Conditions for national integration
by
I DIFFERENTIATE between national integration and national cohesion. We can have integration (combination, blend or amalgamation) without necessarily having cohesion, which conveys harmonious unity, congruency or consonance or compound; which the fathers of the American constitution called “a more perfect union.”
I posit that from the convenient or self-serving Lugardian amalgamation (very apt word indeed) of 1914 till date, we have not significantly succeeded to have national integration as well as or pari pasu with national cohesion. And one even wonders whether to refer to us as a “nation” is as such strictly appropriate.
The unfortunate consequence is that over the years our over 350 ethnic units have co-existed essentially as mere “geographical expressions” (Awolowo). Thus, our scholars or intellectuals have little discomfort to identify these units as ethnic nations or ethnic nationalities. And it is largely because of this lack of sincere acceptance of belonging to one modern nation-state, Nigeria, whose consonance or unity is spiritualised, that makes inter-ethnic clashes so easy to spark off, or so easily manipulated by some self-serving persons to spark off.
Over the years from one government regime to the other, we have embarked on certain strategies to inculcate discipline among the citizenry, and to bring about the crucial national integration as well as cohesion: ethnical revolution, MAMSER, WAI (War Against Indiscipline), WAI-C (War Against Indiscipline and Corruption) and national orientation.
However, despite these intrinsically laudable programmes the set objects have continued to elude us. Perhaps, we are not looking at the right direction; or the tools are questionable. May be, we have our priorities wrong. Possibly, we are not particularly serious, and so the campaigns or the crusades are carried out perfunctorily. In other words, most of them are empty of what I have often referred to as the needed “spiritualisation” of these programmes.
On the question of tools, let me in passing cite one example. I do this constructively. For instance, one of the mandates of the National Orientation Agency I am told is to indoctrinate Nigerians towards certain set desirable goals.
The could be counter-productive, and even dangerous. Because to indoctrinate, is to propagate a set of beliefs, without allowing any room for rationalisation or questioning. It is to propagandise. Indoctrination robotizes.” A person manipulated to fall in with set ideals cannot be a real convert. This is because he or she has not been allowed any room to rationalise and internalise the gospel of the crusade, so to say.
Next, on the question of priorities, I would like to argue that it is a wrong ordering of priority to be crusading or praying for peace in the land.
What we should first and foremost pray or crusade for is justice, (which also conjoins fairness) in the land. Because without justice there can be no peace. And with justice reigning supreme in the land – throughout all the facets or institutions in the land – all other things will fall neatly in place. No mutual distrust. No crises. No tension. No violence.
Indeed, like the exhortation of our Lord Jesus Christ to his disciplines: seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all other things shall be added unto you.
Accordingly, with reference to Nigeria and Nigerians, I submit that we should seek first the “kingdom” of justice and fairness, and this done most, or even
all, of our national inter-group or inter-person feuds will cease. Unredressed injustice creates social disequilibrium, tension, civil disobedience, rebellion
and even revolution.
“Every act of injustice perpetrated in the land is a seed for violence” (Rev. Father
Ehusani).
In my essay, “of justice and peace” (The Guardian
on Sunday, May 10 1992) I maintained, “justice elevates a nation or an institution. Injustice, like a wasting cancer, slowly but persistently destroys the fabric
of society and leads on to eventual demise.”
I also argued that justice leads to peace; peace guarantees stability; stability ensures
growth, and growth culminates in development.
There is no shortcut to this flow from justice to development.
The centrality or cruciality of justice in national development was highlighted by the father
of the American constitution (1787). Their object was to fashion out a “more perfect union” than the ones they had before 1787. And in order to achieve this,
justice was listed as the topmost priority.
Peace is a state of quietude or tranquillity. But this is not to suggest that it is an
absolutely tranquil state of no dissidence. During pervading peace (predicated on justice) discordance or disagreement is comfortably accommodated within the overall
ambit of peace.
Indeed, dissent or the withholding of consent is one of the distinguishing features of
democracy.
“Peace is not absence of war,” maintained Baruch Spinoza, “it is a virtue, a state of
mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.”
Jawaharial Nehru also expressed similar views about peace: “peace is not merely an absence
of war. It is also a state of mind.”
As asserted earlier, any act or form of injustice in the land encourages violence.
However, violence, brutality, destructiveness, savagery, thuggery are never in themselves
solutions to felt injustice.
Injustice is corrected by a devotion to the golden rule actuated by a sensitised conscience,
the totality of whose operation situates in justice which, in this spiral of metaphysical relationships, leads on to peace.
The Christians’ rendition of the golden rule demands us to “do unto others what we would
or want them to do unto us.” This is a positive prescription.
On the other hand, to the confucianists, “do not do unto others what you would not want
them to do unto you.” Even though I am a practising Christian I personally consider the negative rendition or prescription of the golden rule by the confucianists
much more penetrating.
The operation of the golden rule is inextricably tied to the operation of conscience.
Conscience is the internalised soft voice of the creator within us. It adjudicates during our
moral or ethical dilemmas of right conduct and wrong conduct.
And after this “passive” dichotomisation of right and wrong, conscience in its “active”
and most crucial stage or phase insists that it is mandatory for us to choose the right conduct. Hence, I argued in my “dialectic of conscience”
(Sunday Times April 1, 1990) that there is nothing like bad conscience.
The Kantian categorical imperative that we should at all times treat the other person always
as an end in itself, and never as a means to an end (just as we would wish for ourselves) has the flavour of the golden rule.
The golden rule, which is clearly the first principle of a decent society, is religiously (or
metaphysically) founded on the fact that as human beings, we are, all of us, regardless of race, sex, religion or social status, created after the image of the creator,
the almighty. Thus, the human person shares a common sacred dignity or sanctity.
The other intriguing thing about violence is that it is the antithesis of power. In other
words, it has an inverse relationship with power. Where power reigns, violence does not exist. In short, violence manifests itself in the absence of power.
Furthermore, “violence ever defeats its own ends” (Hazilitt). It often consumes itself.
“Nothing good ever comes of violence” (Martin Luther).
The so-called euphoric “victory” of violence is in fact very transient; since “nothing
that is violent is permanent” (16th century proverb). And the so-called “victory” a common mission and a common goal.
There is no question that it was the frustration consequent on this mental occupation which
prompted the elder statesman, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, to declare that Nigeria is “a mere geographical expression.”
However, since then a lot of water had passed under the bridge.
We have fought and concluded an unfortunate 30-month fratricidal civil war in which we lost
over one million compatriots.
The Federal Government “mission slogan” for the civil war was “to keep Nigeria one is a
task that must be done.” This was a finality; and so beyond all or any question to the contrary.
It is very significant therefore that the late elder statesman, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was
himself, in the General Gowon’s federal cabinet (executive council) as the honourable commissioner for finance throughout the civil war.
In addition to this he was also the deputy chairman of the federal executive council; and as
such next to the head of state, General Gowon.
The point being made is that Nigeria can no longer be dismissed or waved aside as a “mere
geographical expression.” In other words, the very fact that the elder statesman, who made this statement in the 1950’s found it right and proper to serve in the
Gowon’s government (and holding very important offices) in the 1960’s and saw to it that Nigeria is sustained as a single indvisible country, means that the elder
chief had re-examined and recanted his earlier position or view on the Nigerian state.
Let me be quick to state that this obvious change of mind by the sage, does not in anyway
suggest that we now have a perfect union. We still have a long way to go in the attainment of this desirable goal. Lots of fine-tuning towards this are necessary here
and there.
In fact, it could be argued that the very fact that we are having peace forum
organised by the National Orientation Agency in all the six geo-political zones of the country provides sufficient or eloquent evidence that all is not well with the
Nigerian state or union.
However, in spite of this reality there is no question that in the famous words of General
Buhari in his famous maiden address to the nation on January 1, 1983, “we have no other country than Nigeria.” And so “we shall remain here and salvage it
together.” But obviously this cannot be done successfully outside of justice and fairness.
I believe that it was the same sentiment of love of country which impelled the 18th
century English patriot, Charles Churchill, to say, “be England what she will; with all her faults she is my country still.”
Another English patriot, William Cowper, expressed a similar, in fact identical, sentiment
when he said, “England, with all thy faults, I love thee still, my country.”
The Roman patriot, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, believed that it is honourable and noble to die
for the cause of one’s country: “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” which translates: “It is sweet and seemly thing to die for one’s country.”
But patriotism, which is the love of, and loyalty to, one’s country is practically strictly
contractual.
I addressed this thesis in my essay, “on patriotism as “contract (Vanguard,
March 28, 1995: Weekend Concord, April 22, 2000; Independent Monitor, May 1-3, 2000).
When W.C. Braun asserted that “no man be patriotic on an empty stomach” he was in fact
underscoring the contractual nature of patriotism.
Thus, when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy exhorted Americans (and also the world) in his
inaugural address (January 20, 1961) that “fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” he was obviously
suffused with idyllic romanticism which glossed over the two-way contractual nature of patriotism id
est duty to one’s country on the one hand, and the obligation of country to the citizen on the other hand. Put differently,
the responsibility of the citizen to his country in contractual social bond with the responsiveness of country to the citizen.
Chinua Achebe, also captured this when he stated, “patriotism being a part of an unwritten
social contract between a citizen and the state, cannot exist where the state reneges on the agreement. The state undertakes to organise society in such a way that the
citizen can enjoy peace and justice, and the citizen in return agrees to perform his patriotic duties,” (emphasis, mine).
In my essay “on patriotism as contract” I contended, “obviously, a dying citizen – an
unfortunate victim of state callous and criminal neglect (governmental maladministration) – can do nothing for his country. He simply cannot for quite obvious
reasons. He is simply too weak and frail physically or mentally.”
Continuing I posited, “now, how on earth can any one expect patriotism under the
circumstances from the down trodden, who are perpetually at the fringe or outskirts of society? They cannot have sufficient food to eat. They have no respectable
shelters. They can’t train their children. No adequate health care etc., etc, etc.
To these ‘living dead,’ or one foot to their non-metaphoric graves, every waking hour is
one catalogue of agonies; every sleep minute is waking sleep fraught with excruciating pangs of pain – stomach pains, mental pains.
And you expect them to be patriotic. What moral right?”
Then to rub salt into the injury, these veritable scum of society are seeing, played out to
their full view, two Nigerias – the one of the stupendously affluent, and the other of the ‘wretched of the earth.’
Affluence amassed through questionable means: corruption, graft, stealing, bunkering,
contract inflation, “419” etc, etc., which in fact subvert the country.
The point being made is that where there exists what I once called “graduated citizenship”
within the polity it would be practically impossible (and even immoral) to expect patriotism from the downtrodden; and who in any case makes up a preponderant majority
of the polity.
As consequence of such a situation we have estrangement or alienation of the citizen, who
under the circumstances does not feel that he (or she) has much stake in the system, which is rightly seen as hostile indeed.
And these pent-up negative feelings give vent to social disorder, which often eventually
culminates in political instability.
In the Sermon on the Mount our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ emphasised the importance of
peace when he said, “Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God,” (Matthew 5:9).
And as has been highlighted or stressed in this paper, peace can only be achieved in an
atmosphere of justice, fairness and equity. The case of Nigeria cannot be different.
Excerpts of a paper presented at the South-South zone peace forum organised by the National Orientation Agency in Port Harcourt Rivers State Professor David-West
teachers at University of Ibadan