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By Dele Momodu
Friday, July 30, 2004
Please, grant me some indulgence as I begin this very important lecture today. Kindly permit me to express my profound gratitude to the organisers of this event for inviting me to walk the path of much greater men like the late Chief M.C.K. Ajuluchukwu and his Excellency, General (Dr.) Alhaji Abdulsalami Abubakar (GCFR, CSG), former Head of State, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and President, African Strategic and Peace Research Group (AFSTRAG). When I realised the status of the distinguished speakers/lecturers before me, I accepted this year’s lecture with obvious trepidation. In age, in experience, in brilliance, I am far too junior to these eminent Nigerians. All the same, I have picked up the challenge and I hope that at the end of the lecture, I would have done enough justice to the subject.
Also, I must pay special tribute to our very dear father, Senator Chief Pa Abraham Adesanya, the great leader of the Yoruba race for continuing to uphold the integrity, reputation and golden heritage of the descendants of Oduduwa. We salute him and all the others for their steadfastness, and for giving us the little opposition that we have in the near-one-party-state in Nigeria today.
When the crusade for the revalidation of June 12 started in the year of our Lord 1993, no one could predict the outcome of the biggest post-election campaign in the history of our dear nation. Not even the biggest of incurable pessimists would have thought it possible that the military would be replaced by some paramilitary democrats.
Politicians in Nigeria, whether in civilian garbs or military uniforms, behave like Carlyle’s “foolish baby”. They strive, they fight and they fret. They demand everything when, in reality, they deserve nothing. They become army generals when they have fought no wars. They become presidents, ministers, governors, and all through crooked means and drop dead like rotten potatoes. Most of them end up in shallow graves. And you begin to wonder, why the rat race? What shall it profit a man who has acquired the whole world, only to lose his soul? Vanity upon vanity. When death comes, as it will certainly come, usually sooner than later, you wonder why they had to strive, fight or fret in the first instance. Then you remember the words of William Shakespeare, “Life is but a walking shadow. A poor player that struts and frets its hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.
“Nigeria is making a third run at democracy. The first try had floundered in 1966 because of incompetence, the second in 1983 because of greed. The gap-toothed general, having vowed to give power back to civilians, decided to ban all former politicians from taking part in the proposed “third republic” on the grounds that they were likely to be fools or thieves. If the “old breed” joined a political party, the general decreed, they would spend five years in prison. “The richest man in the country, a former politician, corporate tycoon and generalissimo of the traditional forces of the Yoruba tribe, did not like it. He believed that the only way to make a nation succeed was for it to be run by rich, successful men such as him. He had built more than two hundred houses for his relatives and single-handedly eliminated poverty among his kin. In the belief that he could do the same for Nigeria, he challenged the general’s banning in court. He lost…
Like most of the countries out of colonial Africa, Nigeria was a geographical and historical fluke. It was created by Lord Frederick Lugard, a British colonial Governor General, and named after the Niger River by a foreign correspondent from the Times of London (a woman who married Lugard). Nigeria roped together three huge and highly developed tribes. They each had cultural traditions reaching back a thousand years. Predictably, they did not like each other much. Oil all but killed off the farm, where prior to 1973, four out of five Nigerians had lived and worked. Farm exports fell from 90 to 3 per cent of total export earnings. The world’s leading exporter of palm oil and peanuts became one of the world’s leading importers of palm oil and peanuts. Oil took over. As petrodollars flooded the cities, so did Nigerians. The percentage of the population living in cities doubled from 15 to 30 per cent and the number of cities with more than half million people jumped from two to nine.
Lagos became black Africa’s biggest city. Its population jumped from 100,000 to perhaps 10 million (again, nobody’s sure)…
In a typical oil boom year, two of every three dollars poured into Nigeria, poured out again to buy imported manufactured goods. In the 1970s, an estimated one-eight of the world’s merchant fleet was waiting to unload off Nigerian ports. In 1975, Nigeria had orders pending for twenty million tons of cement, enough to build an entire city. The national unloading capacity was two million tons a year. In the logjam at the ports, many ships in the “cement armada” sank. Harbour piracy boomed.
“Besides cement, Nigerians ordered food. The staple food in cities switched from garri, made locally from cassava, to bread made from imported wheat. More than $5 million a month was spent to fly foreign meat into Lagos. Nigeria became the world’s largest importer of Champagne… Big “ogas”, as rich men were called, ordered gold bathtubs from Europe and set fire to government buildings that contained records linking them to corruption. The Ministry of Education, the Ministry of External Affairs, the External Telecommunications building and the National Petroleum Corporation were subject to the torch…
The fear of religious violence is the reason that no one knows how many Nigerians there are. “It is not that the Nigerians can’t count themselves. They just won’t”, John Caldwell, an Australian demographer, told me. Caldwell has spent most of his career chronicling demographic and fertility trends among Nigerians. He describes the counting of Nigerians as a profoundly religious matter. Muslims claim they are the majority; Christians suspect the Muslims are lying…
The Ugly face of Democracy
The way Nigerians fought for democracy, home-grown or not, one would expect the maladies to disappear overnight once democracy was attained. Thus, Nigerians agreed to give Chief Olusegun Obasanjo a chance, despite the fact that he was a military dictator with the instincts of a statesman. Not many agreed that he won a landslide victory in 1999, against a formidable challenger, Chief Oluyemisi Falae, a distinguished banker, economist, teacher, farmer, administrator and politician. The entire military class, led by Lt. General Theophilus Danjuma (retired), a respected soldier, with, of course, the evil genius, ex-President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida in the background, wanted their own man, Obasanjo, back in power, after spending some debilitating twenty years as a poultry farmer and an aspiring Mandela of Nigeria. The cowardly and often compromising politicians were ready to accept any deal. Unguarded optimism suggested that Obasanjo was a changed man after a stint in General Sani Abacha’s “archipelago”, an experience that should have humbled any normal soul.
But hopes were dashed as soon as they were raised. On our expected “freedom day”, changed by the powers-that-be to May 29, not October 1 anymore, as we were taught in primary school, we expected earth-shaking reforms, words of hope, words of reason, words of wisdom and above all, healing words of reconciliation. Many had died for our sake. Many had been jailed for our future. Many fled into exile to hurl stones at our oppressors. We did not know that our history would be rewritten. Little did we expect that our heroes would die in vain, unacknowledged and unsung. As we listened to every word uttered by the new gladiators, we realized how cold blooded politicians could be; we discovered how short memories were. Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, the arrowhead of the struggle and winner of Nigeria’s best presidential election ever, was never mentioned, neither as the major subject of our history nor as a footnote in the fight for democracy. We watched with amazement as our men of power, in the usual overflowing robes attempted to change our history as if tomorrow will never come. Our government today is slow, unfair, corrupt and peopled by politicians living on graft and sinecure. And most troubling of all, it has become notoriously resistant to reform.
Mr Dele Momodu was Guest Speaker at the 3rd annual Abraham Adesanya lecture.
Election after election, new candidates step up to the podium, exhorting us to throw the bums out and let them, the reformers, in to clean the house. And election after election, we watch as they take possession of their predecessors’ cushy jobs, take money from glad-handing lobbyists, and slowly but surely become overtaken by the seductive allure of incumbency, the bankruptcy of political leaders, who work harder each year to refine and perfect the deceptions that they perpetrate on the public, the death of idealism and the massive resistance to political reform, and the dangers of focussing on the blessings of prosperity while forgetting those it leaves behind.”
Malady as Melody
Everywhere two, three or more Nigerians are gathered, wherever in the world, they have nothing other to discuss than Nigeria. Nigerians love Nigeria so much, and though the ethnic groups may hate themselves with an incredible passion, they can never stop talking about their beloved country wherever they meet together. We eat, drink, sleep and wake NIGERIA. No subject is more important. Most times at beer parlours, you meet stark illiterates analysing Nigeria and proffering solutions to our problems as any professor of social studies or political science would. Those who have never travelled out of Ikeja can describe the streets of New York. They know the public officer who has “arrived”. They can quote coded bank account details in Geneva and Zurich. We talk and talk and talk - just as we are doing now.
The rumour mill is Nigeria’s biggest industry – bigger than NNPC. We are often regaled with tales that sound like tales by moonlight but which oftentimes turn out to be true. Rumours always have a melody; they are lubricants of democracy. In 1989, Dr Tai Solarin swore that there was a publication in America’s popular black magazine, EBONY, about our former ruler, now warming up for another chance, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. According to the talebearers, Babangida had billions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts, his wife, our elegant First Lady, Maryam Ndidiamaka (meaning, patience is a virtue) Babangida owned a very exclusive boutique in Paris, France. Of course, the rumours developed wings and began to fly like bushfire in harmattan. The Gideon Orkar coup also provided another tragi-comic relief. The coupists said what many ordinary Nigerians were too scared to say in public. Those agitating for the break up of Nigeria did so not because they hated the name, Nigeria, but as a result of acute frustration. If indeed you decide to break down Nigeria into pieces, there would be so many fragments.
The Ifes may decide to have an Oduduwa Republic, while the Modakekes may decide to have an Akoraye Republic. The Ijaws would ask for theirs, just as the Itsekiris, the Urhobos, the Fulani, the Nupe, the Tivs, the Ibibios, the Ibos (and I am told they have many dialects), the Kalabari, the Ijebus, the Ishans, the Binis, the Ijeshas, the Ikales, the Hausas, Igboninas and so on and so forth. At the level of theory, let the advocates of break up go ahead and design their new look Nigeria and you will witness a cacophony of some hocus pocus.
Every Nigerian leader since independence was labelled a thief in one form or the other, yet no Nigerian leader has been so stigmatized that he and members of his family cannot walk on the streets. There is always a cast-iron alibi – want of evidence! Nigerians, therefore, are such “artful dodgers” that they know how to cover their tracks well or how to buy their ways out of trouble. The so-called “oppressors often come back into our political life with a renewed vigour. Just imagine that at different times, most of our former rulers had attempted a stage back: General Yakubu Gowon, Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu, General Shehu Musa Yar’adua, General Olusegun Obasanjo, General Muhammadu Buhari, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi and others. As we speak, some of them are warming up already. And why not? Democracy guarantees them the right to participate in the affairs of their country, as long as it is done transparently and without the use of force.
I am not sure if some of our leaders know that is quite easy to be demystified. Imagine if General Obasanjo had not returned to power. Perhaps he would have continued to enjoy good melody as an eminent citizen of the world, a statesman, an apostle of peace, a Baptist priest or even the new Olowu of Owu. According to Robert Greene and Joost Elffers in their very popular book, THE 48 LAWS OF POWER, “Too much circulation makes the price go down: the more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you are already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about, even more admired. You must learn when to leave; create value through scarcity.
The way forward
I believe most Nigerians know the solutions to our problems. It is the lack of political will and courage that has kept us away from concretising anything. According to the exiled (for twenty years) Brazilian author, Paulo Freire in his amazing book, PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED, “Liberation is thus a childbirth, and a painful one. The man or woman who emerges is a new person, viable only as the oppressor-oppressed contradiction is superseded by the humanization of the people… the generosity of the oppressors is nourished by an unjust order… because of their background, they believe that they must be the executors of the transformation. They talk about the people, but they do not trust them, and trusting the people is the indispensable precondition for revolutionary change. A real humanist can be identified more by his trust in his people, which engages him in their struggle, than by a thousand actions in their favour without that trust.
“Those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly. This conversion is so radical as not to allow ambiguous behaviour. To affirm this commitment but to consider oneself the proprietor of revolutionary wisdom – which must then be given (or imposed) on the people – is to retain the old ways. The man or woman who proclaims devotion to the cause of liberation, yet is unable to enter into communion with the people, who he or she continues to regard as totally ignorant, is grievously self-deceived. The convert who approached the people and feels alarm at every step they take, each doubt they express, and each suggestion they offer, and attempts to impose his “status”, remains nostalgic towards his origins”
“Conversion to the people requires a profound rebirth. Those who can undergo it must take on a new form of existence; they can no longer remain as they were”
Together, we can build a new Nigeria. We can move our dear country forward. Our leaders must aggressively pursue a few cardinal programmes like education, health, agriculture, industrialization, housing, transportation, rehabilitation of physical structures, etc. We can achieve all if we make sufficient efforts to erase corruption from our lives. If the Obasanjo government in eight years fails to generate steady electricity in Nigeria, after spending billions upon billions, then we are in serious trouble. In Ghana, where I currently live in voluntary exile, we enjoy good electricity, water, roads, communication, security, incentives to private investors, duty waivers, immigration status (it is a shame to all of us the way the Vaswani brothers were bundled out of Nigeria without trial), good schools (no cultism), good and decent hotels for tourists, good transportation (taxis run 24-hour services), we don’t queue for petrol, kerosene or diesel, we obey traffic lights at all hours, and public officers cannot flaunt their ill-gotten wealth (a minister was recently jailed for misplacing some money while on a foreign trip).
All these and more can be achieved in Nigeria, not by politicking and rabid witch-hunting but by a genuine and systematic attempt at providing the basic needs of the people. When every man has to run his own government in his own home by having his own NEPA, his own water corporation, his own NITEL, his own Ministry of Works to build neighbourhood roads, and so forth, the temptation and propensity to steal is already entrenched. We must with determination say like Franz Franon did in his world-class book, THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH, “Come then, Comrades; it would be as well to decide at once to change our ways. We must shake off the heavy darkness in which we were plunged, and leave it behind. The new day which is already at hand must find us firm, prudent and resolute”.
I thank you most sincerely for listening to my lecture. May God Bless You All.
Mr Dele Momodu was Guest Speaker at the 3rd annual Abraham Adesanya lecture
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