The Narratives of National Distress in the Management of the Nigerian Debacle

[caption id="attachment_55433" align="alignright" width="600"] Ademola Araoye[/caption] By Ademola Araoye For the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the scurrying away in humbling circumstances, of, hopefully, the last vestiges of military rule in 1999 yielded many paradoxes. Rather than consolidate the notion of one indivisible Nigeria with a consensual monistic sovereign center and a homogenizing Order anchored on a strong foundation of unassailable ideo-nationalistic props, the long military interregnum spanning a whole generation and covering three quarters of the entire life of independent Nigeria, 1966 to 1999, was characterized by the ascendance of a permanently conspiratorial sub national partisan hegemonic force. That nebulous force was built around an inspired sectional caucus of the Nigerian Armed Forces. The force assumed centrality in its occupation of the federal center. The debilitating ozone layer that emerged in that center has remained an immovable impediment to freedom and development. It has sought to emasculate holistic growth of the Nigerian state space. This controversial center merely sought to brutally impose and rationalize in convenient patriotic rhetoric the in depth contradictions of an institutionalized political space in disequilibrium. In fact, the core of this military, associated with and in collaboration with partisan social and political constituent forces, emerged as the questionable instrument and dedicated guardian of Nigeria’s status quo defined by a partisan hegemony. From the brazen sectional orientations of the regimes of Ibrahim Babaginda to the monstrous Sani Abacha military autocracies, the will of the ever dwindling core North and the partisan interests of its people were equated with the will of the federation. The geo-political structural configuration of the state was a reflection of the hegemonic character of the federal center. However, the troubling status quo did not go unchallenged. With the country firmly in the throes of military adventurers and gamblers, putsches and coup d’etat became synonymous with disaffection with the extant regimes. But they also often portended profound differences on the vision of Nigeria, including the structural imbalances that had alienated a vast majority of the South from the northern dominated and oriented Nigeria project. The Major Gideon Orka coup of April, 1990 against the Babaginda regime expressed this disaffect. The coup was advanced as staged on behalf of the patriotic and well-meaning peoples of the Middle Belt and the southern parts of this country. It was remarkable for its explicit denunciations and attempt to excise parts of the core north from the federation. Orkar highlighted countless examples of what he termed as “the exploitative, oppressive, dirty games of intrigues of its (hegemonic) class, where people and stooges that can best be described by the fact that even though they contribute very little economically to the well-being of Nigeria, they have over the years served and presided over the supposedly national wealth derived in the main from the Middle Belt and the southern part of this country, while the people from these parts of the country have been completely deprived from benefiting from the resources given to them by God.” This pronouncement imported serious implications for the internal cohesion of this North. [caption id="attachment_55744" align="alignright" width="640"] Ibrahim Babangida[/caption] By that salvo, Major Orkar repudiated the assumed singularity and seamlessness of a convergent interest of one geographical North. He thereby illuminated the tensions inherent in and emanating from the heterogeneous character of the North. Gideon Orka conceived his repudiations as “revolution as for the marginalized, oppressed and enslaved peoples of the Middle Belt and the south with a view to freeing ourselves and children yet unborn from eternal slavery and colonization by a clique of this country”. Orkar’s proclamation hinted at the potential for the future demise of the notion of a North in the fullness of Nigeria’s evolution. It has taken another two decades for Orkar’s assertions in that regard to be concretized and for the Nigerian process to come full cycle. The Association of Middle Belt Ethnic Nationalities (ASOMBEN), representing Major Orkar’s home base, has formally debunked the generalization of all states in the northern part of the country as one entity called North. For the association, it is wrong to lump Middle Belt with the North. The ASOMBEN affirms that the old Northern Region and all the other 3 region ceased to exist when General Aguiyi Ironsi abolished them through Decree 34 on 24th May, 1966. The Association further stressed that the belief that the Middle Belt is part of the larger north is erroneous and should be discarded adding that the people of Middle Belt had since stopped addressing themselves as part of the north. In this fullness of time, even Southern Kaduna, in the assumed capital of this dilapidated hitherto granite political entity within the federation, has opted out of being considered as of part of the old North. The evolution of the Nigerian national process has therefore entailed incremental factional interest articulations and identity modifications along finer ethno-regional and ethno-religious lines that have geo-physically altered the social and political boundaries of Nigeria’s old North. Paradoxically, Western Nigeria, even in the face of its robust and sometimes riotous internal proclivities, has sustained its rally as a relatively monolithic socio-cultural and political space. This has been evident the more attempts have been made to balkanize and factionalize its internal arrangements by forces external to the region. The two most defining outcome of Nigeria’s ending evolutionary cycle from 1953 to date has been the dissipation of the concept of one North and the emergence and ascent of radical minority groupings in the old Mid West, the old Eastern Nigeria and in the Middle Belt of central Nigeria. With this evolution has been the increasingly contracting circle of the constituent groups internal to the hegemony. In the latter instance, the end of the civil war revealed the depth of animus in the now designated South-South in its complex relations with the Ibo heartland- the rump of a putative and aspiring Republic of Biafra. These developments have significantly altered the internal construction and balance of forces in Nigeria in the beginning of the Third millennium. It would impact the comparative leverages of the fraternal interlocutors in a definitive manner in articulating and advancing their subjective interests in the process of negotiating a new political settlement for the country. The now fossilized dissipation of the historic solidity of the once granite internal cohesion of the old behemoth North is a major cause and, at the same time, effect of the loss of relative capacity to dictate the terms of Nigeria’s future. In the long term military rule, in its character as the dominant instrument of hegemony, succeeded in validating the very struggle against going on with one Nigeria as constructed. The interregnum undermined the civil war rallying mantra of keeping Nigeria one as a task that must be done. Despite the no victor, no vanquished policy, the core North, unimpeded by often self serving and fawning convenient interlocutors from the South, went on a historic rampage building a brutal hegemonic state. The political economy of hegemony was assured by the incongruent political structure and the debasement of universal values and standards in favor of the Nigeria specific that was tailored to advance the objectives of the hegemonic force. Nigeria, consistent with the image of these single minded partisan appropriators, was plainly structured to advance the partisan interest of the North. This hollow interest, whatever it substantively was, was at variance with the overall national will. Yet, these accommodations did not translate into a preponderant growth for the North and its milling talakawas in any way. At the same time, it decimated the opportunity for the corporate Nigeria project to grow. This did not imply partisan growth of the other constituents under the thumb, but references a bungled holistic constructive growth that would have enabled the totality of Nigeria to deliver on its natural mandate. This natural mandate being the stout assertion of Nigeria of itself as the vessel containing at least 15 per cent of all Africans, and as the preeminent first of the five states containing forty five per cent of all Africa’s population. Warts and all, with its potential, Nigeria remains the unarguable leading black nation in the world. It is instructive that the other four most populous states are in the throes of varying crises. One of the five, certainly not Nigeria, may eventually die to compound Africa’s woes with a litany of unviable statehoods. Nigeria is therefore not an exception in the often crippling challenge of forging a nation out of a diversity of nations. After the breakaway of Eritrea, what remains of Ethiopia, the second most populous African state, was only recently described as a house of cards that might easily topple. Ambo, the capital of Oromia, the largest and most populous of Ethiopia’s nine ethnically based regions, has a reputation for political dissent. The Economist of London recalls that it was on the streets of Ambo that protests against authoritarian rule started in 2014 before sweeping across the country. The street demonstrations culminated in the declaration of a six-month state of emergency on October 9th 2016. The problem of partisan appropriation of the totality of state space is a pressing challenge in Ethiopia, as in Nigeria. It is noted that Oromo identity is especially powerful. Oromos are vehemently angry about being marginalized by ethnic Tigrayans, who they say have dominated the government despite making up less than 6% of the population. Also, the narratives of the Democratic Republic of Congo from its very inception in 1960 has been horrific. It has not fared any better since the ouster of the horrendous dinosaur Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997. Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga was the military dictator and President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1965 to 1997. His exit instigated the world’s bloodiest conflict since World War II that is still rumbling in the DRC today. Also, what is described as the Great War of Africa, a seemingly unending conflagration that has involved soldiers and civilians from nine nations and countless armed rebel groups, and manipulated by deeply entrenched external interests has been fought almost entirely inside the borders of that unfortunate country - the Democratic Republic of Congo. This week, a team of human rights investigators said they were able to confirm that a new militia group, called the Bana Mura, had been formed in April this year with the apparent backing of the government. According to a UN report, the group was responsible for 150 of the 251 murders carried out between 12 March and 19 June this year. Before then, the Movement 23-M23-, a mainly Tutsi rebel military group created by Rwanda and based in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), conducted brutal operations in the province of North Kivu. The M23 was to counter the Hutu Power militia Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda. The DFLR counts among its number the original members of the Interahamwe that carried out the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. In the continuing gory affairs of the DRC, in more recent times, dozens have been killed in protests against President Joseph Kabila’s insistence to stay in power beyond constitutional term limit by State Security operatives. Meanwhile, South Africa, a major continental military and economic powerhouse, is undergoing serious political crisis that would indicate the likely trajectory of that country. It is the singular seemingly stable country of the five big African countries. The challenges of bigger size African states notwithstanding, the fate of Africa’s small nations have not been salutary either. A proxies of their powerful financiers, they have no will for determinate national policy. They have thus been worse. Riding the wave and euphoria of success in overcoming the Biafra challenge to the centrality of the Nigerian state in the 1960s, in managing Nigeria, the partisan appropriators of post war state were blinkered in their intent on sub-national hegemony. Arising from the lacuna of long term vision and focused on the elusive dividends of the destructive internal dynamic for petty appropriation of the state space by this limited historic complex, Nigeria had remained unfulfilled in virtually all realms of national and international life. The failures are legion and have been dramatic. Despite its sturdy all round potentials, Nigeria is rated poorly by Nigerians in the integration and deployment of its social capital; stunted in its political development (state penetration and extraction) and tied to historically extreme reliance on coercion rather than suasion, stymied economic, including infrastructural, networks, underdevelopment of its human capacity, deliberately stultified domestic intellectual capacity and even humiliating if not embarrassing relegation to the bottom in international competitive sports. Winning one bronze medal in the summer Olympics held in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, from August 5 to August 21, 2016, Nigeria was ranked 78th. That only bronze medal in the Men’s football saved the country its pride from the continual humiliation of returning empty-handed from the Olympics for the second straight time. In the same vein, given its 180 million population, Nigeria posseses only in limited numbers internationally recognized preeminent statesmen that can reliably be deployed to argue the case for a new Nigeria, save for the likes of Emeka Anyaoku, Ibrahim Gambari, Bolaji Akinyemi, Alex Ekwueme and a few others-all of them three quarter way to or near the transit lounge. [caption id="attachment_41345" align="alignright" width="400"] Emeka Anyaoku[/caption] [caption id="attachment_32367" align="alignright" width="400"] Bolaji Akinyemi [/caption] Also, it is instructive that they are not products of Nigeria’s turbulent mainstream domestic politics. Given the dearth of unsoiled and truly credible non partisan national figures, discredited ex military impostors parade as oracles and diviners of the future of the Nigerians state and polity. Even in the military constituency, given the contrived dissipation of the hallowed values and contents of a truly credible national Order, the best talents who often are perceived as threats to the status quo are weeded out soon enough. Coasting free, certificated flotsams and remarkable charlatans as well as thinly veiled criminals mostly dominate the top hierarchy of national life, including the military. This situation is reflected in the largely discredited national honors system. Barely a generation after the civil war, Nigeria has gone full cycle. The national discourse has been openly truculent as hate speech has emanated from both the overwhelmed status quo forces and the myriad of resurgent forces repudiating the legitimacy of the Nigerian state as presently constructed. A remarkable and dangerous syndrome of group vexation is creeping in. Despondent status quo forces are exhibiting a siege mentality. It is manifesting itself in many expressions. They are entrenched in the now very diminished core North, a euphemism for the ethno regional/religious pivot of a sustained hegemonic project that has decayed. Again, it is clear that the progressive evolution of the Nigeria’s socio-political space to potential damnation reached its apex in the physical and metaphorical demise of the last military monstrosity in Sani Abacha. Abacha’s inevitable physical neutralization was key to Nigeria’s crucial historic watershed. As important as this is, the ultimate salience of the exit of Sani Abacha in the longitudinal span is not exactly in the popular appreciation of its democratic parting with autocracy. The end of Abacha is more salient in its acceleration of a distillation of national consciousness. It is the maturation of this consciousness that has ultimately de-validated the very structure of the state that gave rise to dictatorships of Abacha and others of the same odious typology. But first, in desperation the Abacha regime, the IBB one that preceded it as well as its immediate successor had to emasculate an emerging national will and consciousness that was expressed in the mandate accorded to Moshood Kashimowo Abiola across the nation in the June 12, 1993 presidential elections. The attempted evisceration of the emergent national spirit for the rebirth of a nation was to feed the current cascading revolt from the past. That national spirit has coalesced into the emergent forces of national renewal and rebirth. Yet, not withstanding all the aforementioned deficits, it is certain that there is a legitimate Nigerian project that has, admittedly, gone awry driven by a demonstrably roguish establishment and its allied forces that beguiled itself about the robustness and stability of their hegemonic template. This bubbled illusion is now burst. A key preliminary step now is the unapologetic torpedo of the extant signature notion of an insurmountable hubristic partisan hegemonic leadership. This national revolutionary deconstruction project is multifaceted. The new national project is to first set the foundations to construct a nation underpinned by a pillar of luxuriant consensus that the national strength is derived from its diversity and that that strength is firmly dedicated to the holistic advancement of Nigerians and then critically deployed to the total emancipatory resurgence, renaissance, if you like, of the whole of black humanity. This is the formal codification of the conception of Nigeria as the pivot of the holistic emancipation of black humanity. It is Nigeria’s natural and rational mandate that is and has, even if unconsciously, been central, at least in the permutations of its critical external Other, to the projected calculus of its engagements with its immediate and wider and broader externalities. The next step is thus the codification of a grand strategic template as a defining motive to anchor the new Nigeria project. This search for a redeeming motor of ideas and concepts to power the Nigeria project would be consistent with the experience some of the great powers of contemporary times. History abounds with the constant infusion of news meanings to reinvigorate nations going down the drain or perceived to be facing terminal lack of salience as a national space. Post Nazi Germany, a post war humiliated and crumbled France and even the triumphal United States of America are good examples. It would sacrilegious to recall as Andrew J. Bacevich did as recently as 2007 that, placed in historical context, the American national ethics of self gratification threatened the well being of the United States. This is because it saddled America with costly commitments abroad that America was increasingly ill-equipped to sustain. At the same time, it was confronting the United States with dangers to which there was no ready response. Bacevich further adumbrated that the restless search for a buck and ruthless elimination of anyone-or anything- standing in the way of doing so have long been central to the American character. Yet, history throws up transformatory impulses that a serious nation must grab. This theme has reverberated in America’s national life ever so often. The issue was again highlighted in the comprehensive consultative audit of America’s national life in the summer of 1979 by Jimmy Carter. His audit culminated in his summation that America’s real threat to itself was internal. Carter observed a crisis of confidence that was striking at the very heart of and soul and spirit of the American national will. [caption id="attachment_55433" align="alignright" width="600"] Ademola Araoye[/caption] He spoke of a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well financed and powerful special interests. Partisanship was the order of the day and it trumped the concern for the common good. Down the road of a mistaken idea of freedom for Americans to grasp for themselves some advantages over others is implicit the constant conflict between narrow parochial interests that would end in chaos and immobility. Carter observed that this American national crisis was manifest in the growing doubt about the meaning of individual lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for the American nation. It was noted that the spreading of American crisis of confidence was an outward manifestation of an underlying crisis of values. The consequential erosion of national confidence threatened to destroy the social and political fabric of America. But the gravity of the crisis and the ethical deficiencies and value deficits were not allowed to submerge the idea of an American project. Americans rose to the challenge in various re-invigorating projects. Among these was the project proposed by Walter Russell Mead. The project is defined by Walter Russell Mead as a grand strategic vision of what it is that the United States seeks to build in the world. He advanced that in the case of the United States, the national project then was to protect America’s domestic own security while building a peaceful, world order of democratic states linked by common values and sharing common prosperity. Importantly he located this development in the deep roots in the American past. Mead reasoned that the aims and methods of American policy may be mistaken and misunderstood. Yet, it is the avowed American objective to promote the happiness and advance the cause of humanity as a whole. For him his advocacy of the American project was not to persuade his compatriots to do something different and better in the world, but to show better ways of achieving goals that he thought could be as moral and as practical as could be expected. These seminal interventions are consistent with Antonio Gramsci’s epistemology that is founded on Hegelian principles. Summed up by Richard A Brosio, it is that knowing is never a passive reflection of the given, but instead is an act which can change the given. This is the logical outcome of belief in tenacious will of man. Gramsci affirmed that individuals can, and do, act alone and collectively in order to make their own history. Gramsci is clear about the locus of man and his existence as an actor. As a social being and actor, man can understand the data which comprise the physical and social worlds, and can act in a politically effective manner to create an order which makes good and just life possible. Man can reorder and restructure his world to advance equity, justice and fairness. Brosio illuminates that Gramsci is firm in his belief in the power of the will; the ability dialectically to analyze physical and social reality; and man’s ability to act collectively in order to realize his legitimate plans. Yet, in making history, men and women do so not under conditions of their choosing. The structural context is then critical. This understanding is crucial for all sides in renegotiating the political settlement of the disequilibrated Nigerian polity. The structural context of the coming counter jousting of local and partisan interests puts the old core North on a back foot. As with all social processes human, it was only a question of time for hegemonic forces to get to the current impasse. Hopefully, this structural evolution would not imply a catastrophic cul de sac for the nation. As with all situations of power transition, managing the consequences of the evolution of major internal forces for power distribution in the federation requires on all sides deft and prudent management of the cards they have been dealt by our national history. Yet the case of Nigeria would not equate the classic power transition model. In real terms, restructuring from a hegemonic Order in a multi-national state space can only imply not classic power transition but rather power diffusion to achieve a new balance of multiple power centers. This power diffusion would ultimately strengthen the new federal experience of actually pooling resources together to achieve corporate strength. It reverses the prevailing logic of roller coasting the federation through hegemonic predation of the weak co-opted. Parties to the construction of Nigeria’s new project should abjure the logic and trappings of hyper-hegemonic chest-thumbing. The concept of nationalism is not static. The construction and constituent elements of nationalism evolve with the exigencies of each era. In this, just like freedom, nationalism generates new imperatives as old constraining existential realities are consigned to the garbage heap of history. Nigeria needs to eviscerate problematic concepts and notions that have been associated with the massive and historic failure, waste of human energy, hemorrhage of the national will that combined have brought it down on its knees. In the current national debacle, it is imperative to allude to a great American intellectual power house of the 1930s through to the 1960s. Reinhold Niebuhr, pastor, teacher, theologian, humanist, and a man of profound intellectual depth called for philosophical realism (not the power calculus strand) in managing situations such as Nigeria’s current phase of evolution. Holding very few illusions about the nature of man, the possibilities of politics or the pliability of history, Niebuhr enjoined all to see the world for as it is, and not as we would wish or even fantasize. He asserted that the challenge to being realistic is hubris, which may imply an outsized confidence and commitment to a partisan stance based on a false reading of reality. • Ademola Araoye is a former Nigerian diplomat and a retired official of the United Nations. Currently a Visiting Professor associated with the SARCHi chair on African Diplomacy and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg, Araoye is author of critically acclaimed books including Cote d’Ivoire: The Conundrum of a Still Wretched of the Earth and Sources of Conflict in the Post-Colonial African State. He is a regular contributor to TheNEWS magazine