14 Oct 2008 |
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Why I may consider a Revolution By Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh Some clarifications are necessary here! I am principally a guy who loves life and believes that human life should be fully guaranteed and protected to the greatest extent possible! I am a firm believer in the fact that no law is ontologically empowered to make a man lose his life under any circumstance. This explains why I have been an arch opponent of capital punishment. The state should not kill a man to teach us that killing is not good. Capital punishment is not a punishment in my estimation. It is the celebration of vengeance under the law. And vengeance should never be the end of the law or the criminal justice system. Its end should be justice and restitution wherever possible. Capital punishment is such a mosaic aberration that the Christian doctrine of forgiveness even for our greatest enemy purchased my admiration and patronage, with its transcendence and nobility. This explains why I, in a thomistic tradition laced with large doses of existentialism, oppose unjust wars or wars contracted by greed in furtherance of avaricious agenda and dogmas. This explains equally why I hate and oppose to death all holy wars no matter the G (g)od(s) in whose name(s) it is convoked. There is nothing holy about wars. Wars remain symphonies of destruction, where human aggressive tendencies is given a free reign and worshipped with the blood of people whom if the situation were to be reversed would find more peaceful basis for fellowship than the blood, tears, pain and death offered by war. These have been the broad outlines of my personal philosophy. It is a syncretism of various philosophical standpoints and worldviews, which agree to all that I hold dear and have cause to cherish. But since a fool remains the guy who adamantly refuses to reappraise the scaffolds of his ratiocination and beliefs, in the light of new evidence or realities, I have been doing some hard thinking in relation to situations in which I may consider a revolution and the taking of the life of another person in furtherance of some goals other than myself and my personal feelings. I have come to some interesting conclusions which have even surprised me. Suffice it to note that I hate revolutions. I love evolutions. Evolutions are processes. Revolutions are events at the end of a process. Evolutions give time and room for mistakes to be made and corrected in the process. Revolutions seek to overthrow the old with a novel system; quite new and hitherto untried. Revolutions are sudden reactions to an accreted annoyance of socio-economic or cultural oppression. It is an explosion of discontent, which have been swept under the carpet for so long. Its seed is not an event, but sown by a process that took no cognizance of the limits of human endurance vis a vis the abiding presence of an irritant. Revolutions equally evolve. That is the paradox here. The ingredients keep on coming together, mixing themselves in the cauldron before they reach the boiling or breaking point, at which they explode. Just like a volcano that cooks in its core for ages, before erupting with its magma when the circumstances reach unendurable proportions. I am suspicious of revolutions because their promises are most times more than they can deliver. In the bid to change the oppressive status quo, certain good things harboured by the status quo are equally thrown overboard; a case of throwing the baby away with the dirty water. I am circumspect about revolutions equally because revolutions feed on its creators. Many of the creators or revolutionary leaders have enough initiative to engender it, but not enough stamina to see it through. This makes a revolution susceptible to being corrupted by opportunists who never knew a thing about the dreams undergirding the revolution. This could be well seen in the Orwellian Animal Farm, where an Old major who dreamt of a revolution left his dream to others. Scarcely was the revolution successful in kicking the human masters out of the way, than it was hijacked by Napoleon, who nursed a parallel dream that was basically at variance with that nursed by the fathers of the revolution. This in real historical and political time was seen in Stalin who took over the communistic dreams of ideological fathers from Karl Marx and Engels to Lenin. He distorted it to suit his megalomania. He mangled the dream so much so that the dreams of a workers’ paradise had no option than to degenerate into an iron curtain that killed people in order to liberate them. In spite of all these, the signs are there that Nigeria is a country ripe for an explosive revolution. Whether this revolution will take place cannot be predicted with certainty. But one thing is certain. Nigeria as it is configured is no longer sustainable. Nigeria cannot continue along its present trajectory. It is totally unsustainable. A country ruled by a cult of political thievery at all levels, hell bent on embezzling the country out of existence is totally unsustainable. The social indices are being stretched at the seams. The audacious impunity of executive roguery in Nigeria is no longer sustainable. The brazen advertisement of obscene opulence by the Nigerian ruling elite in the presence of massive poverty of the masses is a recipe for social explosion. The Nigerian social space and streets are no longer safe. Armed robbers have taken over our roads and streets to mock our collective callousness. The police are jokes and shadows in comparison to the firepower that these robbers consult to impose their will on our streets. Banks now lock out their customers for fear of being invaded by robbers in broad daylight. Time was when robbers wear face masks in Nigeria and only operate at night when chances of their not been recognized are high. Today they advertise themselves in the full glare of everyone who cares to look and the Police scamper for safety with their tails tucked neatly behind their legs. I don’t blame the police. They are ill-equipped and ill-motivated. To that end, they have no response. In addition to that, the armed robbers seem to have a moral case. Since the Police cannot arrest or prosecute the politicians who steal more with pens than these robbers can haul in a bank raid, what moral right can they subscribe to when these robbers strike? These are some examples of rotten situation. I think that the time is ripe to consider a revolution in the case of Nigeria!!!! My reasons do not violate my ethics nor affront my metaphysics. I can sleep at night with a clear conscience while advocating these two seemingly contradictory standpoints. Shock therapy is sometimes necessary. Nigeria is ripe for this shock therapy. The reasons are there for all to see. Nigeria is a state that is made up of nothing but various bands of robbers. I stand to be corrected. This does not mean that the majority of hardworking, honest Nigerians are crooks. No! This means that this hardworking majority are spineless and superlatively timid. Nigerians have for no just reason abandoned their destiny to the capricious whims of a ruling elite that is nothing but a cult of stupendous roguery that is congenitally allergic to social justice. And power in Nigeria has eternally been a relay race of handing over the baton of power from one sector of this cult to the next. Chinua Achebe rightly recognized those ruling Nigeria as a clique of renegades. We cannot better articulate this than Achebe has done. St. Augustine of Hippo was on song as rightly querying what a state without justice is, but a band of robbers. Nigeria unfortunately happens to be a country founded up greed and imperial mischief; and subsists on the most depraved form of social injustice. This is a country where over 70 percent of the population are subsisting on less than one dollar a day. This is a country where according to the World Bank 1% of the population own 80 percent of all the wealth. This is a scandal of unimaginable proportions. Be that as it may, this country has had opportunities to appease justice on behalf of its rotten ontology. But it has failed on all these occasions to rise up to the challenge. The civil war and its aftermath was such an opportunity. The oil boom years were equally one. The June 12 debacle was equally another such opportunity. Obasanjo’s 8 years of foolery was equally such an opportunity. But Nigeria and Nigerians failed. The major furniture of these failures was that the leaders have failed a la Achebe to rise to the challenge and responsibility of personal example, while the followers wallowed in postural timidity, unconcern and incomprehensible lethargy. The inaction of the followership commissioned the climate where the leaders had no qualms in consulting all the visionless obscenities in their arsenals of stupidity to defraud Nigeria of her destiny and postpone the arrival of social felicity on our shores. To that end, the Nigerian situation has remained not only a rotten sore on the conscience of the African continent; it has become a metasizing cancer at its terminal stages. This accounts for the CIA’s intelligence estimate that Nigeria risks implosive disintegration in 15 years. And every variable seems to be justifying this conclusion. I have come to the conclusion that this Aegean stable seems to call for nothing but a courageous direction of the waters of revolution to wash off the accreted rot, and give Nigeria a chance at a new beginning. This may agree with what many canvass: that the answer to the Nigerian predicament involves the sacrificing of victims to wash our land of these abominations. The major apostles of this view see regicide as the mandatory sacrifice required to liberate Nigeria from the shackles fettering her to anomie and regress. The proponents on this side of the divide have been compelled to lose all faith in the Nigerian system. They are tired of legislating caution or counselling further patience with the situation. They recommend that every leader that has ruled Nigeria in recent times be called upon to lose his head. Those that headed Nigerian rot at every level should have their heads cut off to teach an eternal lesson to all Nigerians that ruling us to ruin us will consume your head as atonement. They have historical scaffolds for their submissions here. The French 1789 revolution saw the crème la crème of the Bourbon Monarchy and the elitist leeches of the day, who engineered and presided over, or benefitted immensely from the decadence of the French society lose their heads to the guillotine. That singular historical moment sanitized Europe for much of the 18th century, with echoes still there for all to learn from today. It paved the way for a government where equality, liberty and egality became respected and honoured watchwords of social transactions. The Nuremberg trials taught those who took liberties with power during the Nazi times that power comes with responsibilities for all times and in all situations. The African version of these was seen in the Rawlingsian revolution in Ghana which chopped off the heads of the inglorious bastards who did nothing but bastardized Ghanaian posterity. Today, Ghana is better than Nigeria in almost all indices except corruption. The French revolution was a pioneer in regicide. The Bolshevik revolution of 1917 wiped off the Romanov feudal dynasty. To this end, these proponents believe that justice demand that the Nigerian masses rise up and execute all the former and present leaders, who have had a hand in ripping Nigerian asunder in deference to their selfish interests. Justice demands this! The society has a right to vent the full extent of its wrath on those who mortgaged the commonweal in obeisance to their avarice. Their embezzlement of the resources mapped out for our development passed a death sentence on so many powerless Nigerians. And justice demands that they pay to the fullest extent possible for their crimes. We should go an apologise to all the petty criminals we jailed, tortured and killed for crimes lesser in ontology and impact as the ones committed by our politicians, if we let our politicians off the hook. Allowing our politicians to go scot-free is a telegram to tomorrow that irresponsibility pays in riches and that crimes pay the higher you are in the social pecking order. That a richly endowed country like Nigeria is so impoverished in criminally irresponsible. It is treasonable felony. Treason has attracted capital punishment for many a Nigerian. And if this line of reasoning is to be followed to its logical conclusion, those leaders guilty of embezzling Nigeria into penury deserves nothing other than to lose their heads. Ahmed Sani the Sharia proponent of Zamfara state allowed a cow thief to lose his hand. But this man stands accused of stealing billions of dollars belonging to the people of Zamfara State. Does justice not demand that he lose his head? Jerry Rawlings did it in Ghana. The French peasants executed the Bourbon Monarchy that destroyed France. This is what justice demands. Successive Nigerian leaders have through their commissions and omissions sent many Nigerians to early graves. The bloods of these Nigerians are screaming like that of Abel for vengeance. We cannot advocate vengeance. Justice is a nobler motive. Brutus had to murder a bosom friend because he loved Rome more. Jerry Rawlings had to execute some of his comrades and fellow Ghanaians because he loved Ghana more and care for her posterity. Nzeogwu had to kill off the crème la crème of the corrupt first republic politicians because of his love and dream of a great Nigeria. Our love of Nigeria should be a morally edifying reason to bring Gowon, Shagari, Obasanjo, IBB and Yar Adua to trial. The State governors and local government chairmen are equally not left out. All of them must answer to their crimes against the Nigerian people. In rational climes, the ruling elite are compelled to rethink their ways whenever the clamour for revolution starts rising. In unintelligent circles, these elites buy the trash hawked by sycophants that it is only the cry of non entities who want to be settled. They continue on their inglorious ways only to lose their heads when the waters of bottled anger break the dykes of reason. Nero kept fiddling while Rome burnt to cinders. And that is what is happening across Nigeria. The government of Umaru Yar Adua remains directionless and visionless amidst chill penury and squalid poverty afflicting over 70 percent of the Nigerian population. The clock is ticking. Nigeria is a country sitting atop a keg of social TNT.
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