Lineage of absolutism: A Nigeria without Nigerians 

By

Professor Adebayo Williams 

No nation is ever given...nationalism attests to this

A celebrated German military historian, philosopher and wit has observed that war is the continuation of politics by other means. In post-independence Nigeria this cutting aphorism is often stood on its head; politics as the continuation of war by other means. Sometimes this war of all against all is open and hot, sometimes it is cold and of the low intensity variety, but the operational procedure and defining paradigm of our miserable existence is violence in all its forms and subtle mutations. Why are we permanently at war with each other, and why do we appear to be bound to violence in a state of nature where everything is short, nasty and brutish?

The constitutive ethos of Nigeria was an act of imperial violence against the constituting nationalities. Nigeria is like a test-tube baby whose birth is clinically induced, an act of fundamental violence against nature. Not a single one of Nigeria’s major nationalities escaped the pacifying wrath of the colonising imperium. The Ijebus got their comeuppance in 1892. The Ilorin cavalry met its Waterloo in February, 1897. The Aros were defeated in 1901. In 1903, the caliphate’s army was routed and the last caliph killed in action. Before all these encounters, the Bini army was subdued and the king sent on exile. There is nothing spectacular about such aggressions. The birth of the modern nation-state from the ruins of the old empires was marked by prolonged violence, which convulsed the whole of Europe. This was how the nations began germinating after the peace of Westphalia in 1648, which gave the principalities some rights as electors and abridged the universal authority of the Catholic Church. In a sense then, most nations are artificial offspring of violence. The difference is that many visionaries recognise the artifice for what it is and then get to work. After Garibaldi had forcibly unified modern Italy, D Aveglo, a great parliamentarian of the period observed: "Now that we have created Italy, it is time to create Italians". The role of certain national institutions, particularly the military, in this national becoming cannot be gain said. They act as catalysts and binding glue. Unfortunately in Nigeria, these institutions, because of their organic deficiencies and lopsided development, have become the greatest enemies of nation building.

The greatest error of judgment of succeeding generations of Nigerian elite is the assumption that Nigeria is already given, a custom-built product ordered by the imperialist fiat of a British gentleman. The sublime irony may be lost on generations of rulers but this assumption constitutes an act of violence against truth and reality. No nation is ever given. The mixed legacy of the phenomenon of nationalism attests to that. By that token, no nation is sacrosanct. Only the people are sacred and sacrosanct. The nation-state is just a mode of organising territorial space at a particular conjuncture of history. The Yoruba people for example have thrived as the dominant nationality of a multi-national empire, as multiple colonial protectorates, as an embryonic city-state, as part of several nation-states and as a race in Diaspora. A major nationality can also be without a state of its own. Strewn across at least five nations, the Kurds are learning to live with the modern absurdity that the idea of a Kurdish nation did not coincide with the post-Ottoman imperialist cartography of the Middle East. Without the internationalisation of the slave trade, this last phenomenon would have been unthinkable. Let it also be noted that in the march of history when a state becomes an obdurate historic burden on its constituents, then the very logic of its existence becomes very problematic.

But let me also note that Nigeria is star-studded. If such a nation had not existed, it would have had to be invented. There is something infinitely satisfying, even profoundly self-subverting, a mystical turn of retribution, in the logic that brought colonial invaders to see the need for a strong central state in this part of Africa. Nigeria’s imminent destiny as a multi-national haven for the Black people has never been in doubt. Nigeria presents an epic opportunity for the Black race to rise above the crippling limitations of its recent history and to transcend historic inequities. A people of mutual ancestry divided and split down the line by adopted culture. It is the task of Nigeria to transcend the contradictions and then harmonise and harness the strengths and energies of the two dominant civilisations of our millennium, the Islamic and western civilisation in order to leap frog into the twenty first century. That task had almost been accomplished by some of its consistent units before the intrusion of armed colonialisation. But we cannot wish away eighty seven years of forced cohabitation. It is useful to remind us of how ordinary Nigeria has fared in the face of such historic abdication of leadership and responsibility by its ruling group. By subterfuge and quiet subversion, Nigerians have managed to create some identity for themselves. The endlessly satirised and occasional demonised Nigerian prototype shown on Western television is not a figment of some racist imagination, but a reality. To the best of my knowledge and ability, the peculiar accent and injunction, the mannerisms and gestures of this eponymous Nigeria, cannot be traced to any particular ethnic group. The immigration official who quickly put down the new arrival walking majestically towards him as a Nigerian is drawing on his expertise of national psychology. The swashbuckling bravura, the lordly gait and imperious carriage fit a certain national profile. Other Africans are usually overawed and diffident when approaching the shrine of the timeless tormentors of their ancestors. But not so the rogue Nigerians who ride the psychological bumps with aplomb. Again, this exasperating post-colonial subject cannot be reduced to an ethnic constituency in Nigeria.

But the obverse of this coin of derelict leadership is also the negative identity Nigerians have created for themselves to fill the vacuum. The association of Nigeria and Nigerians with international fraud, global extortionist syndicates, multinational drug cartels, transnational drug smuggling and other heinous acts of economic malfeasance is a standing rebuke to the inability of the leadership to harness and channel the dynamic energies of the people to more productive avenues. In our time, this signal lack of a sustained nation-building ethos has led directly or indirectly to the rise of ethnic militias, the resurgences of regional supremacist organisations, Sharia separatists and resource control insurgents. These centrifugal forces relentlessly tugging at the already frayed and frazzled fabric of the nation have turned this period into the most interesting and explosive in the history of the country. We are the overloaded bearers of the burden of history and past excesses. The sins of past generations and ours have caught up with us, and we must find urgent solutions or be overwhelmed by them. A desperate disease needs a desperately inventive remedy. Having enumerated the symptoms of our national malaise. I must now proceed to a diagnosis of the ailment.

We must return to the great German philosopher who observed that war is the continuation of politics by other means. Despite its bleak pragmatism and biting cynicism, the aphorism grants primacy to politics over war in the conduct of human affairs. After the most savage of hostilities, after the most bloody of contentions, we must still return to the negotiating table to politics, which remains the principal vehicle for ordering the affairs of men. A truce is a mere causation of hostilities before the resumption of battle. But no peace or settlement has ever been negotiated on the battlefield. Given the primacy of war over politics in our national life, given the aptitude for violence and the swift breakdown of all post-independence agreements, we must ask ourselves whether what we have been having are not mere truces before the resumption of the next round of hostilities. How then do we move the country from this pact with violence and eventual suicide to a pacted negotiation of our collective future? Strange as it is, then countries do survive civil wars as long as there is a political foundation to such countries. But no country can survive for long the absence of fundamental or fundamental politics. Incessant wars and endlessly violent contentions are the usual early symptoms of such want. For an intensely political people, it is another great paradox of our national existence that we can be accused of poverty of politics. But politics involves much more than bargaining for political office or jostling for allocation of resources. Politics involves wisdom, tact, moderation and restraint. This is why the ancient Greeks often hoped for a philosopher-king a person of sobriety and profound wisdom to pilot their affairs.

There are three main ingredients of foundational politics, I call them the three "C's". Consensus, compromise and conciliation. Consensus involves determining the aggregate reality of the nation for the greatest happiness of the greatest number of citizens. Compromise involves yielding a hard stance or shifting ground in the overall national interest. Conciliation involves making concessions to the injured and humiliated of the land. In certain European countries, this arrangements based principally on elite consensus is known as constitutional politics. The greatest periods of peace Nigeria has known have always been when there is a substantial elite agreement about the destiny of the nation. This can be seen in the run up to independence and also during General Olusegun Obasanjo’s first coming when there seems to have been a consensus among the dominant political factions and the military hegemony on the need to return the country to civil rule. Conciliation could be seen at work in the decision of the dominant northern political establishment not to seek the presidency after the trauma of annulment and the tragic death of Bashorun MKO Abiola. But this conciliation was undermined when the political generals took over the machine and insisted on a particular candidate. For a multi-national nation with a complex and complicated reality, these examples are few and far between, and they point at the tragedy of our time. The greatest threat to peace and the corporate survival of Nigeria has always occurred during military rule. Military rule is the supreme triumph of violence when elite consensus disintegrates. But the ground is usually prepared by the phenomenon of a civilian government transforming into a civil autocracy, scheming to take over opposition territory by hook or crook. We saw this in 1963 and we hope we are not seeing it in the run up to 2003. By its organisational nature, the military is the natural enemy of compromise, consensus and conciliation and hence of foundational politics. The greatest assault on politics in post-independence Nigeria is the criminal annulment of the 1993 presidential election. The great damage to the national fabric, and the instability generated by that history making event are still with us. With the active connivance and collaboration of several segments of the political class, the military graduated from coups against the state to a coup against political society, hence a coup against the nation which is the worst form of treason by an institution created to defend the same country against internal and external aggression.

What is at stake, and what has made all these transgressions against the nation possible, is the absence of core values. Without core values, there can be no foundational politics. And in the absence of core values, the state itself becomes a hostage to political misfortunes, an alien territory to be ravished and defiled at will. What then fills the vacuum is the politics of anti-politics. The greatest exponents of this are the soldiers. In an attempt to rankshift the civilian faction of the political class and turn them into junior partners in the project of national de-construction, the soldiers have dealt severe body blow on the twin concept of the subordination of the military to civil authorities, and the idea of politics as a patriotic vocation. They have created a civilian class in their own image and in what is obviously a normalisation of the abnormal, we see retired generals taking over a party formed by civilians acquiescing, we see great politicians fronting for great despots in putative parties dominated by unreconstructed dictators, we see our greatest political figures accepting as "natural" the ascendancy of former military dictators. This militarisation of politics and the politicisation of the military has led to grave consequences for both institutions. In the case of the military it led to a spectacular unraveling with the Oputa panel resounding to the echoes of professional suicide. In the case of politics, the terminal consequences and fatal possibilities are simply too gruesome to contemplate. It is like a horoscope of catastrophe. The suicide of politics heralds the end of the nation. The rank of traditional politicians with their hereditary failings has now been swollen by a hybrid creation of the military part gangster, part buccaneer and part political adventurer. After fifteen years of dubious social and political engineering, it is a sad irony that this is the greatest political bequeathment to the nation from the military laboratory of national atrocity. Yet after criminalising the noble calling of politics, and in the absence of core values and a sharp deterrent, the perpetrators of this monumental heist against the black race are scheming to stage a come back. They want to put finishing touches to their post-colonial guinea pig. As the year 2001 approaches, the primacy of violence over politics, the spectre of unfinished business and the return of the repressed stares the nation in the face. As Lenin would ask what then is to be done?

To invoke the name of Lenin, the greatest revolutionist the world has seen, only to come up with a dubious phrase like "the long revolution" is like tempting intellectual fate too far. A revolution is usually a short, sharp and severe affair. The idea of a long revolution is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoronic formulation. Yet although the actual revolution is a sharp and brisk affair, the groundwork preceding the radical rupture with the past, the momentum of contradictions building up to the explosive finale, is a slowly germinating affair, beyond the prying eyes of humanity but under the watchful vigil of history. In the light of the preceding picture painted, it may be tempting to conclude that nothing has changed in Nigeria. But that would amount to a radical misreading of historical signals. Given the primacy of violence over politics, the state has lost its monopoly of the instrument of enforced compliance. It is easier to learn how to handle a gun than to master the complexities and intricate intrigues of vocational politics. The result is the privatisation of violence and liberalisation of coercion. The climate of uncertainty has thus assumed a wider national spread. Since violence is the organising principle of the society, no one is safe anymore. The phenomenon of graduate armed robbers, a stem reproach to the wastage of human capital, points to a losing battle with revolutionary anarchy. The resulting social ferment has led to a democratisation of fear and the equalisation of unease and anxiety. Not even men trained in the domination of their environment would dare take a solitary walk in the urban jungle of our main cities. Added to the demystification of our law enforcement agents is their pathetic social and political plight. When the police boast that they have arrested a "criminal" like Ganiyu Adams only for the people to come in their busloads to hail such a "criminal" as their hero, saviour and liberator, then we have added loss of authority and legitimacy to the democratisation of violence.

I invite you all to picture a grim scenario. What if the loss of legitimacy and authority were to extend to the realm of politics in an atmosphere of privatised violence and in an age when the military has suffered self-demystification as a patriotic arbiter? It is obvious that the slide to revolutionary anarchy would accelerate and become irreversible. All the dominant negative forces would be roused to vengeful fury and the demons of violent disintegration would be on hand. It is this beast of bloody balkanisation that we must fear. It is already on the loose, and its frightening apocalyptic visage is apparent to those blessed with the power of extra-sensory perception.

So while 2003 is critical, it is obvious that something is even more crucial beyond this, and that is the survival of the nation. The good news is that established political wisdom suggest that the Nigerian political class does not have the moral and heroic wherewithal to commit suicide. They will always come back to their senses. Nobody wants to leave the good things of life, and certainly not the Nigerian politician. The pattern suggests that after raising hell and overheating the system as a bargaining chip, they will quietly plump for a compromise whether honourable or dishonourable. The bad news, however, is that each time you overheat a political system, it loses a bit of its elastic capacity for pain and gluttony for punishment. Besides, there are so many other contrary forces in contention, which may pin you down and prevent you from leaving the brink. Political brinkmanship is not a game but public enactment of suicide by installment. As the countdown to 2003 begins, and if only for the purposes of enlightenment self-interest it is imperative for the political class to shed some of the nastier attributes, which have given, rise to the phenomenon of the ugly Nigerian politician. Let us now enumerate what must be done in order to keep the patient alive and our collective hope in good shape. Efforts must be made to minimise inter-party and intra-party intolerance. No association of human beings can be completely rid of conflicts. Problems arise when conflicts degenerate to bitter feuds and bloody contention. The current equilibrium of political forces, which holds the country together, must also be respected. Attempts to take over opposition strongholds either through dubious landslides or deliberate acts of destabilisation must not be encouraged by the ruling party or by disaffected members of opposing parties. This politics of violence has in the past sent direct invitation to the professional managers of violence. In future, it might serve as an invitation to non-professional managers.

The problems facing Nigeria are more severe than costly electoral victories. Let us for the moment leave behind us the whole idea of politics as a zero sum game, the frantic monetisation of voting and voters, the deliberate contracting of the political space opened up with the blood of the several sung and unsung martyrs of the struggle against military absolutism and the denial of a political platform to credible opposition through non-registration of new parties and other bureaucratic disincentives. The existence of these major figures of civil society outside the regular framework of political contention robs the system of credibility and legitimacy and creates room for the phenomenon of anti-politics as a violation. If it is not carefully handled it may lead to elite disavowal of politics and the belief that the real task of nation-building is beyond the moral and ideological compass of professional politicians. These measures, when and if taken, will not save Nigeria. They will merely provide us with the breathing space necessary to prepare the ailing giant for a major restorative surgery. At some point in the nearest future we shall have to find the will and the willingness to sit down and fashion for the nation some core values which will serve as the anchor for missionary and visionary politics.

Such a gathering of the "tribe" will comprise of institutions of the state, vestiges of the pre-colonial states, organs of civil society nationalities and other stake-holders in the Nigerian project. Such an extraordinary assembly is beyond the scope, conception and historic brief of the current national assembly which is an assembly in transition, providing a critical bridge between demilitarisation and recivilisation. The first task of this assembly will be unification or harmonisation of political values for the country. A situation in which a person is regarded as state-robber in some sections of the country and as a hero in some other sectors and yet with total indifference in a third does not conduce to nation-building. Beyond the current ad-hoc temporising, the assembly must look into the issue of deterrence and the foundation of social justice. In ending, let me recall a phrase I used at the beginning of my concluding remarks.

Nigeria is in the grips of a lone revolution, and no one is sure of how it will play out. There are simply too many variables and permutations, too many possibilities between radical restructuring and revolutionary anarchy. It is not the business of the intellectual to offer confronting illusions. For the past twenty years many of us at grave peril to our lives and at the risk of exile have cried in the wilderness about the country’s descent into chaos and ungovernability. The newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals of this period are our testimony to posterity. Let us solemnly, and with a sense of duty and loyalty to our country, warn that the omens are still unclear. It may be morally reassuring to imagine that we have seen off forever the back of armed interlopers in our political process. But in a polity still hostage to the primacy of violence over politics, still vulnerable to military-inspired political offensives, this is grossly unscientific. What seems to have exhausted its historic and political possibilities in Nigeria is a type of armed intervention by a type of military. Let us only hope that our fabled mystical luck holds and everybody does his and her duty in the coming years. 

December 2001