The fallacies of unity 

By

Obi Nwakanma 

Nigeria's democratic transition will not be complete until the central problem of enfranchisement is dealt with, within the polity.

As at today, what has gone on in Nigeria is an organized, fraudulent and manipulated system by which a truly democratic process could never emerge. But more and more as the debate over the nature of the Nigerian state continues, many of those truly committed to change in Nigeria will continue to emphasize the restructuring of the federation, through the democratic process, to allow power, the true power of the state, to rest upon the will of the people.

I have been fascinated by a number of events in the last couple of months, which have framed the debate about the wisdom or not of having a sovereign national conference. First, the minister for justice, Chief Bola Ige recants his position of several years, proposing that the National conference was no longer feasible in the context of what he sees as our current democratic achievements. The dubiousness of that argument becomes even more remarkable with his theory of forfeiture.

In his view, all those who chose to jump into the wagon of the Abubakar transition, had lost the moral right to propose the National conference. Only those, he says, like Anthony Enahoro, Wole Soyinka, Cornelius Adebayo, Alani Akinrinade and co, who chose to opt out of that program could justifiably canvas for the conference.

Well, what this kind of argument does is to estimate Nigeria's sovereign quest in the will of an elite few, who either agree or disagree. But it also creates a distraction: the very fact that one of the leaders of the so-called progressive movement (whatever that means in Nigeria) did an ideological summersault provides an awesome amount of tinder for the likes of Wada Nas and Jubril Aminu.

I do not need here to draw a character profile of those two but we must know, that Jubril Aminu is the brilliant, 'fair-haired boy' of the Northern conservative establishment and currently Nigeria's Ambassador to the United States.

Through his career he has been a beneficiary of the lopsided policies that have favoured inequity in the distribution of national perks: after a brilliant medical training, he was moved straight on from a junior faculty position to head the powerful National Universities Commission and from thence, placed on a roller-coaster to the most powerful positions in Nigeria.

I do believe that Jubril Aminu can stand his own anywhere, but he has been part of a very destructive system that has created elite privileges and made the rest subservient. Wada Nas, (also sometimes referred to as the Nasty Wada) on the other hand embarked on a rabble-rousing career when he was appointed, after Walter Ofonagoro, as Abacha's propaganda chief.

This Goebellian archetype, from all indications soon discovered his true vocation, when he strove all through that dark regime to sell the most ludicrous views on Abacha and on the right of the North to rule. From all indications he is currently jobless, but draws attention with his continuous media forays, defending what he thinks is a 'Northern position'. One of those positions is the need to canonize his buddy Sani Abacha, from demon to saint. Unfortunately, Abacha's history is etched on stone, although his acolytes, like the Nasty Wada struggle on.

These two have roused my interest in the last couple of weeks, over their comments on the Nigerian question: in separate, unrelated circumstances, both have touched upon the critical issues, and their interpretations, of the conditions that are at the heart of the nationality crisis. In a recent interview with the Weekend Vanguard, Wada Nas explored the whole idea of resource control, and what it means in relations to Nigeria.

What struck me in his responses in this interview were the fallacies, and misreadings of both historical and sociological facts about Nigeria. As Wada would say, if the South insisted upon resource control, meaning the control of such a thing as the oil deposits in the South, then the North would insist on the control of the massive human resource that is the population in the North.

My response to that is, that Wada does not have his figures correctly. It has long been a contention among serious demographers about the claim of the massive population in the North.

It is not true, in fact, that the population of the political North is more than you can find in the political South. I think the reverse is the truth. A look at the population statistics from the colonial period, sustains my assumption: 1906, 1921, and 1944 recorded a higher population figure in the census conducted in that period.

But whereas the population of the East, which was the highest in the period examined, for instance, was made to show massive, irreconcilable decline, the North saw a quantum leap in its population, in a progression which would have startled Adam Smith, from the 1960s downwards.

This question of the population figure was very central to the factors that led to the crisis of the First Republic, when the regional governments rejected the population figures manufactured to sustain the demographic control of Nigeria, at a time, when population was, and in fact remains, the benchmark for resource distribution.

As I write this I have before me the diskettes of the manuscripts of a colonial officer, Harold Smith, who has detailed how the departing British, in one of its most dubious acts, rigged both the elections and the census in their effort to leave power in the hands of their minions. So I do not quite think that Wada Nas has any point there. If I should be as foul-mouthed as he, I would say, he should go to hell with his population.

I do agree with him, however, that in a very normal federal union, the Northern states should be able to make money with the resources so abundantly available to them. Through agriculture, they could expand an industrial base, regulate the prices of food, and deal with the problem of scarce funds. I do not believe that Wada Nas knows that it would take the modernization of farm methods, dairy production, and the deeper understanding of the economics of modern industrial farming to come to this point.

So, his problems ought to be how to develop the population that would transform this, into reality: he would need an educated and liberated population, not stuck up in the primitive feudal strangle-hold of a blind oligarchy.

People like Wada Nas who spout the population bogey, should worry when only one state in Nigeria produces a quarter of Nigeria's highly trained manpower. That is the real trouble. When he talks about food production, I wish Wada Nas would understand, that advancements in biotechnology has cancelled out the question of land as an issue in massive food production. But of course, still trapped in his 14th century mentality, he does not read the lips of the future. As for Jubril Aminu, his comments at the Champion Newspapers 'Better Society Lecture' last week leaves a deeper question about his cognitive capacity: Aminu ought to know, that Nigeria cannot run under a unitarist structure. But if he does not appreciate that, let me provide one simple insight for him: Nigeria's diversity compels the acknowledgement of the constitutional framework upon which we must work.

The basis of the independence constitution, was the principle of plurality, the understanding that nothing else could guarantee the equality of the various ethnic identities that make up the Nigerian collage. Moreover, the excuse upon which the Northern army usurped and murdered General J.T.U Ironsi, Nigeria's first military head of state, and caused events that spiraled into massive genocide of the Igbos and to civil war, was the idea sowed around that he was moving towards creating a unitary state. That is on record.

Although of course, all military regimes thereafter have run this country around the centralization of power, it has borne us more ill than good. Nigeria's terrible underdevelopment has been largely so because a group of unimaginative, ignorant leadership hijacked power and ran this country like a casino. There have been no room for pure devolution of power to allow the creative energy to flow. Besides, in the context of Jubril Aminu's analysis, unity is an illusion until all constituent parts of this pseudo-federation, feel themselves to be equal partners in the Nigerian venture. But how can that be?

Not when a deputy governor of a state takes it upon himself to launch a jihad against 'foreigners' meaning Nigerians who have come from other parts to settle in Kano because they enjoy and sell alcohol. Not when the same Nigerians, who have lived in other parts of Nigeria, pay their taxes, carry the Nigerian passports, and know no other country, are denied the rights of citizenship to life, to property, to freedoms and indeed to livelihood.

They are denied these because of the 'son-of-the- soil.' Even when you can guarantee all these, because of the peculiar architecture of this colonial enterprise, a unitary state will certainly be a call to arms. The reason is that Nigeria is not a negotiated entity it is an imposed illegality.

But Jubril Aminu is blinded by other considerations to understand this. He pretends however to the fallacies and the illusion of unity.