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I took this picture at Nassarawa Eggon, a Middle Belt town located between Keffi and Lafia, the Nassarawa state capital. I had arrived in Nigeria shortly after the May 29, 2007 transition from Obasanjo to Yar’Adua, and was interested in what Nigerians expected from a leader they knew little about. I wanted to know what, if any, overriding concern they had about a leader whose ascendance they were beginning to grudgingly accept. Many Nigerians expressed resignation. What could they do about Yar’Adua’s de facto presidency even if they didn’t like it? Many people I spoke to concluded that there was nothing they could do than to hope that Yar’Adua become his own man.
Many saw Yar’Adua as an extension of Obasanjo, the man who brought him to power and wondered if the protégé could really assert himself in the shadow of his mentor. As I traveled the country, I heard the same refrain of the need for Yar’Adua to move away from Obasanjo’s disastrous policies. But even the most vociferous expressers of this sentiment acknowledged that they had to be modest in their demand for Yar’Adua’s policy independence; that they had to recognize the practical impossibility of Yar’Adua’s break from his benefactor. The prevailing sentiment was therefore necessarily nuanced. Nigerians expectated Yar’Adua to repudiate Obasanjo’s legacies, but this expectation was tempered by a sober recognition that, given the circumstances of Yar’Adua’s ascension, only a gradual, modest departure from Obasanjo’s era could realistically be hoped for.
This giant concrete billboard on the side of the Nassarawa Eggon section of the Abuja-Lafia road brilliantly captured this feeling of resignation and cautious expectations of a fresh beginning. A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. One unpretentious piece of artistic commentary encapsulated the prevailing national political atmosphere. It was sharp, poignant, and resonant. I couldn’t drive past it. I had to stop and capture it.
The artist who made it is well known to travelers on that road. A prolific visual commentator on political, social, and economic affairs of the country, he changes his messages and their captivating artistic murals every month. He does so to capture the national political mood, to comment on the most important national issues of the moment, and to convey the sentiments of rural and working class Nigerians on burning national issues. Occasionally, his paintings and their textual commentaries convey timeless philosophical folk wisdom.
This billboard mural is a visual piece of recent Nigerian political history.
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Postscript: I wonder how poignant this painting still is. Yar’Adua fulfilled some of the early expectations of self-assertion, dismantling some of the most egregious of Obasanjo’s policies. Beyond that, however, he has yet to articulate any vision of development, infrastructural improvement, and a higher commitment to ethical governance and anti-corruption. Indeed, recent make-up elections tell a story of a president who has lifted several pages off the Obasanjo-PDP political playbook of scorched earth warfare. Those early reversals of some of Obasanjo’s legacies now seem to have been packaged solely for populist appeal. In the absence of a coherent developmental and ethical alternative to the disastrous Obasanjo years, the national political mood has soured. If Nigerians expected Yar’Adua to “shift small from Obasanjo’s agenda,” they now expect him to “shift” gear into building his own policies and legacies, especially since his election is still being challenged at the Supreme Court. He has to now "shift small" to his own agenda. It is no longer enough for Yar'Adua to simply prove himself capable of nullifying Obasanjo's despised bequests. That is important, although many of Obasanjo's hated political constructions are still intact, preserved by Yar'Adua for his own political use. Nigerians now expect him to buckle down and start tackling the seemingly intractable problems of the country.
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Posted by Robot| 23.05.2008 17:49