when citizens see more of their differences rather than what unites them; when those who should proudly declare themselves as the future of the nation are already seeing themselves as a wasted generation; when yesterday’s leaders who should sit back in the comfort of their retirement to mentor new leaders still see themselves as the real players in the polity, then, it becomes difficult for us to have a new beginning or the fresh start out of our national malaise.

This unfortunate situation has resulted in some discomfiting development rightly manifesting as anomie: a condition of hopelessness, according to the Chambers 20th Century Dictionary, which is caused by breakdown of rules of conduct, and loss of belief and sense of purpose. The implication of this definition is that we have lost vision and direction in our nation. When there is a collective amnesia in the land, hope is lost and right purposes are defeated. The beauty of nationhood is obliterated while the evils of diversity are magnified. The recipe for national collapse are collated and highlighted for everybody to cook the nation’s downfall. In this anaemic state and collective amnesia, more enemies of the state are sired to set the stage for war of national dissolution. But this resort is really not profitable for any nation.

At a time China, a colossus, still romanticizes on the Chineseness of Taiwan, Hong Kong and even Singapore, a time South Korea dreams of the Korean reunification and when the history of Germany still plays out as a worthy example of unification, it is surely mad to advance the cause of Nigerian disintegration. Today, Europe celebrates its union, while the United States, a richly diverse continental shelf, is proud of its oneness, yet vastness. Indonesia offers a very good case study of nationhood and diversity. An archipelago comprising more than 300 islands with diversity of languages and culture colonized by the Dutch, Indonesia had found its national bearing ever before its independence with the resolution at a youth conference, declaring Indonesia as one indivisible and indissoluble nation with one national language, Bahasa Indosnesia, and not the language of the Dutch who colonized them.

The problem with Nigeria is not peculiar. What is peculiar to us is the lack of faith in ourselves. What is peculiar to us is our arrogance to one another. What is peculiar to us are our complexes, unfounded phobia and misdirected hatred towards ourselves. Nations are not built or reconstructed on phobia and complexes, but on shared values despite diversity, and common purpose despite differences.

It is the enemies of the nation who latch on differences and diversity of tribes, ethnicity, language and religion to play up centrifugal tendencies in the country. They sing the songs of war and speak the language of separation; they remind the citizens of the past odious wars of attrition. They are the funders and financiers of destruction of national assets, human and material, causing distraction from the pursuit of national development. Somehow, they may have some justifications from what they have suffered. But these are not sufficient to compromise the essence of unity and brotherhood of humanity. Nationhood is one of the paths to achieving the unity of mankind.

As a student of the Quran, this is why I am always enthralled by a particular verse which suggests that the essence of the diversity of mankind is not for unnecessary competition and despise, but just identity. The best of you is he who fears God most, that verse concludes. This verse is amplified by a prophetic saying that the Arabs have no superiority over the non-Arabs, nor do the rich over the poor. There is an illustration of this reality in the position of Bilal, an African of Abyssinian descent, being the preferred muadhin in the time of the Prophet. When an Arab denigrated him because of his skin colour and the incident got to the attention of the Prophet, the Prophet excoriated the Arab, Abu Dharr al-Ghifari, for still possessing traces of jahilliyyah, ignorance, in him.

‘The problem with Nigeria is not peculiar. What is peculiar to us is the lack of faith in ourselves. What is peculiar to us is our arrogance to one another. What is peculiar to us are our complexes, unfounded phobia and misdirected hatred towards ourselves.’

Celebration of tribalism and arrogation of ethnic superiority are all indications of ignorance. Liberated and enlightened beings discount such ignorant attitude towards one another. We are all the same. It is the enemies of the nation who call for, and support, disintegration. But they can be forgiven because they are acting on ignorance and not of enlightenment. So, as we approach a century of our togetherness, despite the hate we nurture against ourselves, we should think of amnesty for all the enemies of Nigeria who, by errors of omission or commission, have been responsible for the anomie in our land, anaemia of our economy and consequently our collective amnesia and also the cry of marginalization and campaign of national dissolution. Perhaps when they see the beauty in our diversity, they will lead the call for our continuity and stability. There is grace and power in the unity of our nation, Nigeria. There is beauty in our diversity.

4. OPTIONS FOR NATIONAL CONSTRUCTION

‘The problem with Nigeria is that we are too blessed to know the biggest blessing to leverage on. Confronted with so many options, we seem to be in the greatest dilemma of deciding the most cost effective and fastest means of reaching our promised land’

As Nigerians, we should all sympathize with ourselves that despite our limitless potentials and possibilities, we have been constrained in constructing a true nation, united in her diversity and progressive in her national ideology. We have been on this tortuous trajectory, not because we do not possess the wherewithal to advance but because we lack the courage to begin from the numerous starting points of national construction. The problem with Nigeria is that we are too blessed to know the biggest blessing to leverage on. Confronted with so many options, we seem to be in the greatest dilemma of deciding the most cost effective and fastest means of reaching our promised land.

Rather than just taking any of the trains and routes available to us, we are busy at the national terminus of development figuring out and fighting among ourselves on which of the routes does not have sharp bends and creaky joints and which of the trains have full air-conditioned coaches to travel in luxury to the extent that we all seem to be dragging the steering with the captain and pushing him almost out of cabin. If we are not careful, we will collectively derail this train of a nation and crash together woefully, recording unimaginable casualty and fatality.

The crises of nation building are not peculiar to Nigeria: Identity, leadership, integration, participation, representation, equity in resource distribution and allocation are issues that every diverse society has to contend with. It is in the management of these crises that we short-change ourselves as sectional vested interest take precedence over the collective national interest. What to do in our various ethnic cocoons and tribal camps that we have holed ourselves since independence is to lower our garb of pride, remove the stained and dirty lenses with which we view one another from the distance and travel from our various primordial posts towards that national confluence and have the warm and affectionate handshake across the rivers Niger and Benue rather than posting fake letters and emails without the attachments of love and understanding. What options are available for us? I believe the best options we have are not anything close to dissolution and disintegration as many disappointed patriots would prefer. They are not what marginalized and aggrieved Nigerians should contemplate, even though these seem the easiest way to meet their demands. In the final analysis, if we take the road to the Balkans, we will soon come to the table of negotiating reunification.

The challenge we really have in Nigeria is the lack of will and weakness of structures and institutions required to build a strong nation. In our tribal confusion and ethnic viral infections, we acquired certain national immunity deficiency syndromes. In this scenario, what kills the nation is not the disease, but the arising depression from the stigma associated with the disease. But it is better to admit we have this natural and national virus and take the necessary cocktail of drugs in addition to following the strict dietary regime and have a new outlook to life if we must live happily with our malaise. This is a national strategic management challenge, managing our diversity, our opportunities and our strengths while remaining conscious of our internal weaknesses and national threats.

‘What to do in our various ethnic cocoons and tribal camps that we have holed ourselves since independence is to lower our garb of pride, remove the stained and dirty lenses with which we view one another from the distance and travel from our various primordial posts towards that national confluence and have the warm and affectionate handshake across the rivers Niger and Benue’

In my recent fajr reflections, I isolated a number of factors as responsible for our national crises. Drawing from our colonial experience, one can say there was no sincere attempt by the departing imperialists to nurture a true nation from the diverse and complex peoples aggregated into Nigeria. From the dawn of independence therefore, there is what I refer to as structural disaggregation or misalignment in the new nation which gave room for uneven and unequal development. It is to be noted that the colonial government ran Nigeria with policy differentials and variation suitable to their own economic interests. So, before Nigeria attained political independence from the British colonialists, the nation had been a victim of policy inconsistency. The fallout of this misnomer is that the constituents of the new nation, even before the Union Jack was lowered on our soils for the green-white-green flag to fly in the new Nigerian sky, had begun to nurture animosity towards one another. In any case, our resolve for independence was not uniform which explains why southern Nigeria attained self-government earlier than the north.

It is, therefore, not surprising that on the eve of independence, Nigeria was birthed on a keg of gun powder waiting to explode. In less than two years of nationhood, the West was on the boil. Wetie was in the air. The mainstream political party in the Western Region, the  Action Group, despite its standing as the most cohesive and disciplined political party with a coherent ideology, was already being penetrated , compromised and eventually isolated as the opposition party. Its leader, the very charismatic Chief Obafemi Awolowo, later to be acknowledged as the best president Nigeria never had, lost in the political game as he was caught in the trap of treasonable felony which saw him being imprisoned. Marooned in the Ita-oko Island, Chief Awolowo had a bitter experience not uncommon for true nationalists and resilient freedom fighters.

As things began to fall apart for the new nation, the Young Turks in the military, the press and the academia who were already witnesses to regime changes in some parts of Africa were afflicted with the twin diseases of evolutionary impatience and rabid revolutionary consciousness, the result of which was the coup d’état of January 15, 1966, that saw the assassination of key political figures and top echelon of the military in Lagos, Kaduna and the east. The details of that plot have been written in different versions of memoirs depending on the position and motives of the actors and authors.

Before 1960, Nigeria or the constituents of Nigeria were not decided on what future to craft for the nation. We are still at it, almost 52 years after the queen agreed to let Nigeria go from her majesty’s suzerainty. Nigeria’s diversity and vastness are usually cited as reasons why it would be impossible to forge one country. I disagree with that notion, because diversity is not inherently evil or problematic. What comes as a challenge are the intentions and sagacity of managers and stakeholders of a diverse political entity. In all diverse polities, there is always the minority question. Because of the peculiarity of comparative disadvantage of the minorities, the cry of marginalization is always prevalent among them. The real and quantitative weakness of the minorities and their insignificant demographics always lengthen their distance from the power centre of the polity. So, it is not uncommon that the minority question becomes a big issue in a pluralistic polity. The enduring challenge in such a polity, therefore, is how to ensure distributive justice and equity so that no group, no matter how insignificant is its strength and number, is excluded from the socio-economic and political benefits in the scheme of things. This is a real policy challenge, the solution to which is putting in place a very robust and effective affirmative action contents in the constitution, written or unwritten.

Beyond ensuring distributive justice and equity through affirmative action, however, is the need to ensure the primacy of rule of law in the diverse polities. The compromise or the breach of the rule of law in most instances is at the detriment of the minorities who often lack the voice and the strength to challenge their denials and deprivations in the larger political context. Again, what protections and guarantees exist to prevent the abridgement of the rights and privileges of the minorities or against the oppression and exploitation by the majority in the socio-economic and political context of the nation is another policy challenge.

The first option to overcome this miasma is through the instrumentality of the rule of law. Inherent in the primacy of the rule of law, therefore,  is the institutionalization of good governance in the national polity. Here, we begin to raise questions on how fundamental and strong are our national objectives and directive principles of state policies as contained in the ground norm of the nation, the constitution? How participatory is our political and decision making process? What are the pillars of transparency and accountability? What are the constitutional protections and guarantees for the constitution itself, its interpreters, executors and enforcers? What is the substance of immunity and immunity waivers in that constitution?

These questions are germane to incorporating elements of good governance in any polity, the deliverables of which would manifest in the promotion of political and democratic pluralism, building strong and effective regulatory institutions and mechanisms, ensuring distributive justice and equity in the allocation of state offices and resources and promoting socio-cultural and religious diversity.

In this climate, it will be possible for all to seek equal opportunities and have equal access to power. It will be possible to live anywhere in Nigeria as a Nigerian and not as an indigene of a part of Nigeria. But the ultimate policy challenge for the government of the day is facilitating nationwide infrastructural development and diversifying the national economy to the extent that every Nigerian can live anywhere and work anywhere without resorting to political opportunism and the political cannibal and economic rapist mentality of looting the treasury, emptying the pot of the commonwealth and stuffing the throat with a selfish bite on the national cake. With development policies, we should be able to trust, depend on and optimize our chances and dreams. The collective challenge for Nigeria is what framework do we institutionalize that will create disincentives for political jobbers but empower true patriots to work for national development and cohesion and consequently build the New Nigeria of our dream and not break her up as our enemies dream.

• To be continued.