Nigeria: A Time to Be Honest

By Okey Ikechukwu

A man who descends on a full keg of palm wine with a drinking cup and empties the contents into his innards, has written down his name in the list of those who may fall into the gutter on their way home. That is even if he actually makes it home at all after such an impressive performance at a drinking joint. He may simply fall by the wayside on his way out, or by the roadside somewhere, and sleep for hours on end.

He was the one who drank himself silly. It was he who did not have to finish the keg of palm wine, but chose to do so. Therefore, he should be held responsible if he later found himself rakishly ensconced in the untidy recesses of the public drainage system. Yes, he then has no one but himself to hold responsible for being at his new-found temporary abode.

It would be both foolish and absurd for such a person to later prance out of the gutter and declare that it was the handiwork of his enemies. He did not have to finish the keg of palm wine in one fell swoop, did he? Even if someone bough it for him, and he did not spend his own money. It was still his duty to exercise discretion as he was navigating the inebriating contents of the keg to his mouth.

But what did he do? He took violent possession of the keg of palm wine, chuckled to himself and downed the drink with reckless enthusiasm. If, later the next day, he staggers out of wherever he may have ended up and spent some hours in his drunken state, he must tell himself the truth. To cook up some delusional tale, wherein he would blame whoever or whatever catches his fancy, is simply to say that he is not yet ready to move from his unedifying circumstance and predicament.

And we are at that time in our national life when it has become impossible for us to sustain a lie that has acquired a life of its own. We are confronted on all sides with undeniable, irrevocable and incontrovertible ‘brute facts’ that put every attempt at self deception to shame. Yes! But should we refuse to admit the obvious, even to ourselves? Should we not now give up the denial and come to terms with what we really are, and where we really are today. If we choose, instead to say “Anything  but the truth”, for how long would we be able to sustain that?

A lost fight from the beginning, if you ask me. But many never give up on folly.

So, let us reason together about out current situation in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It seems to me that we are reaping what we had been sowing decade after decade since the 1960s. Whoever puts a lot of energy into doing anything, whether right or wrong, will get results that are commensurate with his endeavours with time.

And we are all facing situations that took time to create and sustain. It is alright to pretend not to know that we are all collectively responsible for what is going on in this our season of reaping. It is also even easy to speak of ‘them’ as responsible for the terrible fruits we are harvesting, without half a thought for our reprehensible diligence of monumental proportions.

Many who, as young public servants or soldiers in our national life introduced many questionable things and got away with what they did many decades ago, are now the very old men. Many of them are still in our midst. They helped to create the Nigeria we are living in today. If you look at the massive wealth of some of them, please remember that you are not supposed to ask whether they would have been so wealthy if they did not hold the reigns of power at one level or the other. Do not also ask if their wealth can be described as ‘earned’ wealth?

And many of them are elder statesmen and women today. They have been so called for decades now. Was such eldership and statesmanship truly earned, or did it come via presumption and self-inflation? They meant well in many things they conceived and tried to do, decades ago. But how much of the nation’s troubles of today are not traceable to many of their good intentions?

Go back in history to the arrival of the British traders. Think of how the West African Frontier force established by the colonial traders became autonomous, in terms of complete disregard of indigenous and original communal norms. The concepts of traditional authority, cultural norms, inherited notion of right and wrong, etc., gave way to totally alien paradigms. These paradigms derived their validity, authenticity and credibility from the mere pronouncements of the conquering white man. Nothing more!

The resulting societal disorientation was not long in coming. And this disorientation was reinforced by almost every other thing that followed thereafter. A look at our national politics, including the military versions of same, bear the undeniable stamps of this existential violation that came with the British. It got nurtured for decades by the local replacements of the Brish rulers. The harvests are here, though; but in ways many do not see. That is because we speak of “regimes” and political parties, without paying attention to the fact that it is one single malaise with many mutations that we have been facing all along.

The Northern and Southern Protectorates of Nigeria were created in order to improve colonial control of the grabbed land and wealth of the various peoples of the area.  Then came the Amalgamation of 1914, which collapsed the Protectorates into one. Then eventually came the official, and globally celebrated, Declaration of Independence. This declaration, and all the ceremonies associated with it, did not give the new Nigeria either economic or political independence.

It also did not, in any way, make one people out of the peoples of the original Protectorates. And we ended up fighting a civil war, with the official declaration of an end to the civil war not ending the continuation of that war by other means. The creation of states did not solve the problems many expected it to solve.

As more states were created in order to address the ever-emerging, and expanding, problems of marginalization and minority representation, more individuals and groups came out to demand for the further carving up of Nigeria. The demand is still very much alive today, as I write.

Thus, as we now stagger about, blaming first PDP and, later, APC for our woes, let us not forget that those who created Nigeria did not in any way provide this new creation with ‘Nigerians’. The processes that were leading to the emergence of genuine Nigerians were truncated by a senseless mutiny. This ill-advised, amateurish and pointedly naive intervention was made all the more reprehensible by its complete ignorance of how the state works.

Just look around you and think of the past I have tried to capture in broad strove in the above paragraphs. Is our country not still wearing some of the trappings that can best be associated with a child of curious, or even questionable, primogeniture and ancestry?

Just think of the Treaty carving out Cattle Grazing Route decades ago. It marked out and approved such routes without any consultations with the various peoples and communities affected. Is there a better example of an unmodified application of what the British enacted earlier around here? It was the British, and not the peoples in the region they called Nigeria, that designed and signed the Amalgamation document.

Consider the following, in order to get the point in perspective: Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe was ten years old in 1914 when the Amalgamation document came into effect. Chief Obafemi Awolowo was two years old, and Sir Ahmadu Bello was four at the time. Sir Tafawa Balewa was also two years old, while Dr. Michael Okpara Okara was not even born at the time. Tell, me, were Okotie Eboh, Margaret Ekpo, Ransome Kuti and others there at the time?

Just as the British created Nigeria without creating Nigerians, much of what has transpired in Nigeria – more especially since after the civil war – bespeaks a reinforcement of many things we should have reviewed, changed or improved upon. Many of the initial missteps have been cheerfully nurtured in such a way that many cannot even begin to imagine that they were wrong to begin with.

As I had cause to say on this page on 28th October 2016: “We have been building a mansion on quicksand and with pillars of straw. The soil, quicksand as it is, is further infested with two species of ants, called presumption and nepotism. These ants, which feed exclusively on straw, have been nibbling away for decades. They have left us with a hollow and painted frame that conceals a lie. This lie has been on parade for decades. It is described as an architectural masterpiece by casual observers. An architectural masterpiece that is not designed to withstand the wind? Now that the whirlwind has come, and the elements are in their element, radical modifications (in design and material) have become necessary”.

One thing is clear today. That is the fact that we need to be honest with ourselves, but completely so. Is our country standing on truthful acknowledgement of its problems today?  Are the business and political elite not cheerfully carrying on as if all is well? Now that the nation can be said to have a new generation that no longer knows the difference between right and wrong for sure, should we expect El Dorado any time soon? I think not.

 Therefore, let us pause and recalibrate. The 16 years of PDP, building on decades of questionable leadership paradigms, did much damage to this country. The eight years of Buhari capped every conceivable form of maleficence in in our national leadership history.

The two dominant parties are, today, a hybrid mesh made of an amalgam of un-detangle-able components. Many members of each or both parties have moved not less than three times into and out of both parties. It’s all in the news. But just as there is often not truth in the news, major political actors see not news in the truth.

So, can we, as Nigerians, still dare to be honest about the things that really matter? Can we see that the long hand of misconduct and complicity have stretched across generations to still dog our every move and step today? Are we seeing ourselves painfully reaping the results of years of diligent misconduct and thoughtlessness?

Are we paying attention to the fact that most religious leaders are leading many away from their Creator and are not helping matters in this country? Are we honest enough to say that the Federal Government, as constituted today, is only also product of its won history? Just asking.