One day soon, hopefully, we shall be able to show Nigerian toddlers, through pictures, written and spoken words, factual stories of how their nation, Nigeria, deployed all her military, economic and diplomatic powers, to the aid of a Nigerian in distress in a foreign land. Maybe, a day will come when our babies shall sit, listening in rapt attention, to the legends of great Nigerians who put themselves in harm’s way for the rest of us. They shall hear and maybe even see, in old, grainy video, how great men and women stood against the oppression of the colonialists: the intellectual Herbert Macaulay, the orator Nnamdi Azikiwe, daring Anthony Enahoro, visionary Obafemi Awolowo, graceful Tafawa Balewa, dominant Ahmadu Bello, The Women of Aba and many others, beyond number, who fought in their own corners even when no one remembered.
Sadly, they do not make them like that anymore. Men and women of great deeds of heroism, colossal reputations and courage beyond their years. Until this generation that neither reads nor writes, they were spoken about in that uncommon admixture of mystique and familiarity. They all had one thing in common, apart from Zik who won his election in the Western Region, none of them could boast of winning votes beyond their regions. Even the great Zik could not command the same appeal after he left the West. It did not diminish their political star statures.
Something has changed and our inherited nationalism has become ethnocentric, fickle and selfish. Many will climb to the hilltops in future and curse those who warped that nationalism into this unknown orphan of a national political identity that so shamelessly preaches and condones selfish constituent cacophonies that drown out national notes of accord. Yes, we are who we are, Children of Eri, the Sons of Oduduwa, the Offspring of Bayyajida, the Seeds of Woyengi and several other great historical figures of our origins that we should be proud of. But the American-Italians also keep and practise their traditions as do the Jew-Americans and the Native Indians but where the Star Spangled Banner floats, they all rise and offer themselves to be counted. Even African-Americans who were stolen from the Motherland!
Here, in this Nigeria where we find ourselves, this one land is all we have to roam free and thrive without fear. We should not need any individual or government agency to remind us of our freedom and diversity or to encourage us to bond firmly into one indivisible unit that is able to deliver telling punches in every sphere of life in the comity of nations. It has become cliche to say that we are stronger together but no one seems to be listening and it shows in almost every area of national life – segregating politics, discriminatory social life, clannishness even in business and selective delivery of justice and fairness. We even disrespect and treat with disdain cultures that are not ours.
It shows even in our voting patterns when elections turn full cycle. We just had one and the pattern has not changed.
The elections are over now and the crazy numbers are probably being analyzed and interpreted by those who know what those numbers mean and how they can be useful to the future of private and public enterprise.
I am hopeful that the new government, and each one of those who have been elected into office at the different levels, will join that forward-looking group in interpreting the numbers from those elections in terms of the sensibilities, the aspirations and the frustrations the people are protesting or celebrating. The success of the incumbent in garnering enough votes to win the election may not necessarily be an expression of affection or preference, it may be in protest against someone or something else and that has to be understood. I will be quite keen to see the elected officer at any level of government turn those numbers, as a barometer of the people’s wishes, into policies, ideas that improve their appeal across ethnic borders and unite us, visions that launch us into a new dawn of political stability, more appealing investment environment and true twenty-first century development on all fronts.
The policies that understand the sentiments of the people and are crafted to meet them are more likely to succeed and be owned by the people themselves than any whimsical top-to-bottom idea that plays to the gallery of helpless and divided masses. For a better nation, those policies must feed off the combination of the resentment of the past which the people have bottled up for long, the campaign promises of the winner, the novel ideas of the opposition and the dominant desire of the people which they expressed in the number of votes that were counted. They must acknowledge the apathy that made some to stay away from the polling booth and factor it into the design of every policy of government. The existing policies must be reviewed to reflect the new realities of the country.
Since the First Republic, the country has followed a tradition of politicians winning the largest volume of their votes from their ethnic nationalities. Chief Moshood Abiola was the only politician in Nigerian political history to have won, in 1993, across ethnic nationalities and regions. Mohammadu Buhari always won his biggest numbers from the North West, his base, which also happens to have some of the heaviest voter populations in the country. In spite of those heavy numbers, he was, however, unable to ascend to the presidency till he joined forces with others across the country in a political alliance of selfish ambitions. He is symptomatic of traditional Nigerian politics, an over-dependence on ethnic sentiments.
There is a thinking of superiority of ethnic nationality over Nigerian nationality that we must cure. It should be a commitment of the political class to grow truly representative local, state and national leaders who can win elections across demographic clusters because they are believed and trusted by all and not just because they appeal to particular tribal and religious sentiments.
The Buhari-South West collaboration has one positive, like that of the Ahmadu Bello-Ladoke Akintola accord of the First Republic, and the NPP-NPN accord of the Second Republic: it opens up a bridge that has potential to permit other ethnic nationalities to reach beyond their own borders and aspire to votes from among others. Hopefully, it will penetrate deeper into the streets where voter trust resides and does not end only with the political elites. Hopefully, beyond the charisma of Buhari’s persona among the Talakawa of the North, the people on the streets of Kaduna, Kano, Damaturu, Funtua and Rano will be willing to vote for anyone from any other ethnic nationality that is taken to be of the character ilk of their Muhammadu Buhari.
In a truly united country, driven by the singular objective of installing truly representative leadership in office, our leaders should be able to win elections anywhere and everywhere in the country as we succeed in breaking down the artificial invisible walls of distrust that divide us and develop trust in one another again like the days when Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe was Leader of Opposition in the Western Region in 1951 and Mallam Umaru Altine was the first Mayor of Enugu Municipal Council in 1956. A presidential aspirant should be able to sell him/herself beyond his home base to the larger multicultural Nigeria.
As the aging elders of the South East sit at the dining table to remind the young of the gory stories of betrayal, losses and agonies of the pogrom and the consequent destructive civil war, they must also be made aware that their sons and daughters are marrying now across ethnic borders, engaging and prospering in business in the ‘other people’s land’ and they cannot continue to remain outsiders and strangers in those lands and in those families anymore. They must be reminded that that war is over and the country is moving on, the nation is truly appreciative of the contributions of the Igbo nation to the larger nation and Nigeria has repeatedly expressed her sorrow and regret that those events of 1966 to 1970 happened. Almost all of the major actors of those events are dead. We cannot continue to live as a nation at war and expect fair treatment, trust and progress to flourish. The industrious young men and women of the Igbo nation must begin to find a Nigerian identity that connects with all without prejudice or painful memories of atrocities they never personality experienced.
No one must act in any manner that suggests that the Civil War was the war that battled and defeated the Igbo. It was a Nigerian Civil War and one of its biggest failures was the way other parts of the country were insulated from its realities. Those who did not experience it will need to take the trouble of educating themselves, not so they can quote victories or losses but to connect more with the enduring pains of those years and be more empathetic of the perception of the average Igbo person’s suspicion of the rest of the country, the loud screams of exclusion and be more sensitive to the issues that will help to truly rebuild Nigeria.
As a cosmopolitan Lagosian who has been in every part of this country, working, schooling, partying and meeting people, as a man who experienced the tail end of colonialism and the turmoil that ensued as our founding fathers struggled to take over an independent nation; as a lad who heard, read and watched on television some of the events of that war and its preludes, I understand these sentiments because I experienced them. I have lost friends both to that war and because of the resentment it bred. It has frustrated relationships and destroyed otherwise profitable engagements.
It is, indeed, hard to argue with the man whose father and mother were victims of war. The experiences are never the same with those of a man who heard of it. The North must show that while it schemes to win power at the centre, it is not acting in the mold of a victor over any region of the country. It will never be able to truly govern in peace and progress. The South West must resist the temptation to regard the Igbo as an enemy because of perceived differences. The Yoruba has never been at war with the Igbo. History confirms it and together, they can form a political force that is able to present representation that holds potential to win elections across the country.
Together, we must work at a formula that build bridges beyond our homes and truly unites the country. It is this one country I have and I will join forces with anyone who shows equal commitment to bring it into true independence and prosperity.
The all-conquering Uthman dan Fodio, Alaafin Oranmiyan, the great Eri, the mythical Ogboyinba and all others of our forebears must be allowed to rest in peace while we, the inheritors of their legacies, acknowledge the new realities of our national existence and make them proud. It is in making a success of the challenge Nigeria poses that we do them honour not in regressing into our individual corners and cannibalizing the baby.
I have no doubt that Nigeria can be great, if only…
- Bimbo Manuel
15 March, 2019