16 Aug 2009 |
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Hillary spanks ‘em again
Pardon snooper this morning for turning a grave national issue into a laughing matter. These are times that call for a grim sense of humour, if one is not to end up a barmy lunatic in a vast asylum. Humour and comical twists lurk in even the most threatening of situations, turning national tragedies into dire comedies. In Nigeria, you gotta laugh to cry indeed. But let us get the dynamics of mixing horror with humour right: If a word that connotes utter danger is uttered in a musical way, people will dance to its alluring rhythm. The enduring image snooper has of Hillary Rodham Clinton is of the Iron Lady of the American White House. Snooper was reliably informed that each time Bill Clinton was caught out on one of his numerous trysts, the saxophonist-statesman usually avoided the master-bedroom where the real master had already taken up position. Giving the nuptial bed a wide berth, Bill Clinton would spend the next few nights bonding and playing cards with his secret service details until the domestic volcano subsided. Hillary’s ferocious glare was enough to set even a mad cow ablaze. This past week, it was the Nigerian authorities that were at the receiving end of Hillary’s icy distemper and her searing stare. It was not funny. They cut a pathetic sight indeed. Shorn of their blustering arrogance and shameless grandstanding, they appeared like meek and contrite school children after corporal punishment. They ought to have known that the spate of state-sponsored pseudo-nationalism and the rash of cash and carry articles cautioning Hillary Clinton not to talk down on Nigeria would not cut any ice with the Iron Lady. When it comes to strategic national interests, America does what it must while Nigeria does what it can. That indeed is the crux of the compelling national tragedy that leaves a sour and bitter taste in the mouth. The eyes know what is enough to feed the stomach. It was not that what Madam Clinton has to say is particularly profound or even singularly brilliant. Her reservation about corruption and the comprehensive collapse of governance in Nigeria has been articulated several times over in the local press by concerned patriots. But coming from America’s highest ranking civil servant and shortly after President Obama himself had handed a historic snub to the country, it is the equivalent of a double-whammy. What must now be of concern to serious nationalists is how to extricate the nation from the historic quagmire in which we have found ourselves. It has not always been like this. In 1976, Nigeria was in a position to talk down to America in the famous "Africa has come of age" episode. Thirty three years later, Africa has come of Stone Age and Nigeria has come of under-age and underdevelopment. It has been a stark evolutionary reversal in which a butterfly has metamorphosed into a grub. We have no one to blame but ourselves. When failure is this stark and all-encompassing, there is a compelling need for self-examination. Had Malam Yar’Adua been so evidently hands-on about the nation’s adversities, had he exhibited a statesmanlike transparency in tackling corruption, had he been truly committed to electoral reforms, had he not been hunting with anti-democratic hounds while commiserating with electoral dupes, the American slap-down would have been out of place. Had Yar’Adua been seen to be seriously committed to a process of internal reforms of a badly traumatized nation, the Americans would not have been in a position to lecture us about the fundamental ethos of decent governance. Had Nigeria begun to put its house in order, and knowing how tolerant and fair-minded the average Nigerian is, he would have taken the battle to the US. But it is not rational to be caught pushing a rotten merchandise. It is not because the Americans have a special affection for Nigeria that they have been railing and ranting about our manifest inadequacies. In a globalised world, a gargantuan purulent sore has to be lanced before it infects the entire body. Nigeria is an open sore with equal opportunity prospects for both Africa and the rest of the world. Pandemics spread pandemonium faster than the World Wide Web. By rooting for good governance and a durable democratic order in Nigeria what the Americans are doing is called immigration control at source. The emergency patriots asking Nigerians to line up behind a tattered flag are mere victims of the occupational hazards of intellectual and political prostitution. Nationalism is a two-way traffic, flowing from nation to nationals and from nationals to nation. A nation which treats its nationals with contempt and cruel abandon cannot expect affection or deep commitment. Except as a refuge for the scoundrels and miscreants who are responsible for the nation’s adversity in the first instance, patriotism has nothing to do with an unthinking glorification and endorsement of a morbid state. Thirty three years after the tempestuous and swashbuckling Murtala Mohammed famously put the US in its place at the OAU, Nigeria appears to have reached the nadir of its fortunes with an inept leadership and centrifugal forces tearing the nation apart. For a proud people, it has been a cruel denouement. If this miserable fate is put in demographic perspectives, it simply means that most living Nigerians have never witnessed a truly inspiring and liberating government. Many prominent Nigerian analysts have laid the failure of Nigeria fairly and squarely at the doorsteps of the failure of leadership. The argument is compelling. Yet it is also certainly curious that in thirty three years, the only brief moments of inspired and visionary leadership Nigeria has enjoyed have all come from military usurpers who force their will on their colleagues and the nation. Till date, Nigerians remember with great nostalgia, Murtala’s golden two hundred days and the national mobilization briefly enjoyed by the Buhari-Idiagbon regime before it unravelled in a cesspool of sectionalism and intrigues. But when it comes to choosing Nigeria’s civilian leaders, the structural deformities of the nation helped along by the antics of an irresponsible and short-sighted political elite usually combine to produce a rash of mediocre and reluctant leaders. In the past thirty three years, none of Nigeria’s emergent civilian leaders has been known to have actively sought the position, with the result that all of them, including the meddlesome but middling General Obasanjo, appeared clueless and totally bereft of vision. Yet such is the enormity of the stakes and the predatory nature of Nigeria’s political class that any civilian leader with a measure of the vision and proactive intellect needed to move Nigeria forward is usually done in before he poses any danger to the extractive predation and its backsliding robber-barons. The fate of the Abiolas, the Awolowos should be instructive. Except as a product of a pan-Nigerian mass movement which bypasses the stifling and strangulating rituals of the system, it is impossible for a truly visionary and patriotic leader to emerge from the current system. If it is impossible for the system as it is currently structured to throw up a genuine pan-Nigerian leadership, why do we then blame our failure on the leadership and not on the system that throws them up? Until the power brokers sought them out, Shehu Shagari, Segun Obasanjo and Umaru Yar’Adua never actively sought the mantle of leadership. It was always a case of the unpatriotic cultivating the unprepared. The wages of this leadership by abdication are fully with us. So will the crackling whip of Hillary Clinton. It should be obvious by now that Nigeria’s problems are more complex and fundamental than the question of leadership. Perhaps we can now begin to think the unthinkable. Except there is a structural reconfiguration of Nigeria, the only avenue for visionary and transformative leadership left to the nation is through the odd military intervention. Even then history has also taught us in Nigeria that military rule is a national lottery of lengthening odds and therefore an unreliable route to national redemption. Either way, Nigerians have a tough choice to make in the next few months. This house has not fallen, but it cannot stand the way it is. So, Hillary if you happen to read this please spank ‘em real good. (Tatalo Alamu is the pen name of a columnist in The Nation newspaper)
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