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Nigeria:
A Failed State in the Making?
By Emmanuel Franklyne
Ogbunwezeh
- Handwritings, Histories
and Portents!!!!
Before the
Shakespearean Caesar fell, the nightmares of his wife were premonitions.
Before he took the fatal steps to the Capitol, the good offices of Artemidorus
were deployed by fate as an early warning system. The treachery of Brutus
was appropriated by the sharp faculties of the Seer. Caesar was warned.
He got sufficient forewarnings. But like every conceited man, Caesar
was deaf. His pride deafened him. Caesar felt invincible. He kept his
self-deception running on all cylinders. “Caesar was more dangerous
than danger”; screamed the arrogant banners of his conceit. He swaggered
in pride, loathing his wife’s unease, and disregarding the Poet’s
note. As pride precedes every crash, his arrogance goaded him into ignoring
the warnings; signing his execution warrant in the process.
That was in
ancient Rome!
Frail is the
line between literature and life. As form follows function, so literature
follows life. Literature is the narration of human vicissitudes rendered
in words. Literature mimics life, and typifies it. Literary artists
are sculptors of words, and creators of worlds. The universe is their
canvass, as well as material. To this end Shakespeare bestrides the
universe of ideas like the Colossus at Rhodes. His literary interventions,
and voyages into different town squares of human endeavour deluge our
universe of meaning, with their insight and brightness. He holds promise
for our enterprise whenever we consult him; centuries after he took
his exit.
Another ancient
Kingdom was visited by portents!
Before Belshazzar
lost his kingdom, he was equally tipped off. The story makes for a wonderful
reading:
Once upon a
time, a historic “handwriting”1 appeared on the walls
of an imperial dining room. It was at the royal courts of Babylon, during
the reign of Belshazzar. The handwriting at interpretation, detailed
the numbering, weighing, division, and destruction of a great empire.
It appeared at the event of an occasion. It was an imperial feast. Abundant
debauchery attends such occasions. Crapulence is indulged, celebrated
and canonized. Bacchus is the patron of such assemblies. Such was the
Bacchanalia convoked by Belshazzar the King of a decaying Babylonian
empire.
All the signs
of decay surrounding him never revolted him into acting to save his
empire. He was not only blind to them, he was blinded by them. He suffered
from the perceptual myopia native to those ensconced in rot. Just like
olfactory fatigue, which renders a man incapable after a few minutes,
of perceiving his own malodorous odour, he was immunized to the decadence
of an empire that gorged itself fat on the ruins of other nations. He
was oblivious of the internal profligacy, wasteful incompetence, and
sterile lethargy of his courtiers and nobles, at whose hands the empire
was being bludgeoned to death. His charge was expiring and falling into
disrepute, while he imitated Nero, who would gloriously debauch himself
into the synonym for fiddling, some centuries later. Just like the
Humpty Dumpty2, whom neither all the kings’ horses nor
men could put together again, Belshazzar’s courtiers, magicians, lords,
and men were useless in the face of the portentous threats. Their faculties
were blunted by a combination of greed and privileged debauchery. And
Babylon was destined to fall at their hands.
This is the
fate of all nations piloted by privileged leeches and elitist scoundrels.
It is destined to fail. Isolated micro-universes of individual greed
encircling the corridors of power, is the foolproof recipe for national
failure. Greed is never a manifesto for good governance. A state populated
by avaricious individuals is simply embezzled out of existence. In such
states, reason capitulates.
To that end,
Babylon and all empire that would mimic its historical blunders was
already weighed on scales and found wanting. The days of the kingdom
was numbered. It was already divided up along its great fault lines,
and apportioned to usurpers for their sport. In a little while, Babylon
was to tumble into the sea of “was-once-great”. It was to become
history. But the custodians of this empire were blind to the impending
catastrophe.
- The Lessons of Signs
Portents are
forerunners of catastrophe. Signs advertise themselves, as calamity
prepares its visit. But a corrupt cocktail of arrogance, oversight,
presumption and outright incompetence sabotage their being rightly perceived,
and interpreted. Ignorance equally compromises the effectiveness
of the perceptual facilities from anticipating such downturns. In complex
institutions, bureaucratic bottlenecks, sycophancy, laziness, greed,
corruption, petty politicking, and outright dereliction of duty aid,
and propel the misinterpretation of the radar signals emitted by catastrophes
as they make landfall.
Prior to 9/11,
for instance, FBI operatives in Minnesota picked up signs that a disproportional
number of men of Middle-eastern descent, were enrolling in American
flying schools. They sent words up the command chain. But petty politics
prevented actions that would have nipped 9/11 in the bud. Before Massoui
could be arrested or his computer searched, the hijackers already had
some planes in mid-air, enroute their various targets. World Trade Centre,
the Pentagon and most probably the White House had to pay for the petty
politicking and allegiances to ego, resident deep in the bowels of such
complex bureaucracies run by midget conquistadores and petty egos.
In Nigeria,
the immediate post independence government was very busy overreaching
itself in its unwarranted tolerance of official corruption and pettiness,
to realise that the country was no longer at ease. A nelson’s eye
was posed to Okotie Eboh’s advertisement of corrupt opulence. Akintola’s
political brigandage was timidly tolerated ad nauseam. Corruption arrived
and engrafted itself onto the body-politic. As these cancers metastasized,
the government basked in timidity. It failed to anticipate the unrest
and the subsequent putsch, which swept its inglorious feet off the corridors
of power.
However, the
job of intelligent leadership everywhere is to anticipate these calamities;
read and interpret the signs intelligently and come up with blueprints
to counter such threats. Belshazzar had the Hebrew youngster Daniel
in his court for this purpose, though his belated action did not suffice
to save a kingdom rotten from the roots. Artemidorus may have been
Caesar’s intelligence agent, whom he roundly ignored to his eternal
discomfiture; while the espionage prophets of Arlington remain American
government’s response to such eventualities, in spite of their monumental
failures to anticipate 9/11.
Handwritings
on walls are metaphoric, preliminary gestures thrown up by an empire
on the throes of death. Not some senseless historical graffiti designed
to be ignored. Perceptual fatigue and the arrogance of power scuttle
their being rightly construed. They are often ignored by those most
in need of its lessons, only to be happened upon, when future generations
seriously inquire into the decline of their once proud and august heritage.
Every creation has its genesis. The same holds and applies to every
destructive apocalypse. The decline of great empires commences in the
inconsequential misdemeanours of its custodians. Ancient Rome was well
past its way across the Rubicon of decline, as its successive Emperors
fiddled and dallied with debauchery and corruption. The custodians of
the state convoked a festival of depravity, and invited the citizens
to partake as spectators and participants in the cannibalization of
their commonweal. In the same vein, the death knell for all failed States
is sounded once the leadership begins a brazen embezzlement of all morals,
good sense, and resources of their various charges. That is why Nigeria
may be on the highroad to becoming a failed State. The journey has begun.
It may just be a matter of time before we arrive there.
Great signs
are not needed to show that things have really fallen apart. The situation
is attested to, by a collection of facts, which inconsequential in themselves;
assemble to brew a broth of far-reaching unease, as is the case in the
Niger Delta today. This area is increasingly being militarized on both
sides. It is a war between a heartless government and a cheated people.
The government is construed by the people, as fighting to maintain a
status quo, which benefits the people only in depriving them of the
succour of a clean environment and bequeathing them an all round poverty.
The government seems to be fighting for the maintenance of the unearned
privilege of a few elitist leeches, and their foreign collaborators,
in whose interest it is that the oil continues its uninterrupted flow,
even if the whole Niger Delta ecology is to be destroyed in the process.
- Dateline Nigeria!
Nigeria is
on the road to becoming a failed State. The signs and portents are everywhere.
But Nigerians being wishful thinkers and redundant optimists of the
worst quality are still posing a blind eye to the signs environing them.
Every factor worthy of consideration in Nigeria seems to be a part of
a huge conspiracy to get Nigeria to crash land and break up. The leadership
is a corrugated theatre of indentured roguery; the populace; a timid
mass of impoverished humanity. Infrastructural decay is tradition here,
while interminable crises have assumed the way of life. In Nigeria,
the Hobbessian fear of violent death accompanies Nigerians throughout
their short life spans. The life spans of Nigerians have been reduced
terribly southwards that investing in an uncertain future is predicated
on the roulette wheel of chance and luck. And this ensures that
“there is no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time;
no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual
fear, and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish and short3
When on Wednesday,
the 25th of May, 2005, the United States National Intelligence
Council, released its long-term outlook and assessment of Nigeria, which
projected a catastrophic scenario that Nigeria risks collapse in 15
years, Olusegun Obasanjo; Nigeria’s erstwhile president dismissed
the report as emanating from detractors, and “prophets of doom”.4 Obasanjo was not doing something out of character. He was being religiously
faithful to that ostrich culture of dismissive denial, which has forever
been the hallmark of Nigerian leadership. This culture of dismissal
has so much permeated Nigerian leadership corridors, as to sire a thoroughbred
race and bureaucracy of professional sycophants, whose bounden duty
is to shoot every patriotic criticism of government’s incompetence
out of the sky. It seemed that when the president reacted himself to
the issues, he did that with the same modicum of arrogance and incivility,
which emboldens the audacious impunity of his rabid Rotweilers like
the notorious court-jester, Fani-Kayode, Remi Oyo, or his ministerial
“Otimpkpu” Frank Nweke, jr. These were notorious for their unrefined
propensity to react to issues, and dismiss them with a plethora of insults,
and garrulous irrationality, which resides in the darkest grottos of
motor-park thuggery. Abubakar Umar, Chinua Achebe, and the European
Union 2003 Nigerian election observer mission have all faced the speaking
ends of presidential-approved verbal thuggery.
This dismissive
culture of denial is an attempt to wish away the facts, or manufacture
illusions to soothe their incompetence with the balms of ease. But facts
are stubborn. And like corks, would never drown; always popping up at
unguarded moments with tons of embarrassment in its wake. The World
Bank followed up and pursued the same issue from its own peculiar standpoint.
The 2005 World Bank Assessment lists Nigeria among the fragile states
that risk collapse.5 These states known in World Bank parlance
as Low-income countries under stress (LICUS) are laden with multiplicity
of chronic problems, which pose some of the toughest development challenges.
These countries according to the World Bank’s assessment are characterized
by the same dysfunctional constants. They are embroiled in extended
internal conflict; struggling through tenuous post-conflict transitions,
faced with weak security situation, fractured societal relations, corruption,
breakdown in the rule of law, and lack of mechanisms for generating
legitimate power and authority. We must underline that although I have
had occasions to disagree with World Bank’s recommendations especially
for African economies, I have always found their appraisal and analysis
of the problems flawless. But the solutions they recommend and impose
most times are inspired more by ideology1, and less by science2
On the 23rd of December 2006 a car-bomb exploded in the Nigerian Southern city of
Port Harcourt, which incidentally is the Oil capital of Nigeria tearing
down parts of the fencing of the government House, which is the administrative
hub of the state. The Associated Press report claimed that MEND-The
Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta claimed responsibility
for the bombing.6 This importation of Taliban tactics into
the Niger Delta agitation by MEND marked a new twist in Nigeria’s
chequered voyage enroute renaissance or implosion. This is testament
to a nation embroiled in extended internal conflict.
Nigeria has
never ceased to struggle through tenuous post-conflict transitions.
The military years which reached its unholy apogee in Sanni Abacha bastardized
almost all the structures and apparatus of state, conscripting them
into the service of tyranny. Then, came the coup from heaven, which
saw Abacha expiring atop imported prostitutes; followed by a hurriedly-convoked
transition to a rule by a political class peopled by inglorious collaborators
with the military occupation of Nigerian politics. At the head of this
hurried transition emerged Obasanjo; a man who went to jail under the
military, and who rose pledging to spare no sacred cows in his fight
against corruption in the new dispensation. Eight years after that declaration,
more sacred cows were cloned under his administration than any other
in Nigeria history, in spite of what his paid cheerleaders would have
us believe. Obasanjo succeeded in single-handedly re-introducing civil-tyranny
into Nigeria. He bestrode Nigeria as a village thug, in an Orwellian
revolution gone awry. He busied himself harassing anyone who believes
in the rule of law, as against the rule of Kabiyesi. Audu Ogbe bears
in his disgrace, a testament to Obasanjo’s crude ways. Atiku Abubakar
equally got his share of Obasanjo’s crudeness for daring to nurse
an ambition unapproved by Baba himself. This uncouth midget thug essayed
to destroy all that was left of accountability in governance, decency
in comportment and vision in authority. He sold Nigeria to his isolated
pocket of false friends, who are members of this syndicated gangsterism
holding Nigeria to a ransom since independence. Almost all our public
utilities were auctioned off in obedience to his greed. He bestrode
the NNPC like a drunken sailor, rendering no account to anyone on how
the revenues accruing the country were expended. After investing trillions
of naira in our power sector, which he took up as his highest priority,
the power sector is no longer epileptic but in coma. He invested over
300 billion naira to make Nigerian roads look more like the outbacks
of hell and primeval desolation in concert with Tony, “Mr. Fix it”
Anenih.
Obasanjo’s
crimes against natural justice, equity and good conscience can never
be retired or appeased in two generations. Nigerians will continue for
ages to come to offer propitiations to equity in retirement of the crimes
committed by this cow in china shop. Obasanjo’s greatest achievement
was in cloning and imposing an illegitimate government on the Nigerian
tribune of power. After an eight year tenure marked by executive delinquency,
policy confusion, selective fight against corruption, and presidential
vindictiveness, he further castrated the Nigerian electorate by imposing
on them candidates they neither wanted, chose, nor asked for. He used
Mr. Maurice Iwuh for this heist.
Today, Nigeria
still summarizes insecurity of lives and property in spite of the sepulchral
whitewashing of the Heart of Africa project, and the sterile millions
wasted thereto. Armed robbers, both official, government-approved ones,
like the Nigerian Police, and the freelancers have ensured that the
Nigerian public space remains an arena of insecurity. This is a country
where life is cheaper than the price of peanuts. This is where arms
and ammunition are in the hands of petty crooks and psychologically
unbalanced policemen and soldiers. The Nigerian state has since lost
the monopoly of violence. Armed bandits are now ruling the waves and
determining who has the right to life or death. Our fundamental freedoms
are now casinos where crooked politicians, bandits and privileged debauchery
play for high stakes.
Instances of
this drastic denigration of human life in Nigeria abound. Thisday’s
journalist, Godwin Agbroko was sometime ago, shot dead in cold blood
on his way home. No suspect was fingered or arrested. Believe me, none
will ever be. How could the Nigerian police solve the murder of a common
journalist, when it could not open mystery that was the murder of the
former attorney general of the Federation; Mr. Bola Ige?7 Ayodeji Daramola was murdered in Ekiti State. The Nigerian Police Force
is yet to fish out the killers. Funso Willams was murdered in Lagos
state. The police are yet to rise up to the challenge. Instead, hundreds
of innocent Nigerians are still being killed and tortured yearly by
the Nigerian police in a very degrading and shameful manner that has
attracted the highest international condemnation.8 Till now,
no one has been convicted in the killing of 6 young Igbo traders at
Apo village in Abuja in June 2005. Are we still talking security? A
glance through any Nigerian news daily will apprise you of what security
means here. In fact, Nigeria defies every rational computation. When beggars die in Shakespeare, there are no comets seen, but the stars
themselves, blaze forth the death of princes. That is only in Shakespeare.
In Nigeria, whether princes or beggars, life is so cheap that anyone
who cares to do you harm would really do you in, and get away scot-free.
Today, thugs
rule the Nigerian political theatre. Armed secret cultists butcher every
opposition into submission, turning our universities, which are supposed
to be the ivory towers of learning into abattoirs for human slaughter.
Brown envelop syndrome has been deployed in emasculating the Nigeria
Press; the supposed Fourth Estate of the Realm, into lending itself
as cheerleaders of privileged rascality and political roguery. The Police
force has since abandoned the pretence of being custodians of law and
order; they are now a full-blown corrupt vestige of the ruling party
in power. The battle for the soul of the Nigerian judiciary is on. With
those who believe in the rule of law daily losing ground to those led
by Aoannadaka the federal attorney general, a petty egomaniac and a
corrupt representative of the ruling cabal. The Nigeria social space
offers no protection to anyone, both celebrities and paupers. To this
end, celebrities pay for police protection as they would private militias
to protect their asses. The poor are abandoned to the mercies and good
pleasures of the marauders. Do we have fractured social relations in
Nigeria? Well, a visit to any Nigerian chatrooms, or internet discussion
group would surprise you. The amount of mutual hatred oozing out of
those rooms is so toxic that it could corrode hell. Other factors listed
by the World Bank and the espionage prophets of Arlington are abundant
in Nigeria. That would take a full dissertation to explain.
- Designed Never
to Function
Nigeria was
never designed to function. That explains why she is in competition
to become a failed state. The conglomeration, and yoking together of
over 350 different nations under one country, is to all intents and
purposes, designed to be an impossible project. How a huge boiling pot
of invariables, and polarized insularities could stew together in unity,
faith and progress beats every rational imagination. The constituent
nations all jointly and severally boast of millennia of peculiarity
and diversities in culture, language and worldview. They were semi-isolated
ethnic pockets obeying their own rules and living their own lives, although
in interdependence. In fact, everything about this country has been
an imposition. The country itself was an artificial creation. The union
of the component ethnic nationalities was an imposition by the fiat
of the British imperialists. They created Nigeria, not as a state that
should thrive and propel itself independently on the paths of development,
but as a huge reservoir of resources of be milked unto extinction. Nowhere
has a functional state ever been created by the avaricious fiat of a
colonizing power. Countries are not created by the mandates of exploitation.
Peoples unite to pursue their common interests. There was no common
interest on the agenda at the creation of Nigeria. No people ever came
together and dialogued their way unto a union that became Nigeria. Nigeria
was decided at the British trading outposts, and sent to Whitehall for
approval. Recognition for this tardiness was canvassed at the 1885 Berlin
conference, and was legitimized in the eyes of the Robber baronial nations
that masqueraded as colonialists. It was then imposed on the peoples
inhabiting the territories affected by that decision. Nigeria was a
by product of a colonial master, seeking to gorge itself full on the
wealth of its colony.
The country
Nigeria was an imposition. The name itself is equally an imposition.
So is the constitution that under girds it all. A glance through the
Nigerian constitutional history proves this point beyond all doubts.
Never in the history of Nigeria has the true representatives of the
people ever sat on an agenda to define and dialogue out their common
interests and basis for a union. The 1999 constitution that is the foundation
of this present democratic experiment was a military imposition. Chapter
2 of the 1999 constitution for instance, is a phoney creation. It is
just there for cosmetic effect. We either borrowed that from India or
whichever country that was ready to lie to its people for fun. For example:
rights like free education for all Nigerians was deemed non-justiciable,
whereas Nigeria has enough resources to educate all her citizens. These
provisions offer the leadership an escape route to embezzle funds mapped
out for sectors like education without anybody asking questions. If
the leadership knows that a child in Kaura Namoda who is not in school
will take the government to task over this, and the child in Ijebu ode
as well as kids all over Nigeria; then the leadership will not allow
the embezzlement of funds for the educational sector because, it will
be immediately apparent. And that will signal failure of the government
and may engender serious civil outcry and possible civil disobedience.
This will be a way for the people to act as checks on their government.
If a citizen knows that he stands a chance of winning a case if he institutes
an action against the government, its agents or privies, then the government
will be more responsible, than reckless. But because our constitution
was an imposition, we find such lies being celebrated in our most sacred
document. How can a country function when the people have no common
interest except their common hatred of each other, and their common
oppression by a cabal of faceless rogues?
This exploitative
metaphysic followed Nigeria till today. At independence, the colonial
Lords, not satisfied with this apparent loss of power, still craved
some influence no matter how remote. They reengineered power into the
hands of the conservative element that would uphold the status quo in
everything but name. This ensured that at Independence, Nigeria remained
a British colony in everything but name. With the passage of time, the
Nigerian agents of the British neo-colonial interests realized that
a continuation of this culture of imposition would successfully install
them eternally in power; a pedestal from which they would perpetually
lord it over the rest of us, where the colonialists left off. Just
like in Animal farm, we exchanged our slavery to British official whims
to the capricious and monumental indiscretions of Nigerian politicians.
This exchange created a crop of home-grown colonial Lords, who exploit
the people like their former Lords did. The only difference now is that
neither is allegiance owed to the Court of St. James, nor the booty
shipped to Britain, and offered in genuflection to Whitehall. The home-grown
masters have now new masters: namely their inordinate greed. They shipped
their loot to Switzerland; housing it in numbered accounts. The rape
of the country assumed the same trajectory in both epochs. Our local
pirates in some space of four decades succeeded in out-performing the
colonial masters in greed, thievery and plunder of our commonweal.
The colonial
experiment monopolized violence and used it to keep the colonized from
raising their voices against their plunder and oppression. At Independence,
the local pirates inherited that apparatus; namely the Police force,
and deployed it to shutting out and exterminating all opposition to
their excesses. Till today, true democracy refused to germinate in Nigeria,
while the fear of the police became the beginning of wisdom. The Nigerian
police till today remains an instrument of oppression of the populace.
This fact which has followed almost all the post independence governments
ever to rule Nigeria was well advertised during the inauguration of
Yar Adua’s illegitimate government on the 29th of May,
2007.
- The Features
of a Failed State in the Making
The Loss
of Monopoly of violence versus the
Democratization of violence
The State enroute
failure first suffers the loss of its authority to compel obedience
to the sanctions and provisions of its statutes and laws. It consequently
loses the monopoly of the use or deployment of violence. It lacks moral
authority to compel obedience. To this end, violence is democratized.
A failed state
hatches violence. It breeds warlords and warmongers. It tolerates jingoes
and empowers them. It looses its authority to command a monopoly of
violence. Its laws and statutes are objects of scorn and derision. To
this end, warlords and bandits are availed the rich humus to germinate
and assume control of much territories and armed jurisdictions as they
can grab. In this scenario, individuals lose their sense of security
as fear of violent death lurks in every corner and fissure of life.
These were individuals who under the theoretic terms of the social contract
subleased their rights and powers so that the state can accumulate and
exercise a monopoly of violence for the social good.
The Nigerian
government has lost the moral authority to be the custodian of the peoples’
welfare. The citizens through a series of government’s gangsterist
behaviour were invited as witnesses, as the structures of state were
degraded, bastardized, and co-opted into the service of unholy political
ends, to attain impious goals of avaricious import. They have jointly
and severally watched as their posterity was shot off the sky by the
avarice, squandermania and outright thievery of the ruling class. They
have been impoverished beyond all measures, in all dimensions that the
society reeks with the odours of corrupt opulence existing side by side
with inexplicable penury.
The elite in
such states are then fragmented by their haggling over their avaricious
pies. They busy themselves scrambling for crumbs that fall off the tables
of power. They suffer from a mental leprosy that inures them from realizing
their slavish attachment to insignificance. They spend their lives fighting
for crumbs leaving the state to be hijacked by scoundrels. As
tyranny usurps power, the future of the state desiccates into visionless
amblings without purpose. They cause petty empires to be constructed
within the state, and ruled by various barons and dons, while the nation
becomes a bankrupt and corrupt fiefdom. From a corrupt fiefdom, the
nation matriculates into a no-man’s land where anarchy reigns. Poverty,
hopelessness and underdevelopment then invade the land!!!!
This is the
reign of systematic anarchy; systematic in the Machiavellian fashion.
This kind of anarchy is an artificial creation, fashioned to keep the
populace busy, while the ruling thieves loot and pillage the nation.
Obasanjo versus Atiku verbal war for much of their second term in office
for instance, was an engineered disagreement over the loot, which is
a feature of classical brigandage. Executive anarchy at the highest
levels mirrors, inspires, and drives street-level thuggery and violates
the fundamental freedoms of ordinary Nigerians.
The general
populace in such states are victims of pervasive apathy, which cripples
organized resistance to oppression. Thus they become inadvertent collaborators
to their predicament. They are disenfranchised and co-opted unto their
disservice either by their ignorance or collective apathy. And the
dictatorship holding their destiny to a ransom revels in sustaining
this apathy and ignorance, which renders collective resistance to tyranny
an impossibility. Over and above that, these people oppressed by governmental
irresponsibility then conjugate themselves into catering for their individual
selves and welfare. Some arm themselves for their details. Others arm
themselves to defend their conveniences. And since everybody elects
to be his own defender, the power to inflict violence becomes democratized;
within everyone’s reach. And a modern State of nature; a social jungle
is called into being. That is the case of Nigeria today.
A perfect example
of this could be seen in Nigerians of the Oil Rivers extraction organizing
and arming themselves, with the aim of assuming control over their resources,
which has brought them a cocktail of disadvantages. They have seen their
lands pillaged, their ecology is collapsing on them, their flora and
fauna can no longer sustain reasonable life; all because their land
must keep up giving up its oil to fund the extravagant indiscretions
of the Nigerian power elite, and their foreign collaborators. Adaka
Boro’s misadventures were a dress rehearsal for what Mujahdi Dokubo
is trying out today. His tactics may be controversial but the cause
he fights, if that is what he is doing, cannot but be just.
Another example
of the violence in the Nigerian society could be gleamed in the activities
of armed robbers across Nigerian cities. This is a sad catalogue of
pain and despair. It remains a placard attesting to the breakdown of
the Nigerian society.
That a State
fails is not an event. It is a process spanning decades of leadership
orchestrated goofs. Every state on the way to failure entertains dinosaurs,
which should be archaeological monstrosities buried in memory, on its
corridors of power and centres of social legitimacy. This accounts
for Nigerian political and public space being over-populated by recycled
bandits and geriatric debauchees. These guys that should be museum pieces
relegated to irrelevance are the ones defining the directions of social
conduct. They are the ones unfortunately leading the debate on how to
construct our future. These were the men, who wasted our past, embroiled
our present in interminable crises, and short-changed our future. These
same wandering minstrels of cant are the ones holding the keys to our
social legitimacy in Nigeria. The fact remains that any nation
that allows this as the currency of operation, is living in a theatre
of never-to-be-fulfilled dreams. Rationality would command retirement
to men like Olusegun Obasanjo, Ojo Maduekwe, Tony Anenih, etc. But these
men who embody in their crooked frames, all that is wrong with Nigeria,
continue to hoodwink and swindle us into allowing their continued amble
in the corridors of power. These men bereft of ideas are still conducting
the phoney orchestra singing the dirge to Nigeria’s future
Fraudulence
reigns in every state enroute to failure. It commences with electoral
fraudulence and diffuses to all sectors of the national life. Electoral
fraudulence converts a democracy into a seething cauldron of bottled
discontent, which if not properly managed explodes to rip the state
to shred. This is quickened by the fluid equations created by the absence
of functional rule of law or apparatus of state. Electoral fraud hands
a blank cheque to incompetence, creating a ruthless power matrix that
celebrates falsehood and mediocrity. And since every fish rots from
the head, every state collapses from the debaucheries of the ruling
class. No human society can ever survive the erosion of it values and
cohesion, which leadership-orchestrated rottenness engineers. This has
been the lesson of history. But our refusal to learn from history has
condemned us to repeat it, in the vain hope that a future we never prepared
for, will suddenly arrive on our shores, just like a treasure ship from
nowhere. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing. Electoral fraudulence
is why Umaru Yar Adua “won” the presidential (s) elections; a charade
convoked in supreme mockery of the people’s will.
- Issues at Reconstruction
This country
could function, if it is worked at. But attempts at progress are defeated
ab initio by the crude politicization of the inbuilt fault-lines, at
the least opportunity. Any attempt at reconstructing Nigeria must go
back to the basis. Nigerians must convoke a Sovereign National conference
and decide whether they want to federate into a union or go their separate
ways. We should not stay together because it serves American or British
interests and need for oil. We should stay together because we want
to be together and because we have a basis for that. This basis must
be a basis that serves us, not our friends or anybody else. This conference
will map out the matrices of our common interest. It will create the
people’s constitution which will be the sacred document bearing the
letters and spirit of this agreement.
Nigeria will
never know felicity or development until the present arrangement which
is at best retrogressive is jettisoned for a more functional one, flowing
and deriving its legitimacy from the genuine will of the people expressed
in their coming together to dialogue out their differences and configure
it a basis for unity and development.
|
Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh 
Posted by Robot| 02.03.2008 07:04