IBIYEMI
VICTOR ‘WALE
THE
IMAGE PROBLEM
All over the world today,
the image of Nigeria is that of a corrupt-ridden, disorganised, unstable, and
shamelessly pretentious country.[i]
It is a failed nation that swims in a massive ocean of corruption and seems drowning
for she sinks daily in malevolent acts and grows spontaneously in despicable
vices. Though acclaimed as the giant of Africa, what is visible in Nigeria is
only a similitude of a pygmy and a dwarf nation that continues to struggle in
the pangs of poisonous situations that have continually hindered its growth. This
diminutive nation has inculcated in
her citizens the very plague that hinders her development, hence, everybody
whether consciously or not wears that diminishing garb. We therefore become microcosms of
failure and abject blindness- the truth be told! This crucial pang of dwaftness has eaten deep into the nation’s
fabrics so to affect everything she does and that again is vividly seen in recent
times of the minimalistic culture that is transmitted as the ordo rationale in our beloved country.
That minimalistic
proclivity has thrown the nation into a state of identity crisis. The Nigerian
has not an identity for herself. She is lost amidst the crowd. The Nigerian is
joggled in the middle of cultures and cultures stand as markers of identity. She
has nothing to show forth as truly her own in the presentation of cultural
phenomena. So lost, that the question of her origin is mostly reviewed by the superior races to which she is loyal-
indeed it is a drama of crises. Nigeria has become so, not because she does not
truly have her own patrimony but
because she has become an insatiable voracious consumer of others dungs- she
has therefore lost everything that truly was hers. Nigeria evolves daily as a
consumer nation. She not only borrows unstoppably from other cultures but she
has become addicted to depend disproportionately and excessively on others for her existence.
Nigeria literally has
become an official dumping ground for others.
In the odour of this offensive pong, she lost her identity- Nigeria
therefore can be described as a country of paradoxes, perplexities and
complexities. A faceless association
of people that lack the essentialities of a country- maybe there was never a country!
The hesitant continuous pursuit for armistice, peace, development,
growth in the country and the more explosive, volatile and irascible
expressions of emotions in current times have questioned the matrimonial compatibility of the many
ethnic groups under the canopy- Nigeria. To be explicit, On January 1, 2014, it
will be 100 years since the colonial rubber baron, Lord Frederick John Dealtry
Lugard (1858-1945), made the audacious decision to bring what was then the
Northern part of the Niger (area) in unison with the Southern part, to create
what we have today as Nigeria. With such august
centenary celebration, there have emerged again, however this time,
forceful reflections on the tenability of a secession as the solution to the cataclysmic Nigeria.
NIGERIA…THAT
OLD BABY, THAT TODDLING WOMAN[ii]
The lament is this: 53
years old and the woman is still crawling? Not even attempting to walk? Will she
remain a toddler forever? When exactly will she be conscious of the fact that her
hair is now greyed? Nigeria has
become that old baby and that toddling woman. The joy of freedom suddenly
collapses into a bank of sorrows when there is an agony of remembrance flashing
to the stupendous enthusiasm in which Nigeria gained her independence. Indeed,
Nigeria has now become a mole-rat digging burrows of abjectness with
incomparable large and powerful incisors driving narrowing into the spines of her
citizens. Though she may have been freed from the colonial figures and imperial
masters that feasted on her like vultures on a dead carcass, she has now been
fully plunged into the black dungeons of her own feudal lords who at best we
could describe as hungry dogs who lack integral reputation.
Nigeria- a den of
famished and peckish guzzlers have lived 53 years in debacle. All the sectors
in this country must be possessed with abiku
spirits- no matter how they are nurtured
by the overly minimalistic governments- they are never in good shapes. What
sector can you point out as functional in Nigeria? Is it PHCN that offers an
uninterrupted power failure, or the educational sector that has been besieged
with an intellectual debt that is
difficult repaid? The whole nation stood still over the celebrated strike phenomenon. As I described somewhere, the strike
palaver is a carbuncle and a rotten eyesore. More shameful that the government
is not capable of any good- it is all together a failed state of events.
How on earth could ASUU and the Government be over a single matter for many
months? That
was the height of shame! I must say! Anyway it is an exhibition or a
characteristic of an abject and
failed state!
The health saga has been
captured by the popular anti-Nigerian
health motto: If you wan die quick
quick, make you go Nigerian hospital. Yielding to that true maxim, many have preferred to die peacefully in their
houses than to visit Nigerian hospitals for horrible and agonizing deaths.
Should I say something
about security? Oh! I would describe the situation as a symphonic rhythms of
violence and pestilence. It seems that we have been so much acclimated to
horror and ferocity that violence, gunshots, bombings now constitute melodic
and harmonious renditions in our ears or bombs now sound like simple knockouts.
The surfeit butchery, bloodbath and massacre by brave acts of terrorism is a slap on the government and indeed all
of us. What more can we say?
Our nation is adrift and
we are all dancing in a season of blindness to our own dirges. To borrow the
words of Niyi Osundare, “the current image of Nigeria is that of a
big-for-nothing country where nothing works the right way, a country that is
finding it increasingly difficult to govern itself.” When asked the cause of
these calamities; with a sigh of relief many nationals have pointed to an antique
concept in the Nigerian History… What therefore is that historic concept?
THE
AMALGAMATION… AND THERE WAS A COUNTRY!
Before the amalgamation
in Nigeria, there as a continental onslaught on Africa. The Berlin conference
held from 1884-1885 was the colonization of the African continent by European
powers. That Berlin event was the awful of the many evils that besieged her. Africa’s head was shaved in her absence
and divided into irregular fragments not considering language, culture or
traditions. Indeed, Tayo Oke avows inter alia:
As a matter of fact, the whole of
modern African states were created in exactly the same fashion at the Berlin
Conference of European powers in 1885. They sat around a long, round table with
the boundary-less map of Africa in the middle, and started carving up the
territories into choice names: Cameroon (Land of shrimps), Gold
Coast (Land of gold), Ivory Coast (Land of ivories), Upper Volta, Kenya,
Mali, among others. That is how modern African states acquired their
identities. It is a painful part of African history.[iii]
At the time of the
conference, 80% of Africa remained under traditional and local control. What
ultimately resulted was a hodgepodge of geometric boundaries that divided
Africa into fifty irregular countries. This new map of the continent was
superimposed over the one thousand indigenous cultures and regions of Africa.
The new countries lacked rhyme or reason and divided coherent groups of people
and merged together disparate groups who really did not get along. The
conference lasted until February 26, 1885 - a three month period where colonial
powers haggled over geometric boundaries in the interior of the continent,
disregarding the cultural and linguistic boundaries already established by the
indigenous African population. Following the conference, the give and take
continued. By 1914, the conference participants had fully divided Africa among themselves
into fifty countries.[iv]
In 1914, Lord Lugard combined or merged two protectorates-
the southern and the northern as one country under one leadership- his governorship.
According to reputable political scholars, the major reason proposed for
this implausible mishmash was for business and purely for administrative
convenience of the Niger-area that was later named Nigeria by his wife- Lady Flora Lugard.[v]
In the bid to mention the
irrationality of the amalgamation, it has been called many names in Nigerian history
such as; a celebration of slavery, a historic fraud, a merging of opposites and
so forth. Just as the Berlin Conference was Africa’s undoing in more ways than
one, one of which even by the time independence returned to Africa in 1950, the
realm had acquired a legacy of political fragmentation that could neither be
eliminated nor made to operate satisfactorily, amalgamation too has not left
the best tidings on the Nigerian socializations and politics.
The first pointer to the
irrationality of the amalgamation is that fact that it was not even legal. It
was done illegally even though it followed the spirit of the Berlin Fathers, it wasn’t legally done.
Tayo Oke argues that “My search through the United Kingdom Parliamentary
archives did not reveal any promulgation of an Act of Parliament on the subject
as it should have…Lord Lugard had simply prevailed on the Secretary of State to
rubber stamp his wish to rule over a vast swathe of land which he had
christened Nigeria.”[vi]
However, we cannot blame
the amalgamation for all the current ills we are experiencing now as many
claim. A brief retrospection into Nigerian annals proved that the amalgamation
of the south and north was not the first merging and in fact after the merging
things still went on well. For instance, the southern protectorate,
which was the
merging of Niger Coast and Lagos Colony was a clear merger of different cultures,
politics and values, but because of the African spirit which is love and unity,
it was easy for us to live and love harmoniously.
Hence, the agonized
blames on amalgamation and the vicious resolution thereafter which is majorly the insistent cry for secession and the
hunger of division may not be the true
solution to what I termed the NIGERIAN
SICKNESS. I dare to say amalgamation may
not be the problem which we should be vehemently addressing.
Nigeria has a track record of tyranny,
betrayals, ethnic and religious intolerance, civil war, marginalisation, e.t.c
but the question is: if we keep using one injustice to justify another, when
will our cycle of stupidity end? Great nations are built by people who allow
the past to correct and improve the future, not those who eat up other’s livers
in destructive wars of vengeance and recrimination. No country can ever
progress when citizens engage in a perennial ritual of wound-licking and
trading scars.[vii]
THE PARADOX OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: LESSON FOR
NIGERIA
Let me quickly chip in a
paradox- a paradox of the US. “The history of America mostly told is that of
its independent and glory, but a careful look at the American history would
place it side by side with Nigeria in term of amalgamation and merging done by
Britain.”[viii][ix]
We must know that Nigeria is not the only amalgamated nation by England. Sparing
the story of US’ amalgamation, we must say that the US used the multiplicity of
ethnicity and diversity to create what we have today as the greatest nation on
earth, if they have divided in the blindness of incompatibility…the world power
we have today would have been a mirage. Then, there must be a specific problem
with Nigeria outside that amalgamation.
WHY
NIGERIA IS NOT WORKING: FACING THE GENUINE INIQUITY
Why don’t we abandon our exercise in
hypocrisy and face up to the fact that we live in a country that is rotten to
its very core, a country whose near-fatal structural defects bring terrifying
echoes of the year 1914 and Frederick Lugard’s imperial amalgamation? What the
June 12 election did was to proffer a hope, or the hint of a hope, that out
country could be one, that it is, indeed, possible for a candidate potentially
great country, his/her ethnic, religious, social origin notwithstanding.[x]
Corruption, a household
name in Nigeria is the fountain of all our troubles. It is grossly unfortunate
that Nigeria continued to grow daily in this crime and no hope of redemption-
for much has been preached on this topic to effect a rapid metanoia.[xi]
Corruption was there before colonization- for many ignorantly equate corruption
to colonization- however, it heighted with the event colonisation and ever
since it has continued to sporadically multiply destroying all facets of
progress and success in Nigeria. The characteristics with corrupt countries are
political instabilities, money laundering and theft, debauchery, hunger,
strife, wars and others catastrophes.[xii]
Truly, most Nigerians are
corrupt in one way or the other, most times accusing fingers are pointed to
governments and statesmen because they who ought to selflessly serve citizens
are now daily looting states’ funds with laudable ovations and commendable
applause. What a shameless society!
ANY
HOPE IN THIS PLAGUE OF STRIFE AND WAR?
There is always a silver
lining. It is imperative that we must imitate the paradox of the USA. Our
diversity, differences and disparities as a nation must be paradoxically
employed to work for peace and development. Secession is not the solution to
our numerous crises, amalgamation is not the cause anymore. Let us use the past as a stepping stone to actualize
our dreams. There are times in a nation’s history when its abused past springs up
like a monster and clings to its negligent dream like an inscrutable leech.[xiii] The
solution is a return to rectitude and the true African Spirit chorused in Mbiti’s philosophy: “we are therefore I
am and not I am therefore you are”- therefore putting the Other before Yourself especially
in service. The true African Spirit orients to building and restoration not
destroying and defragmenting. Let me end therefore with the lyrics of the
famous Yoruba Musician- Sunny Ade: Nigeria yii
ti gbogbo wa ni, ko ma gbodo baje, eja ka sowopo ka fímo sokan gbe kemi gbe![xiv]
Peace and development will continue to evade Nigeria without the required unity
in diversity.
[i] Niyi
Osundare “Nigeria’s Image Problem” in Dialogue
with my Country (Ibadan: Bookcraft Publishers, 2011), p. 66
[ii] The feminine
qualification for Nigeria is not to undermine the female folk but to maintain
the traditional characterization.
[iii] Tayo Oke, “The
1914 amalgamation: Historic fraud or an act of God?” in Sahara Reporters, published
on February 17, 2013, www.saharareporter.com(assessed on 29th
of November, 2013)
[iv] Matt
Rosenberg, “Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 to Divide Africa” in About.com Education, www.geography.about.com/berlinconference.htm (assessed on
29th of November, 2013)
[v] In popular history, it is affirmed that the
former British reporter- Flora Shaw who married Lord Lugard suggested that the
country be named Nigeria, after the Niger River
[vi] Tayo Oke, The
1914 amalgamation: Historic fraud or an act of God?” in Sahara Reporters, published
on February 17, 2013, www.saharareporter.com (assessed on 29th
of November, 2013)
[vii] Niyi
Osundare “Mad Times” in Dialogue with my
Country (Ibadan: Bookcraft Publishers, 2011), p. 300
[viii]
Abdulrazaq Oyebanji Hamzat, “The Historical Challenges Of Nigeria's
Amalgamation/Religion And The Way To Peace (Part 2)” in The Nigerian Voice, www.nigerianvoice.com
(assessed on 29th of November, 2013)
[ix] Abdulrazaq says the
merging of province or protectorate does not just begin in Nigeria; it has
always been Britain’s pattern in most of their colonized areas… if we claim
that the only solution to our present situation is separation, if we claim that
we cannot forward with the beautiful union, this must be the greatest joke of
the 21st century. It does not only portray us as intellectually lazy which of
course I know we are not, but also portray us as untruthful and insincere with
our self.
[x] Niyi
Osundare “June 12 and After” in Dialogue
with my Country (Ibadan: Bookcraft Publishers, 2011), p. 288
[xi] Metanoia-
Greek word for total conversion
[xii] Forbes reveals this with the other
corrupt countries like Somalia, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Iraq, Uzbekistan,
Turkmenistan, Sudan, Chad, Burundi, Equatorial Guinea…e.t.c
[xiii] Niyi
Osundare “Parable
from Koma” in Dialogue with my
Country (Ibadan: Bookcraft Publishers, 2011), p. 4
[xiv] A literal
rendition would be: “This Nigeria is for all of us, it must not be destroyed,
let us unite our hands and unite our thoughts (minds, wisdom), carry it!
(Nigeria) Let me carry it (Nigeria). The song actually rekindles the “WAZOBIA”
spirit, that is a call to Unity in Diversity- that is the only remedy to the fragmented
and selfish identity we already have after all, we are all human beings and we
are blacks!
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