The curse of foreign rulers
Last week, I tried to sketch out the
minor, desultory drama that culminated in my failing to speak at a
convention of the Anambra State Association-USA in Tampa, Florida.
Had I spoken, my speech would have been shot through with ideas
ingested, adapted or borrowed from two of Nigeria’s best writers, and
heroes of mine, Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe.
I had recently been rereading the two writers’ works, Soyinka’s prison memoir,
The Man Died, and Achebe’s slim but provocative political treatise,
The Trouble with Nigeria.
It was in the former’s work that I encountered, many years ago, two
lines that, to this day, strike me with their aphoristic pithiness and
fierce moral power. The first, perhaps the most famous sentence in
Soyinka’s account of his experience in solitary detention during much of
the Nigerian civil war, goes, “The man dies in all who keep silent in
the face of tyranny.” The second: “Justice is the first condition of
humanity.”
It is fair to say that those two stipulations have continued to
inform my moral posture, certainly my take on the big and small dramas
of Nigeria’s sad, saddening biography.
For any citizen to choose to be silent, especially when principled
speech acts are called for, is to (at least unwittingly) cooperate with
those who degrade and dehumanize others. Speech, and particularly speech
deployed to confront, condemn and combat injustice, is, at bottom, a
moral duty. Humanity, properly understood, is impossible in the absence
of justice. That is Soyinka’s particular bequest, as a writer and social
actor.
Achebe’s book – a booklet, really – is a fascinating model of a
sharply observant intellect delving into the heart of a people’s malaise
in a decisively economic style. The power of the volume lies not so
much in the originality of his insights as in his ability to light on
just the right anecdotes that illustrate – in fact vivify – the tragedy
of a country that, in his memorable phrase, managed to snatch defeat
from the jaws of victory.
As I read The Trouble with Nigeria for the umpteenth time, I came
away with two strong impressions. One is the fact of Nigeria’s
resilience; the other, a sense of awe at the poignancy and currency of
Achebe’s trenchant remarks, a realization that his declamations remain
startlingly pertinent and relevant, that they bear eloquent testimony to
the continuing toxic nature of our choices.
Achebe’s book was published in 1983, a time so suffused with a sense
of pervasive dysfunction and impending doom that nobody was really
surprised when the military struck, knocking down a rotten “democratic”
edifice run by self-indulgent politicians. Of course, the military
regime of General Ibrahim Babangida would go ahead to re-enlist some of
the worst elements among the dethroned and disgraced politicians,
creating a military/civilian tag team that set astonishing records in
impunity, ineptitude and corruption.
Many a page of Achebe’s booklet teems with sentiments that could have
been provoked by today’s disheartening political events. The book, he
stated in the early pages, “calls on all thoughtful Nigerians to rise up
today and reject those habits which cripple our aspirations and inhibit
our chances of becoming a modern and attractive country.”
At the time, his entreaty was deemed utterly urgent. There was the
perception that Nigeria was running out of time. Today, those crippling
habits that impeded the country’s aspirations are still very much in
existence, only more virulent.
The author of The Trouble asked – a question that resonates even more
powerfully today – “Why do the good among us seem so helpless while the
worst are full of vile energy?” In a chapter titled “False Image of
Ourselves,” Achebe juxtaposed two statements made in 1979, one by then
(West) German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, the other by then Nigerian
dictator General Olusegun Obasanjo. Here’s what the German leader said
about his country: “Germany is not a world power; it does not wish to
become a world power.”
It was an advertisement for modesty, if not national self-effacement.
By contrast, Obasanjo projected a hubristic portrait of his country.
Nigeria, he said, “will become one of the ten leading nations in the
world by the end of the century.” Achebe weighed in, categorizing the
former statement as “a sober, almost self-deprecatory attitude,” and the
latter as “a flamboyant, imaginary self-concept.”
The end of the 20
th century came and went. Nigeria, far
from ascending to the ranks of one of the world’s ten leading nations,
became one of the world’s metaphors of disaster, a country that
frequently haunts lists that measure the worst social indexes around the
globe.
Nigerian governors and presidents, mediocrities though they are, bask
in extravagant praise. They call themselves, and cause their flatterers
to address them as, icons. Few Nigerians are content to be known simply
as a president, a governor, or a local government chairman. No, they
must be “executive president,” “executive governor,” or “executive local
government chairman.”
They inflate themselves as having “totally redefined governance” and
“totally transformed” the country, state, or local government. Yet, let
them (or their spouses) have a headache, and the first thing they do is
rush to such places as Germany, Spain, France, the UK, the US, or Canada
– places whose leaders, presumably, have yet to decode the magic of
“totally redefining” governance or “totally transforming” their spaces.
As Achebe pointed out, “one of the commonest manifestations of
under-development is a tendency among the ruling elite to live in a
world of make-believe and unrealistic expectations.” It was, perhaps, a
matter of poetic fate that Obasanjo, who had prophesied Nigeria’s
top-ten leap by the end of the 20th century, was shepherding Nigeria as
that epoch dawned.
Under his watch, Nigeria took several critical steps backward. He
pledged to Nigerians, “on my honor,” that they would start enjoying
“regular, uninterrupted power supply” come 2012. What he gave instead –
perhaps, the only thing he could give – was a regular, uninterrupted
supply of reckless political power. He presided over Nigeria like an
emperor. He decided which governors needed to be removed and how;
arrested members of state assemblies who were slow to do his
(impeachment) bidding; and sent soldiers to raze locations like Odi or
Zaki Biam in state-ordered murderous orgies.
For me, one of the most salient of Achebe’s piquant observations in
his booklet is the suggestion that Nigerian rulers, like many of their
counterparts elsewhere, “do not live in their country.” As I surveyed
the roll of those who have governed Anambra State (as well as many other
Southeastern states), it dawned on me that most of them lived outside
the state prior to running for governor, and promptly fled to Abuja or
Lagos the moment they handed over.
It is an awful, anomalous situation, akin to the curse of being ruled
by foreign powers. Perhaps, then, one of the keys to finding effective
leaders for Anambra (and elsewhere) is to search among those who are
prepared to call the state home after they exit office.
