The medium is the message
By
Communications experts have said that the medium is the message. The man who says a thing can be the message even though what he says might have been said before; the place where he says what he says can equally become the news. The acid test of this thesis came last Monday. Professor Adebayo Adedeji, well-known economist, international civil servant was served by the Awolowo Foundation, one of Nigeria’s agenda-setting institutions, to pronounce on what has become a boring subject.
We would have told Adedeji to tell us another It will but only reflect our boredom with a situation in which the status quo cannot remain. So, we cannot say so. Our frustration makes that attitude impossible.
Adebayo has never been known to rock the boat or ruffle feathers unduly. If anything, most people regard him as an establishment man. He was long in the government system and was part of the system’s policy-making.
It will raise no eyebrows for cerebral organ like the Awolowo Foundation to provoke debates on current issues and no-one wondered that it did ask Adebayo to put his thoughts down on the vexing question of our Federalism. Both instantly became the message. Awolowo Foundation became an albatross for Adebayo Adedeji: would he say it like it is? Would he take umbrage in double-speak?
What did Professor Adedeji say anew concerning the imperatives for strengthening our union that has not been said before? Nothing.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo, leader of the Action Group; leader of the UPN; leader of the Yoruba; Premier of the Western Region; Leader of Opposition in Her Majesty’s Government has said almost everything that needed to be said in his books beginning with Paths to Nigerian Freedom.
If certain names remain today in our memories, it is mainly because of their identification with self-determination in a rounded federalism. Calabar, Ogoja, Rivers (COR) and United Middle-Belt (UMC) among others remind us of that titanic struggle . Eyo Ita, Joseph Tarka, Ibrahim Imam, H. Omo Osagie are beacons of that era and that epic battle.
Some of the constitutions, which Professor Adedeji reminded us of, were not written yesterday; they reflected our anxieties that certain conditions precedent must be addressed and, in fact, were addressed. Until the neo-colonial Nigerian military changed the face of Nigerian politics.
In modern times the stresses and the strains of our polity have been traced to our disregard for our various sensitivities and most contributors to the debate have advised that we go back to the basics like Professor Adedeji advised last Monday.
The MNR of the veteran politician and foremost statesman, Chief Anthony Enahoro, has been unequivocal in its advocacy of rethinking Nigeria into eight zones or regions each homogeneous or approximating the general consensus to live together. I have always advocated six. Not just in name; to all intends and purposes.
With the advertised subject, no-one needed to have bothered to attend or to listen. But Professor Adedeji is not just another Nigerian; his voice carries; even if what he wants to say is pedantic, the man is not. His lecture was very easy to follow; but once in a while he could not negotiate the economics language of fiscal federalism. It is not an ordinary subject; it is specialised and specialists are permitted to speak their own lingo. He did.
If one did not want to attend, despite the personality of the lecturer, Awo is a name that attracts and the Foundation lectures have always been a watering hole for progressives, pretenders to the ideology and their friends.
To debate the issues that will weld our country together; remove our political anxieties is what must be encouraged. And the issue of our imperfect federalism has been at the root of our crises that do not seem to want to go away. To abandon the debate is to consign our peoples to perdition. The Yoruba say: Kikan kikan l’a d’ifa aditi (You divine for the deaf very noisily). Some people are just deliberately deaf; they hear but pretend not to do.
Their recalcitrance is understandable: they do not have faith in their own ability or capacity; if they cannot climb on another’s back, they’d rather progress is stalled. The truth of the matter is that every aspect of this country is endowed. It needs faith in ourselves, love and collective desire in our destiny to surmount the odds and make the great mark, that can only be ours.
We must continue to debate our state; suggest solutions and create the will to accept our failings. The moment we stop doing that, we must prepare for death; not in the biological sense but in the all-embracing sense of atrophy.