Now while this should be a wake-up call for the Southwest, there is a broader concern for the nation. Here we are not talking about record-breaking results in which students made 9 A1’s as we would with excitement 20 years ago. Rather we are talking about the barest minimum for university admissions. So, nationally, we are moving backwards, and yes, the Southwest has shamefully and embarrassingly receded to the back of the line of achievement. This was the zone led by the most politically versatile mind who made enormous sacrifice of intellect and material resources that made the region the foremost pace-setter in the country.
There is, however, another side to the matter: the tragic pervasiveness of parental and teacher collusion in the cutting of corners in the matter of the education of our children. It is no longer a breaking news item that our schools and higher institutions are afflicted with the satanic forces of cultism. Where this is the case, every concern about quality of education is going to be compromised. Thus examination malpractice and cheating have become unfortunate features of our educational environment. A few months ago, the nation was treated to a nauseating expose of how a Punch reporter along with others, was able sit for the WAEC examination at a “miracle center” paying his way through, and he and others getting illicit help in return, such that despite the bragging of WAEC about blacklisting schools with malpractice records, he received his result with a credit in every subject! Yet he and those in that center copied their way through the examinations with the help of the paid invigilators and teachers.
This is an undeniable aspect of our educational system that we cannot wish away. We have to commit to serious effort to rid the system of such unwelcome development which permeates the system from secondary to the university levels. It is why businesses and industries do not have a good pool of potential workers to draw from. It is why the rate of unemployment is in the double digit. It accounts for the sea of heads that confront us at every nook and cranny of the nation urban space. It accounts for the frustration that leads to criminal and terrorist activities.
Awolowo on the economy
In Path to Nigerian Greatness, Chief Awolowo identified the characteristics of an underdeveloped economy deriving fromthree kinds of underdevelopment:
1. Underdevelopment of the mind, arising from ignorance, illiteracy, deficiency in technology and in technical and managerial know-how;
2. Underdevelopment of the body, arising from disease, bad and inadequate food, bad water, bad housing, meagre clothing, and filthy environment;
3. Underdevelopment of agriculture, and excessive and widespread underdevelopment of the rural population arising from underdevelopment of the mind and body, and from lack of savings and capital formation. (PNG, p.154)
He then made three further propositions from which he drew an inference:
1. All men have innate talents or talent ability” and must be given equal opportunity to develop.
2. When all talents have been developed fully, each must be given equal opportunity to contribute to socio-economic development.
3. The society as a whole (not just individuals) suffers when all talents in society are not fully developed.
4. Therefore, the solution to the problem of our country’s economic underdevelopment lie in the “full development and full employment of every Nigerian-man or woman, child or adolescent.” (emphasis in original): “no economic revolution has ever succeeded or will ever succeed, whether green or otherwise, which does not give the prime of place to the full development of man.” p.155
It is to be expected that when a man of thought deliberates and arrives at a conclusion, the next reasonable step is action on the basis of the thought process unless there is akrasia or weakness of the will. No one has ever accused Chief Awolowo of having a weak will at the point of putting words to action no matter what the sacrifice on his part might be. Therefore, it is not a surprise that in 1979, for him and his colleagues in the UPN, the reasoning leads to the four cardinal programs of the party, namely:
· Free education at all levels
· Integrated rural development
· Free health care
· Full employment (155-158)
From the foregoing, it follows that the “full development and full employment of every Nigerian citizen” should be the primary national objective of the nation because A GOOD NATIONAL EDUCATION POLICY AND PROGRAM IS INDISPENSABLE TO A GOOD NATIONAL ECONOMIC ADVANCEMENT.
What needs to be added is that a good national policy without an equally good action plan for its implementation cannot lead to national economic advancement. There is no better illustration of this observation than our experience in the last thirty years or so. The man who shepherded the economic policy of the country through a major national crisis during the civil war without the nation borrowing from external sources, cannot but be appalled at our peace time heavy borrowing that eventually led to the collapse of the economy in 1982.
While Chief Awolowo was not silent in the days of the military, he knew that those were abnormal situations and passing phases. He was forceful in condemning those policies of the military which militated against the welfare of the common run of men and he intervened strategically in a number of economic issues especially during the Agbekoya crisis in the West. But he expected politicians who presented themselves for positions of leadership to do their homework well with adequate plans in place for the welfare and advancement of the people. When this was not so, he did not hold back even when his criticism and suggestions were mischievously construed as sour-grapism. His 1982 paper on the economy and the NPN London Press Conference on same is a good illustration. The whole point about that debate was on the management of the economy in light of what was clearly a glut in the oil market.
Fast forward 33 years later, we have not moved an inch from where he warned the nation against complacency and laziness of mind and therefore we have not prevented the kind of crisis that he had responded to with thoughtful proposals which included the restructuring of the economy from our focus on oil. Now we have another oil glut. Yet, we are yet to restructure the economy away from mindless dependence on oil even when it was clear that our major export market was developing internal sources of supply including alternative sources of energy.
Is there a policy alternative canvassed by politicians and/or economists as a counter to Awolowo’s prescription? None. So, if there is a consensus of expert opinion on what needs done, what prevents those in authority from putting his prescription to work for the country? But that approach would have them include the masses in their reckoning as he did. And for those of them that still consider the masses as expendable, it was a bitter pill they would rather not swallow even if it meant that the county cannot make it developmentally.
A few weeks after the expiration of the tenure of President Goodluck Jonathan, Premium Times published the result of its investigation into the management of Excess Crude Fund by the Ministry of Finance and came up with a startling revelation that N11.56 trillion of the fund had not been accounted for in 8 years from 2007 to 2014. This was at a time when all the major infrastructures were left wasting away with no visible effort to develop them for economic advancement. To the question “where did the funds go?” we are now being treated to some tragic drama with revelations about defense and security funds that ended up in private bank accounts. This has been the fate of this nation from the beginning except that the extractive agents have become bolder and more creative. It will continue unless the masses decide to take their destinies in their hands.
The Arab Spring and its aftermath clearly reminds us that poverty is at the root of citizen discontent. The authors of Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty discovered this much in their research across the globe. In the particular case of the Arab Spring they interviewed the Tahir Square protesters one of who reportedly declared in palpable anger: “We are suffering from corruption, oppression and bad education. We are living amid a corrupt system which has to change.” (WNF, 2) If you didn’t know her identity and country of origin, you could justifiably deduce that she was a Nigerian.
Awo on politics and political arrangements
Chief Awolowo was clear from the beginning about the globally acknowledged characteristic features of representative democracy even if his peers pretended that Nigeria was a different entity.
He knew that a representative democracy must have competitive elections, separation of powers, rule of law, and ideological direction. (PNG p.123, Path to Nigerian Greatness.) He also knew that to be morally justified, the state must embrace an ultimate purpose, which is the welfare of the entire people without discrimination. If each family ensures this for its members, it stands to reason that they will expect the state to take up the responsibility once families are absorbed into the state. This was the logic that informed the ideology of “freedom for all, life more abundant” that the Western Region adopted in 1952. Since then, until his passing, Awolowo did not look back; neither did he abandon the ideology nor renege on the promise of social welfare policies and practices that it meant to the people. It was not difficult then for the Action Group to record its pace-setting achievements in the First Republic. Including the establishment of agricultural settlements, introduction and payment of minimum wage; establishment of first industrial estate and housing estate, first television service in Africa, Olympic size stadium, award of 200 scholarships to Nigerian students; and introduction of free universal primary education and free health services for children up to the age of 18. (PNG page 137)
When we put our minds to the philosophical rationale that Chief Awolowo presented for the four cardinal programs of the UPN, it cannot but amaze first, how much thinking went into it, and second, how clear and simple the principles were, and then third, how anyone could object to the policies emanating from such well-grounded principles to the extent of doing everything possible to scuttle their implementation.
Political structure: between federalism and unitarism
The issue of political structure was Awo’s struggle of a lifetime. His advocacy of a federal structure based on linguistic affinity was clear-headed and patriotically motivated. He reasoned that since language and culture attract, and since we had been gobbled together by an imperialist interest that paid no attention to language and culture, we could do ourselves a lot of good if we accepted the federal principle as the basis of our association. But he advocated for a federal principle based on scientific reasoning, not sentiments. He prescribed a medicine that had worked in other climes, arguing for a federation of eighteen states based on linguistic formula with great attention to the interests of minorities. If we had followed his prescription, we would now have strong and viable states that do not depend on federal allocations to survive.
No one can reasonably deny that what we have now is a sick federal system. But while there are still a few pockets of resistance to the imperative of federalism for the Nigerian state, it is no longer a dominant force. What still persists and endures is the determined effort of unitarists to circumscribe and constrain federal structure leading to the continued struggle for a true federal system.
For the unitarist, the nation is an indivisible and united entity and no room must be given to any divisive tendencies. On this view, federalism, which respects the component units in a multi-national or multi-ethnic union, is a contradiction in terms. It errs for allowing the sentiment of primordial attachments to prevail.
Elsewhere I had attempted to address the unitarist weak challenge to the advocacy of true federalism by identifying two ways of understanding the ultimate goal of unitarism as a system of building a new nation out of pre-existing motley nationalities. First, the unitarist goal is to break and grind all the pots of ethnic nationalities into one heap of clay where even the tiniest grains of the former pots would have completely disappeared. The clay is then to be used to make a new pot which bears no resemblance to any of the old. It is an illusion but reasonable people have entertained the prospect of its reality.
Second, as in variants of the melting pot analogy, a more violent exercise can be invoked. Collect all the artifices, including symbols, emblems, languages, even dialects integral to the being and identity of the component units and put them in a pot. Place the pot on fire and melt its contents until there are no traces of them to behold or identify. Thereafter, use the concocted outcome as the foundation of a new nation from which there can be no residue of the previous component cultures and their emblems. In both of these analogies, the success of the exercise is the complete disappearance of the old nations and the appearance of newly minted ideal—the unitary nation state.
The analogy is false for familiar reasons. An ethnic nationality is not a pot and cannot be melted like a wax. Nor is a language a bar of butter that can be melted by heat. The failure of melting pot ideas and practices is a reflection of the absurdity of their assumptions.
With a bit of propaganda and manipulation, the melting pot idea would work if the people are thoroughly mis-educated into thinking that indeed all of the pots were broken and melted or all of the contents were heated and melted. But the reality in the original cases of melting pot ideology was that, in fact, it was all ideology. All the pots, except the preferred one, were expected to be melted. All languages, all symbols, and all emblems were to be discarded except the preferred one into which others were to be assimilated. It was a ruse and upon its discovery as such, the scales were lifted off the eyes of folks. Now diversity is the rule and each ethnic group is proud of its symbols and linguistic heritage. A thousand flowers are blooming and beautifying the nation-space that proudly engages its differences. Of course, there are still ideologues of who the saying is true that patriotism is the refuge of the scoundrel.
There is more to the absurdity and the malady it spurns, especially in climes such as ours. In the case of the experience that we just narrated, at least there is one dominant culture into which others might be theoretically forced to assimilate. You could think of a dominant English or French or Spanish culture and you could argue, with some justification, that where immigrants are accepted and voluntarily agree to become citizens or residents, they ought to forget their past and reconcile themselves to their new life and locale. It worked in some cases, but not on a grand scale. But even where it worked, you could see it as a different setting and a different structure than ours.
From the beginning of this republic, it was clear that no one cultural or linguistic entity can lord it over others. No language was going to be superior, and no religion was going to be state religion. But apart from these negatives, it was also very clear that the ethnic nationalities that came together were going to have to retain a sensible amount of their heritage in culture, language, and customs. The regions that constituted the governing structure of these nationalities were to symbolize their distinctness and uniqueness. We thus had reason to brag about our “unity in diversity.” This means, for all intents and purposes, that we were not discarding our diversity and we were not melting the pot of our differences into a heap of uniformitarian clay. That was our understanding of the union we were entering into.
Now what do we have? Our different languages are dying a slow death. If the National Assembly cannot reasonably avoid English as its official language because there is no wazobia yet, there is no justification for the preferences of our state assemblies for “speaking in tongues”.
And in the maddening craze to build uniformity rather than unity in diversity, we seem prepared to deny the diversities of our heritage. We seem to be so unsure of the value of our various traditions and symbols, those subtle but real markers of identity that make us who we are, that we can just pretend that they don’t exist and we will be created a new being and a new people. We are being urged to believe that this land, out of the ashes of discarded memories, will rise as a completely new entity. We deceive ourselves.
Some have irrationally questioned the audacity of a state assembly choosing its anthem and symbols of identity. But granted there is a National Flag that stands for the entire nation, why is the idea of a State having a State flagso dangerous to the theory and practice of nationhood? Where states have identity markers including flags, anthems, even trees and animals identified with them, these are means of promoting the psychological well-being of citizens and promoting healthy competition among states. We should stop pretending that we can forget our heritage and still remain ourselves. We should each embrace them and bring out their virtues to bear on the future that we covet.
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