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The agenda setters By I have been thinking lately about the Nigerian paradox: the fact that a nation so prodigiously endowed with human talent manages, somehow, to fail disastrously at the simplest of tasks. I doubt that any other nation exists which is capable of achieving so little with so much. What is it in our national disposition that accounts for that dubious distinction, that ability to turn our extraordinary resources to tragically desultory ends?
Part of the explanation for this anomaly, I think, lies in the insidious warping of values that, over the years of military rule, attained critical potency. Looking, say at the last fifteen years of Nigeria's history, then one is compelled to conclude that Nigeria's social trends and public tone have been set, for ill rather than good, by the least attractive and most ignorant elements in our midst. It hardly requires the offices of clairvoyance to apprehend that a situation as unsavoury as this is bound to beget the kind of crisis in which Nigeria is trapped.
The point, simply, is that there is an essential correlation between the moral and intellectual capacity of a nation's ideasmen (and women) and the lot of that nation. When those who presume to define our vision and shape our dreams are devoid of any moral or intellectual capital, then the body politic cannot but be lethargic and placid. Nigeria's pathetic social profile, it is pertinent to argue, is the product of our leaders' unwillingness or (more likely) inability to set their eyes on lofty goals-and to persuade Nigerians to reach for the dreams.
But of what manner of dreams are characters like Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha capable? In his polemical book. The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis, Wole Soyinka makes a point about Abacha that rings so true, not only about its immediate subject, but also about Mr. Babangida and admittedly to a lesser extent, other dictators in our history. That statement bears quoting at length.
"Abacha," the bard wrote, "has no idea of Nigeria. Beyond the reality of a fiefdom that has dutifully nursed his insatiable greed and transformed him into a creature of enormous wealth, and now of power, Abacha has no notion of Nigeria... Abacha will be satisfied only with the devastation of every aspect of Nigeria that he cannot mentally grasp, and that is virtually all of Nigeria. He will find peace and fulfilment only when the voices whose nation language he cannot interpret are finally silenced, only when, like the Hutus, he cuts off the legs of the Tutsis so that Nigeria is reduced to a height onto which he can clamber... The danger... is in the character of this last torchbearer for military demonology, the puny Samson whose arms are wrapped around the pillars, ready to pull down the edifice in his descent into hell."
Few would fault Soyinka's characterisation of a man whose crimes were so grave that, upon his death, Nigerians refused to honour the traditional stricture against jubilation over a man's final sombre transition. In Abacha's case, Nigerians rose as one to congratulate death on a most perspicacious choice of victim. (And I have it on the authority of Ghanaian professor that Ghanaians also celebrated the passing of our erstwhile ogre-in-chief).
The larger point, in my view, is that Nigeria is in its unenviable shape precisely because the Abachas and IBBs of our world have been permitted to set our national agenda. We are not entitled to expect much of ourselves when, for reasons of personal profit, ethnic jingoism or sectarian interests, we entrust the destiny of our nation to the most depraved among us. Nigerians should not be surprised that their nation, despite its enormous potential, continues to be in coma, to live on life support -any more than a man who appoints a certified thief to look after his estate should be aghast when his assets vanish into air. By brooking leaders like Babangida and Abacha, we permit our nation to sink to new depths of depravity.
As I noted last week, Mr. Babangida once confessed, while head of state, that he had absolutely no clue of the internal mechanism that enabled the wheel of the Nigerian nation to grind on. It was not an innocent confession: for the man knew full well that he and his cohorts had done things grave enough to torpedo a less resilient entity. Yet, are we not today witnessing the Kafkaesque absurdity of some so-called political chieftains trying to propose the man as the leader we need now? Do we not see the hubristic unveiling of the man's political platform, the National Solidarity Association?
Such calculated craziness is by no means novel. I won't forget anytime soon the cottage industry that festered around what the Nigerian press -with its genius for sublimation -dubbed Abacha's "transmutation" plan. At one point, it seemed as if our whole political class had been injected with some dementia-inducing virus. One watched with disgust, horror and contempt as citizen after "eminent" citizen went to Abuja to tell Abacha, an unmistakable moral midget and intellectual cipher, that he was God-sent. Not to be outdone, traditional rulers -many of them with neither subjects nor a modicum of tradition -junketed to Abuja to humour Abacha and salivate at the crumbs he threw them from his table. (After watching that performance, I almost go into a fit whenever I see so-called traditional rulers described in the press as "royal fathers.")
For all his shortcomings -and Ghanaians can give you a litany of them -Jerry Rawlings was a different mettle of leader from the ones we have had -and have -in Nigeria. Despite his country's relative poverty, he utilised his nation's scarce resources to develop Ghana's infrastructure. He built roads, improved power supply to a level that Nigerians can only dream about, and made impressive strides in telecommunications. But his finest legacy may yet lie, I suspect, in his willingness to invite educated (and progressive-minded) Ghanaians to work with him. On any given day, his cabinet would put any we have ever assembled to shame. Yet, if he stands side by side with Nigeria's billionaire general, I can picture them derisively describe him as "this small boy," a reference, neither to his age nor his lack of accomplishment, but to the fact that, with their loot, they are worth a thousand times what he has.
What Rawlings has over them -and this is a leader's most important reward -is the love of Ghanaians. Almost certainly, Ghanaians will mourn deeply -and never dance in the streets -when Mr. Rawlings dies. Tanzanians felt a profound sense of bereavement at the death of Nwalimu Julius Nyerere. It is difficult to imagine that he would not remain a lasting venerable symbol in his fellow citizens' memories. Yet, he was never a rich man, in office or retirement.
When our own leaders seek their models, they go for the likes of Mobutu Sese Seko. Predictably, it was to the despot of former Zaire that the international press frequently compared IBB and Abacha. The company our misbegotten leaders keep is quite telling. Tragically, their predilections also determine our place in the scheme of things. I wonder how many of us would stand up to proclaim our pride at what our nation has become.
December 2001
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