A BREAK FROM GOD

Two years ago, I published a piece titled, “God Don’t Love Africa and Africans”, [http://www.pambazuka.org/governance/god-don%E2%80%99t-love-africa-and-africans].  For whatever reason, the piece never made it to the pages of any Nigerian publication, print or electronic.  This piece is a sort of follow-up to that earlier essay. 

Nigerians need and must take a break from God.  The God from which I ask Nigerians to take a break is the monotheistic, vengeance-seeking centerpiece of Islam and Christianity.  As far as I know, like other old religions characterized by pan-theism, Òrìsà, indigenous Yorùbá religion, was not a proselytizing one; the gods were infinitely interchangeable and, except for their priests, did not require total abdication of responsibility for their own lives from their adherents.  Furthermore, there was no profession of faith and whichever god seems to work for you is the one that you go with.  On this score, the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans were very similar to our ancestors.

Now to the business at hand.  Nigerians need to take several steps back from the widespread God-intoxication in which the entire country is mired.  Put simply, Nigerians need a break from God and this they should do peremptorily so that their God-addled brains, damaged by a certifiable God-addiction, can begin the arduous business of recovery.  This recovery is requisite if we are to reclaim the dominion that both dominant religions claim to be our direct inheritance from God. 

We see a scientist like Albert Einstein uttering what to many in our country today would be a singular blasphemy when he declared that the object of his scientific exertions was “to know the mind of God”.  And our own Obafemi Awolowo did declare that when we call upon God to do for us what we can do for ourselves, something sure is amiss.  According to Awolowo, “because we can do it ourselves, why then do we call upon God to do it for us?  This is stupid.”  I am sure that no one would dare designate him an atheist.  But he took very seriously the injunction that only those could expect help from heaven who are prepared to help themselves.  A benefactor of many churches and a steadfast congregant in quite a few of them he was, nonetheless, clear that there is a reason that we were created with a brain.

When I was growing up, we went to church on Sundays; we were out by 12:00 noon and definitely not later than 1:00 p.m.  Our parents went to Bible class after work, mostly on Tuesdays, and the only real demand on your time was if you were a member of the choir or you were taking classes for your confirmation.  Church was a sliver of life, not all of it.  Work was more important than church.  Home life and other elements of living were more important than worship.  The prelates were well trained and, given the leisure they had during the week if they did not have pastoral visits, we had a reasonable expectation that they would be fresh on Sunday and the chance that they would have worked on a solid sermon for the service was quite ample.

There were consequences for the economy and they were no less salubrious.  People’s lives were dominated by productive engagements and I have no reason to believe that we did not find favour with God.  Indeed, some of the best schools and hospitals back then were mission-owned, both Christian and Islamic.

Back then, places of worship strove to be worthy sacred spaces.  Their architecture sought to “declare the glory of God” and the accoutrements of worship proclaimed God’s majesty.  We had serious theologians and even the literalism of African-instituted churches did not completely shun intellectual engagement with scripture.  Ditto for various Islamic denominations.  The Ahmadiyya Movement-in-Islam, before a section of it, under pressure from Sunni orthodoxy, styled itself Anwar-ul-Islam, competed with Christian denominations and other groups to exert themselves in the uplift of their congregations without demanding that their members abandon their life strivings, the deployment of their talents for the betterment of themselves and their progeny and, instead, leave everything in God’s hands and await whatever God has in store for them.

This reckless abandonment of reason, this criminal handing over of lives to a God that already gave you, if scripture is to be believed, dominion over all things; this vacation of our ability to take charge of our lives and add stature to ourselves in spite of our radical insufficiency as humans is the ultimate blasphemy!

No thanks to this handing over of control over our lives, we follow the reckless tale of a Daddy G.O. who spun a tale of driving a non-electric vehicle without gas over a considerable distance.  I hate to think how many hapless, ordinary Nigerians have come to grief in the stupid belief that their unroadworthy vehicles would miraculously get them to their destinations.  We have charlatans who prey on the separation of our people from their senses by asking them to come to services for the characterization of which they have an inexhaustible store of hyperboles and catchphrases.  The country is literally drowning in an ocean of meaningless but catchy slogans announcing “delivery”, “salvation”, “overcoming”, “mountain of fire”, “latter rain”, “winning”, and the like. 

Worse still, these marathon harangues in the guise of services are held on workdays and during hours when our people should otherwise be at work. What God asks you to abandon the means of your upkeep, lie to your employers about where you are when you should be at work earning your keep, shut down your private business while you are busy falling into false ecstasies under the direction of latter-day sweet-talking fakers dubbed “soul-winners”?

Of course, our spurious but nattily-dressed windbag predators-taken-for-shepherds have to keep the flock addicted to God so that the latter would have no respite, no quiet moments when life-changing questions pop up in our heads and make us come to doubt about the tenor and direction of our lives.  The God noise must be continually dinned into our ears such that the possibility of considering alternative ways of managing our lives would never have room to present themselves to the front of our minds.  Worst of all, because most of the activities associated with this exponential expansion of God in our lives are of a brutally unproductive type—what tangible products can you make at a revival service on a workday or at a night vigil?—our economy has not witnessed any concurrent expansion.  The only guarantee we have is the sapping of the productive energies of our common folk often to the detriment of their families, especially children.

No thanks to this God-addiction and the simultaneous abandonment of the capacity for a self-driven life, only goodness knows how many Nigerians have been killed by “Not My Portion” and how many more are going to succumb to needless death because they would not accept their portion, whatever it is, and steer it in the best way possible for them and their loved ones.  Disease, illness, misfortunes, accidents are all, without exception, part of the human portion, however you cut it.

The two religions under reference in this piece that are ravaging our people hold that we—our very humanity—were created in sin.  And it is a consequence of our having lost our ever so fleeting divine identity that toil, disease, hunger, pain, and so on, became defining elements of our inescapable portion.  Only a god\God, never any human, can be without this sorry aspect of its portion. 

So, why do these crazy prophets and prophetesses keep telling us that what makes us human, under the very definition offered by their scripture, is not our portion?  This can only be part of an elaborate swindle for, as theology, it is demonstrably false.  If I read my bible correctly, God’s grace is not for the asking nor is it for purchase by good works and the capacity to pray for hours non-stop.  Nigerians should stop behaving like children and cease believing false nonsense from too-clever-by-half, self-designing, power-hungry holy men and women.

Meanwhile, the originators of Islam spend good money building some of the best hospitals in the world.  Have Nigerian Muslims followed goings on in Saudi Arabia, lately?  For Saudis, whether or not they are well is not “Allah’s will”, per se.  Only after they have put into gear the best care money can buy do they resign to their fate.  When the immediate past guardian of the holy places in Mecca was battling ill-health in the dying years of his rule, he did not summon the best marabouts from the Islamic world.  He headed on several occasions to that nest of godlessness, the United States, to be treated.  Their hospitals are staffed by the best-trained personnel that money can buy from anywhere in the world regardless of their religious orientation.

Israel, to which we are happy—remember we are “a happy people”—to transfer a nice chunk of our patrimony to pay for some ill-advised pilgrimages of dubious religious value, has never pretended that the Negev is not a desert or that the challenge posed by this fact was not its portion.  Instead, it turned the desert into a breadbasket.  Surely, it did not do this with prayers nor did it do so under the influence of a band of self-styled prophets and prophetesses and “Daddy and Mummy G.O.s” who are on first-name terms with God.  Yet, it is home to all the original holiest shrines of the two rampaging religions in our land.  But Nigerians with their God-addled brains prefer to spend their children’s inheritance in fake acts of piety that can only make God continue to view our kind with utter contempt. 

There is more.  Our airwaves now are saturated with brain-killing noise, exceeding ugliness, mind-numbing drivel, and absolutely stunted language in the form of religious broadcasts, ministry announcements, and mediocre music in the name of gospel singing.  Our cities are now visibly blighted by posters, billboards, signposts, all proclaiming the availability of dial-a-miracle centres, funny-looking “Daddy and Mummy G.O.s” peddling snake oil in the guise of deliverance, salvation and sundry other outcomes that are designed to ensure that the preachers’ wants—and those wants can be obscene in their excessiveness—are met “in Jesus’ name”, no less!  Private jets for ministry, anyone!  My mother, a Christian herself, in utter disgust, recently remarked to me, that the followers of a certain Daddy G.O. are now certified blasphemers who are more inclined to obey their leader than obey God!  As the Yorùbá would say: “Wọ́n ti gba wèrè mẹ́sìn!” [They have mixed worship with lunacy!]

Our creative juices no longer flow.  Our language and diction now reflect the accursed stiltedness of an unimaginative religiosity.  Our bookstores are more than two-thirds filled with a whole library—a veritable assault on our dwindling forests—of pretentious garbage, much of it I am sure plagiarized from their Euro-American equivalents who pioneered this path to get-rich-quick schemes founded on the bent and broken backs of unsuspecting ordinary folk.

Our education system is now captive to this blight the perpetrators of which do not even know the inspiration for their interminable proclamation of the virtues of “religious education”.  For those who do not know, the insistence on giving Africans religious education did not come from a noble place.  I can say it with authority that it did not come from that original missionary cohort led by Samuel Ajayi Crowther who were more concerned to move Africa to modernity. 

It came, instead, from the warped mind of Lord Lugard, the one we still lionize by having one of our governors proudly operate from a house named in his honour.  He it was who said that British colonialism in Africa should not repeat the mistake it made in India where it gave Indians “education of the intellect”, as he styled it, which they later used to undermine British rule in their land. 

In Africa, he insisted that, given what he called the African’s natural proclivity for lying, the only education fit for Africans was a religion-inflected one that he called “character education”.  To think that in the 21^st century we would still be carrying the bag for our racist colonizers is the ultimate indictment of our God-addicted intellectuals and policy-makers.  We are still reaping the fruits of this unfortunate direction. 

The irony is that the more God-intoxicated we have become, the further removed we have become from our moral compass.  The cruel outcome is that we are doubly shortchanged: we have neither morals nor knowledge.  India is preparing a mission to the moon and now gives us alms.  Simultaneously, Nigeria, indeed, Africa, are headed for perdition afflicted with a terminal case of God-addiction.

I would not like to be misunderstood.  As someone who spent 22 years teaching at Jesuit institutions in the United States and a product of a mission school in Nigeria, I am well-placed to appreciate what excellent education religion-inspired institutions can produce.  But they do not offer religion-inflected or religious education.  It is why some of the topmost research institutions in the world are religion-derived or religion-affiliated.  But their business is education, not what goes on behind the closed-doors of their adult students’ dorms. 

Unfortunately, such is the reach of God-addiction that even the denominations that used to do what I just said have joined the ranks of miracle summoners.  Their educational institutions have become citadels of mystification.  The universities founded by these God-peddlers are more notorious for invading the privacy of their students, violating their personal dignity, and treating them like children, all in the name of ensuring that they are equipped with morals than they are noted for their giant strides in research or producing first-rate graduates who will change the world.

Why bother to organize your sports?  God will take care of it.  Just pray harder.  Why care about your healthcare system?  “God is in total control.”  In any case, whatever disease you may have cannot be real: it is not your portion.  By the time you come to terms with your portion, the condition can no longer be managed.

Nigerian adults reserve the right to throw their lives away.  Indeed, the world would most likely be a better place with such a thinning of the herd.  But it is a crime to incorporate our children in this mess.  It is for the sake of the children and thereby the future of our race that I ask that we consider a break from God.

The two religions under reference in this piece that are ravaging our people hold that we—our very humanity—were created in sin.  And it is a consequence of our having lost our ever so fleeting divine identity that toil, disease, hunger, pain, and so on, became defining elements of our inescapable portion.  Only a god\God, never any human, can be without this sorry aspect of its portion. So, why do these crazy prophets and prophetesses keep telling us that what makes us human, under the very definition offered by their scripture, is not our portion?  This can only be part of an elaborate swindle for, as theology, it is demonstrably false.  If I read my bible correctly, God’s grace is not for the asking nor is it for purchase by good works and the capacity to pray for hours non-stop.  Nigerians should stop behaving like children and cease believing false nonsense from too-clever-by-half, self-designing, power-hungry holy men and women.

Meanwhile, the originators of Islam spend good money building some of the best hospitals in the world.  Have Nigerian Muslims followed goings on in Saudi Arabia, lately?  For Saudis, whether or not they are well is not “Allah’s will”, per se.  Only after they have put into gear the best care money can buy do they resign to their fate.  When the immediate past guardian of the holy places in Mecca was battling ill-health in the dying years of his rule, he did not summon the best marabouts from the Islamic world.  He headed on several occasions to that nest of godlessness, the United States, to be treated.  Their hospitals are staffed by the best-trained personnel that money can buy from anywhere in the world regardless of their religious orientation.

Israel, to which we are happy—remember we are “a happy people”—to transfer a nice chunk of our patrimony to pay for some ill-advised pilgrimages of dubious religious value, has never pretended that the Negev is not a desert or that the challenge posed by this fact was not its portion.  Instead, it turned the desert into a breadbasket.  Surely, it did not do this with prayers nor did it do so under the influence of a band of self-styled prophets and prophetesses and “Daddy and Mummy G.O.s” who are on first-name terms with God.  Yet, it is home to all the original holiest shrines of the two rampaging religions in our land.  But Nigerians with their God-addled brains prefer to spend their children’s inheritance in fake acts of piety that can only make God continue to view our kind with utter contempt. 

There is more.  Our airwaves now are saturated with brain-killing noise, exceeding ugliness, mind-numbing drivel, and absolutely stunted language in the form of religious broadcasts, ministry announcements, and mediocre music in the name of gospel singing.  Our cities are now visibly blighted by posters, billboards, signposts, all proclaiming the availability of dial-a-miracle centres, funny-looking “Daddy and Mummy G.O.s” peddling snake oil in the guise of deliverance, salvation and sundry other outcomes that are designed to ensure that the preachers’ wants—and those wants can be obscene in their excessiveness—are met “in Jesus’ name”, no less!  Private jets for ministry, anyone!  My mother, a Christian herself, in utter disgust, recently remarked to me, that the followers of a certain Daddy G.O. are now certified blasphemers who are more inclined to obey their leader than obey God!  As the Yorùbá would say: “Wọ́n ti gba wèrè mẹ́sìn!” [They have mixed worship with lunacy!]

Our creative juices no longer flow.  Our language and diction now reflect the accursed stiltedness of an unimaginative religiosity.  Our bookstores are more than two-thirds filled with a whole library—a veritable assault on our dwindling forests—of pretentious garbage, much of it I am sure plagiarized from their Euro-American equivalents who pioneered this path to get-rich-quick schemes founded on the bent and broken backs of unsuspecting ordinary folk.

Our education system is now captive to this blight the perpetrators of which do not even know the inspiration for their interminable proclamation of the virtues of “religious education”.  For those who do not know, the insistence on giving Africans religious education did not come from a noble place.  I can say it with authority that it did not come from that original missionary cohort led by Samuel Ajayi Crowther who were more concerned to move Africa to modernity. 

It came, instead, from the warped mind of Lord Lugard, the one we still lionize by having one of our governors proudly operate from a house named in his honour.  He it was who said that British colonialism in Africa should not repeat the mistake it made in India where it gave Indians “education of the intellect”, as he styled it, which they later used to undermine British rule in their land. 

In Africa, he insisted that, given what he called the African’s natural proclivity for lying, the only education fit for Africans was a religion-inflected one that he called “character education”.  To think that in the 21^st century we would still be carrying the bag for our racist colonizers is the ultimate indictment of our God-addicted intellectuals and policy-makers.  We are still reaping the fruits of this unfortunate direction. 

The irony is that the more God-intoxicated we have become, the further removed we have become from our moral compass.  The cruel outcome is that we are doubly shortchanged: we have neither morals nor knowledge.  India is preparing a mission to the moon and now gives us alms.  Simultaneously, Nigeria, indeed, Africa, are headed for perdition afflicted with a terminal case of God-addiction.

I would not like to be misunderstood.  As someone who spent 22 years teaching at Jesuit institutions in the United States and a product of a mission school in Nigeria, I am well-placed to appreciate what excellent education religion-inspired institutions can produce.  But they do not offer religion-inflected or religious education.  It is why some of the topmost research institutions in the world are religion-derived or religion-affiliated.  But their business is education, not what goes on behind the closed-doors of their adult students’ dorms. 

Unfortunately, such is the reach of God-addiction that even the denominations that used to do what I just said have joined the ranks of miracle summoners.  Their educational institutions have become citadels of mystification.  The universities founded by these God-peddlers are more notorious for invading the privacy of their students, violating their personal dignity, and treating them like children, all in the name of ensuring that they are equipped with morals than they are noted for their giant strides in research or producing first-rate graduates who will change the world.

Why bother to organize your sports?  God will take care of it.  Just pray harder.  Why care about your healthcare system?  “God is in total control.”  In any case, whatever disease you may have cannot be real: it is not your portion.  By the time you come to terms with your portion, the condition can no longer be managed.

Nigerian adults reserve the right to throw their lives away.  Indeed, the world would most likely be a better place with such a thinning of the herd.  But it is a crime to incorporate our children in this mess.  It is for the sake of the children and thereby the future of our race that I ask that we consider a break from God.

TIME TO CALL THE QUESTION OF BIAFRA

Can somebody please remind me, again, why Nnamdi Kanu is still sitting in jail?  Of course, I know the various charges that have been levelled against him.  And I am not one to pooh-pooh the charges or suggest that they lack merit.  But the larger and deeper issue from which arose the charges that he faces is the one that has prompted the reflections in this piece.

Kanu’s ultimate crime is that he dared call for the secession of a part of the country that styles itself “Biafra” from the rest of Nigeria.  What I propose to address here is the idea that it is a crime, per se, to call for the break-up of the entity called Nigeria.  I plan to call into question this orientation.  I am firmly of the opinion that, based on what we know right now, every day that Kanu spends in jail is an injustice. 

Let me be clear.  I don’t know Kanu.  From the profile of him that I have read, he does not strike me as a genuine freedom fighter and a lot of his responses to his current situation smacks too much of rank opportunism and borderline cowardice.  But, as every serious democrat knows, it is precisely when we find people odious that our commitment to ideas and the freedom to express them is tested and requires demonstration.

We fought a civil war provoked by the declaration of secession by what then was the Eastern Region that, as a result, became the Republic of Biafra.  In the aftermath, the rest of the country rose in defence of the political and territorial integrity of the Nigerian state.  Whatever one feels about the war, it was a pivotal moment, a defining moment for Nigeria.  Regardless of how the country originated, like similar situations in history, the war became a watershed, a moment when the very existence of the country was consecrated in blood.  It was almost as if there were enough of us Nigerians then convinced of the worth and necessity of the experiment that we were willing to shed precious blood “to keep Nigeria one”.

As in similar situations in history, the task for those of us who survived the war, victor or vanquished, was to ensure that our blood was not shed in vain, that the untold suffering of Biafran children was not for naught, and that the cost exacted by our need to stay together would impel us to build a country that would by now be on the path to realizing its billing as the greatest “black” nation on earth!

No one denies that this is a dream that remains deferred.  Worse, as a result of repeated misrule by the military and the collective irresponsibility of our politicians and intellectuals, all the gains of the civil war, the promise of solidifying the unity of the country and creating a supranationality—the true outcome of the national question—of which all Nigerians would be proud remains elusive.

What ought to have been a glorious opportunity for a brand-new country was aborted and alienation from the very idea of Nigeria became magnified.  The leaders of the secessionist bid, the Igbo nation, especially a significant portion of its leadership, never reconciled with the idea of Nigeria.  At intervals since then, with different degrees of severity, the demand for separation from Nigeria and the inauguration of an Igbo-denominated Republic of Biafra has become a permanent feature of the Nigerian political scape.

For a long time, the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) was the spearhead of this agitation.  A younger generation, impatient with what they see as the snail pace at which MASSOB has been moving towards the actualisation of their dream of a sovereign republic, organized under the aegis of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) under the leadership of Nnamdi Kanu.  It is the activism of this group that has resulted in the charges against and the incarceration of Kanu.

What is of moment in this discussion is that since Kanu’s shenanigans made national news the question of Biafra has become topical again.  As I said above, just as it is the business of non-governing parties to plot the ouster of an incumbent government at the next election, a multination-state like Nigeria cannot preempt the constituting units from contemplating and acting towards restructuring be that the break-up of particular states within it—mistakenly dubbed “creation of states” in current parlance—or the excision of specific units from it.  The emergence of new states should not be by fiat.  The say-so of the residents of the existing state and that of the proposed state should be established through serious campaign for and against, with cases made by the respective sides towards swaying public opinion in favour of their preferences.  We no longer live in a dictatorship where some unrepresentative decision-makers dictate where and when new states should emerge.  This is the fallacy of depending on so-called “National Conferences” or even amendments to a constitution that never had any popular inputs in its origination.

In other words, any law against secession is a futility where a section is desperate and\or alienated enough to attempt secession.  A people who are willing to die by their thousands are not likely forever to be kept away from their goal unless serious efforts are made to make separation less appealing and belonging in the existing state more desirable. 

South Sudan went through two cycles of bloody civil wars before separation from Sudan was effected.  Eritrea fought for an even longer period even though theirs was not a secessionist enterprise.  For seventy years, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) pretended that “the national question”, as it was then styled, had been put to bed.  Then the Berlin Wall came down, there was a failed military coup and, just like that, the Soviet Union was no more.  Not long thereafter we discovered that Yugoslavia was no more than a house of cards.  And the small state of Czechoslovakia showed us that size has nothing to do with complexity and attending fissiparous tendencies where different nations, yes, nations, cohere uneasily within a single state.

I have cited the preceding examples to show that the Nigerian experience is neither unique nor particularly intractable in the annals of the comparative experiences of other multi-nation states in the world.  Centrifugal tendencies are inherent in their very being.  The only difference in the Nigerian case is our penchant for playing ostrich and believing, firmly ensconced in the sorcerer’s cove that our country, nay, continent has become, that if we repeat enough the non-negotiability of our unity or affirm interminably our unity, things will be so.  It is a pity that this is how and what we have become.

The path of reason is to acknowledge the fact that Nigeria, like the preponderant proportion of countries in the world, is not, repeat, not a nation-state.  It is a multi-nation state.  It may ultimately become a nation after several generations of living together and evolving common myths, usages, language even,  That Nigeria is not and has never been a nation is not a flaw.  It is just brute fact.  It shares this fate with the United Kingdom, Switzerland, China, Russia, Belgium, Canada, India, and others.  This is not the place to dilate on the theoretical foundations of the claim just stated.

This brings us to the fact that Nigeria is an artificial country that was put together by non-Nigerians.  No one sought the consent of the people that were literally gaveled into existence as “Nigerians” when the state was originally constituted.  There is a sense in which one can argue that the original emergence of Nigerians was the equivalent of kidnapping.

Yes, some may argue that, at independence, we could have freed ourselves from the forced identity foisted on us by our colonizers.  And there, definitely, were such tendencies both before and after independence.  Furthermore, it could be argued that, as indicated above, the civil war was another watershed for cementing our living together in the context of one country.

Unfortunately, since this contraption of a country was handed over to us, there has not been a time that we have sat down as a people to determine what kind of country we would like to be, what would be the terms of engagement for its federating peoples, what the internal relations should be amongst its diverse nations and how its federating units should be constituted and, when circumstances demand, reconstituted over time. 

The only time a reconstitution was undertaken under a democratic dispensation was the perfidious scheme that led to the creation of the Midwest Region in 1963, not out of any principle, but to undermine a particular political party.  All other restructuring efforts have been done by diktat of diverse military rulers. 

It seems as if the main reasons for staying together have been fear of a break-up, the oil-money induced opportunism of the elite in the post-war period, and the all-knowing arrogance of military misrule.

Given what I just said, there is a very simple solution to the question of Biafra and others across the country.  As we might say in parliamentary parlance, it is way past time to call the question of Biafra.

As things stand, the only issues to be resolved are the following:

(1)   Formulate rules for how the constituent nations that make up Nigeria are to federate

(2)   Formulate rules for establishing how state boundaries are to be set and redrawn when there are agitations for reconstituting those boundaries

(3)   Set the conditions for what percentage of those who live in an existing state must indicate a desire to form a separate state or be completely excised from Nigeria, as a whole, before such a wish can be effected

(4)   Only with (3) can we establish the popularity of MASSOB or IPOB amongst Igbo people and whether the boundaries of Biafra will extend over the old Eastern Region or just states currently dominate by Igbo elements.

(5)   Relief must be provided for those who elect to stay with the existing unit.  Similarly, just like the majority electing to have its way, the minorities within their spatial boundaries may be granted veto powers unless certain iron-clad guarantees be given for the continuing viability of their cultural identity and practices within the new unit.

When (1) though (5) shall have been satisfied and the requisite percentage of Igbo elect to leave, that choice should be respected and amicable separation be enacted.

I am tired of hearing about how Igbo or any other people want to leave Nigeria.  Let us put the rules in place.  Let those who wish to go, go in peace and let those who remain on mutually agreed terms proceed with their collective lives, too.

I BEG TO APPLY

PROLOGUE

A few years ago, I had the rare privilege of being invited to compete for appointment as the pioneer Vice Chancellor of a new private university in Nigeria.  Although I had always told people that if I ever returned to Nigeria, I would be too old to be of any use to the country, professionally speaking and I am not an enthusiast for administrative positions, I did accept the invitation.  Simultaneously, had I not left Nigeria to resettle abroad, my life would not have been fully consumed by my academic pursuits.  I always hoped for some measure of public service, including running for public office, and I surely was going to keep burnishing my credentials for my original motivation for going to university: to be a journalist.  Additionally, I am never one to shirk a challenge or pass on an opportunity to fail at doing something significant for the world.  So, when I was approached to submit my credentials and was invited for an interview with the Board of the proposed institution, in spite of my hesitation about relocating to Nigeria--I am getting a bit old for starting my life again somewhere other than wherever I am at the present time--I said yes.

Of course, my application was not successful.  But I remain grateful to the authorities of the institution for giving me the opportunity to compete to be a part of their glorious vision for their school.  I won't ever stop rooting for the institution to rise to the level of its original conception.

What follows is the application that I wrote to the Board.  Why publish this now?  First, not too many people know what motivates some of us to stay abroad, relocate to our original homeland, seek to be a part of life in the land we left behind, and so on.  While one can never rule out the play of ego and the attraction of lucre, I also want to share with others a modest vision that sadly, I hope I am wrong, is not part of how we think of universities and those who have charge of them in Nigeria.  This represents, in part, my opinion of what leadership of a university should be and do.

Finally, I would end this prologue with a declaration: this piece has no further purpose than the sharing of a vision.  No, I am not available for consideration for appointment at this time.  But if anyone else similarly placed sees anything of worth in what I have shared, I am most appreciative.

What follows is what I shared with the Board of the institution.  I have omitted all references to the particular institution, its location, or any other identifying features.

MY VISION

What Drives My Work?

“I once had a conversation with a Nigerian friend whom I was trying to convince of the persuasiveness of the case that I am making in this book. I had asked him whether he or I or quite a number of us who now make our homes in Euro-America went to those countries because we were lured by the promise of regular power, water, and food supplies and stayed because of the bright lights and other material comforts that our countries of sojourn offer. He offered, no.  The reason for this is not far to seek. Indeed, if what we desired were merely material comforts, many of us in Euro-America would probably be in a position to procure those things at the individual level, as do most of our compatriots who stay home, even when the state remains remiss in discharging those functions.  A good part of the reason that we immigrated to Euro-America, I suggested and my friend agreed, relates to the opportunity that their countries offer for self-realisation and, more importantly, more control over the course of our lives and those of our offspring, especially in areas of choosing our rulers, deciding how we lead our lives “from the inside” and having our personal spaces respected, if not treated with utter sanctity.  I suspect that many of those who may offer the objections that I have been considering fall within the same demographic group as my friend and me.  They are the ones who do not miss any opportunity to come to Euro-America to, as one of them said to us several years ago, 'get some fresh air'.  Here is my challenge: why is it okay for members of our upper and middle classes, such as they are, to help themselves to the intangible but more significant rewards of modernity while they object to making the same available to the lowliest of their compatriots in African countries?” 

The quote above is an excerpt from my latest book just published in Nigeria.  The motivation it states—to put at the disposal of the lowliest Nigerians the best that the world has to offer and I am in a position, within the limits of my ability, to help them attain—not only drives my research but all that I do when it comes to my relationship with Nigeria and the larger African continent.

I am persuaded that the prospect of providing pioneering leadership for a new university informed by a keen vision to not only be different but be committed to the kind of excellence that is no longer part of how we do business in our common homeland, Nigeria, imposes on me the duty to be very clear respecting how I hope to present myself and conduct the affairs of the institution, should I be fortunate to be selected.

Finally, I have always believed that my education overseas and my living in other parts of the world are meant to make me look at things in my homeland with a view to identifying the best practices in other parts of the world that I have become conversant with.  This is an attitude that has often set me at odds with some of my closest friends over the years.  But it is one that I am disinclined to disavow for a very simple reason.  As the Yorùbá say, Kò sí bí ọ̀bọ ṣe ṣe orí t’Ínàkí kò ṣe, tótó ó ṣe bí òwe.  I do not see any reason why we should give anything but the best to the ordinary people of Nigeria when we perennially avail ourselves of same in other parts of the world.  What is more, if Indians, South Koreans, Singaporeans, among others, can borrow a leaf from Euro-America to build first-rate universities, there is no reason why we cannot do the same in any part of Nigeria.  Where there is a will, there is a way, so say the English.  What I know about the vision that animates Ayégbàmí University persuades me that the requisite will is there and that I would have the necessary backing of its authorities to realize that vision.

As the overall head of the institution, I see myself as the visionary-in-chief, motivator-in-chief, and scholar-in-chief, in that order.  As the visionary-in chief, my principal task is to create, nurture, and disseminate in the most aggressive and most effective way possible, the Ayégbàmí University Brand.  I take my inspiration from the fact that the university is chartered by an individual who knows what this is, and who has shown his commitment to the importance of branding by his own example.  By the end of my 5-year term, our students, our faculty, even our janitorial staff, should be living and breathing our brand; and our first set of graduates, who should be rounding up their service year at that time, should have no difficulty selling prospective employers, prospective investors in their own business start-ups, or just the general public, on what is special about their Ayégbàmí education and why it is like no other in the neighbourhood.

As the motivator-in chief, I would lead by example, give over and above the call of duty, and inspire all who work at the university to do the same.  This will include an open administration where even the lowliest staff will be encouraged to make suggestions on how to make things work more smoothly and more efficiently.  It will be an operation that people are proud to be a part of and one where any shady deals or attempts to subvert rules will be shown to be ineffective and costly to those who engage in them.  THERE WILL BE ZERO TOLERANCE FOR RULE BREACHES ON ANYONE’S PART.  I cannot think of a better motivation for doing the right thing than PRIDE in our work and in being a participant in such a project.

As the scholar-in chief, my job is to locate teacher-scholars who are primarily committed to excellent teaching but who also realize that enhancing their scholarship through both their own original work and their keeping abreast of developments in their fields is an essential ingredient of teaching excellence.  I will not encourage the paper chase that is the bane of universities in our country.  But I will seek to emplace a reward system that makes excellent teaching informed by top-flight scholarship the anchor on which all else rests.  Finally, we will design innovative service learning programmes, including internships for our students, as part of the Ayégbàmí brand.

I am not the kind of leader who micro-manages his subordinates.  A sure sign of good leadership is the ability to locate excellent subordinates to whom responsibilities can be delegated and who can be trusted to discharge those responsibilities in ways that best redound to the overall vision and mission of the institution.  This begins with locating and putting in place a capable management team from the Provost on down to the headship of departments.

How might the vision be realised in the specific circumstance of Ìlúabíni?

Universities always try to be a vital part of the communities where they are located.  They have on their faculty experts on local issues and they have academic as well as allied programmes that plug into their local communities in very deep ways.  The local population is always a basic pool from which to source some of their students and work-study, service-learning and sundry community-oriented programmes are geared to ensuring that the university pulls its immediate community along with it and its faculty, staff, and students are well-integrated into the host community.  I expect to lead a university that does this in a way that becomes a model for Nigeria, nay, Africa.  I cite as an example the town of Antigonish in Nova Scotia, Canada, where St. Francis Xavier University is located.  It has only 6,439 residents but the university is the biggest employer there and the town has at least two radio stations, largely staffed by students and other members of the university.  This has not stopped it from having the Coady Institute for International Development that has a global reputation and attracts scholars from all over the world.  This is what I mean by how I am affected by my travels to want to have the best for our people.  Ìlúabíni represents almost eight times the promise of Antigonish and this is not an insignificant advantage and challenge.  Ithaca, the location of Cornell University [I had not relocated to Cornell when I wrote this], has only 29,000 plus residents.  It supports\is supported by two universities and a large prison.  It has all the trappings of a city that make it possible for its residents to afford lifestyles from the opulent to the working class.  Cornell supplies the city and its environs with fresh milk and its apple cider is an award winner.  It has the top equine science programme in the United States and its Hotel and Tourism school is top ten in the country.  These are the images that the vision of Ayégbàmí University and its location, Ilúabíni, conjures in my head and I see no reason why they cannot be attained in Ìlúabíni.

Our goal is to provide first-rate education for all who walk through the portals of Ayégbàmí University and produce graduates that would fly our banner very high wherever in the world they happen to drop anchor.  International recognition will be a byproduct, not a motivating factor, of our operation.  By their fruits, ye shall know them.

Finally, I take very seriously that one important part of my function as the head of Ayégbàmí University is to also serve as the fund-raiser-in-chief because, when all is said and done, the university must remain a viable business concern over the long haul if we are to attain the lofty goals that I have described in the preceding sections.

I want to thank the selection committee very much for granting me audience and for allowing me to associate myself with your exciting and exceeding vision.  May we all live to see its full realisation.

I hope that this is a vision that others can find attractive should they be circumstanced to design and run a university in Nigeria.

ON THE MATTER OF DISMISSAL AND APPOINTMENT OF VICE CHANCELLORS: A RESPONSE TO MESSRS. ETUK BASSEY WILLIAMS AND IBRAHIM ABUBAKAR

Dear Messrs Etuk Bassey Williams and Ibrahim Abubakar,

I have just finished reading your letter to President Muhammadu Buhari on behalf of what you have identified as the “Coalition of Civil Society Groups”.  The purpose of your letter is to contend that in the matter of the removal of 13 Vice Chancellors of Federal Universities, the president has breached the constitution.  You further submit that the new appointments breached the federal character principle and are, for the most part, tainted by cronyism.

Since your letter did not contain the list of the groups on whose behalf you claim to speak, it is difficult to see how representative your “groups” are of what, by definition, is civil society and the multiplicity of groups to be found therein.  If I were the president, or I were advising the president, I would promptly ignore your letter for its facelessness.  This is not a charge to be taken lightly.  Here is why.

You have accused the president of a constitutional breach.  That is not a light charge in a well-ordered society based on the rule of law.  It would therefore be necessary to be very clear who are those making the charge and on what basis.  As an ordinary citizen who, by definition, is a part of the civil society from whose ranks your “groups” are selected, I find it difficult to take this charge seriously.

Where were you all when the initial appointments were made?  If the president had the power to appoint those vice chancellors without more, how come the president no longer has the power to remove them, without more?  When you kept quiet when the initial appointments were made, what gives you the legitimacy now to protest when “illegality” upends a previous “illegality”?  As a Yorùbá saying might put it: “Olè gbé e, olè gbà à” [A thief steals something, another thief divests him of it].

There is a lesson here that we all can learn and it is the principal reason why I decided to write this little rejoinder.  In a decent society—very few think of our country as a decent society—those who are just appointed would reject the appointments or at least ask that “due process” be followed before they would accept their appointments.  I am certain that none of them would take this course.  When, therefore, two years into their tenure, their appointor has a change of mind, for any or no reason whatsoever, I definitely will not be extending myself on their behalf.

The real reason here is that the entire structure of the administration of tertiary education in our country is built on legal quicksand and political chicanery.  To begin with, no vice chancellor has anything that resembles autonomy in the running of his or her institution: they, one and all, are beholden to an organ, the National Universities’ Commission, whose bona fides are not exactly sterling.  As some of us have argued in the past [http://forevernaija.blogspot.com/2013/05/to-save-higher-education-in-nigeria.html] that the NUC cannot be a part of the revival of university education in Nigeria.  It is, I would argue, an unnecessary dissipation of the president’s time to be losing sleep over the appointment of administrators of universities.  And when we do not insist on the decentralization that would make civil society, yes, civil society the real locus of control of a quintessential civil society outfit like educational institutions, it is insincerity of the highest order, perhaps even fraud, to protest specific irregularities like the one that has attracted your disapprobation.

When those who have just been dismissed were appointed, what “due process” was put in place?  Where were the advertisements for the positions they were appointed to fill?  What interview processes did they go through?  What constituencies of their respective universities did they interact with before their appointment?  What plans did they use to sway their appointors to pick them over competing others in the process? 

One last word to the new appointees: welcome to the line of prospective dismissed vice chancellors, somewhere down the road [apologies to Barry Manilow].

THE SLAP HEARD AROUND THE WORLD; THE SHAME WATCHED AROUND THE WORLD

I would like to start this piece by thanking the owners of Channels Television in for making their broadcasts available by live streaming on the web.  In case you don’t hear it often enough, your station represents an indispensable entry point to Nigeria and its affairs for many of us its citizens in exile.

But, as the saying goes, this is one of those situations where one must really be careful what one wishes for.  We have enough of the unwanted, hard-to-watch news about Nigeria that come with news, good and bad, and other events that are standard fare in the world of information and entertainment.  Such was my feeling on Saturday, April 30, this year, watching Channels Television’s News at 10 p.m. edition for that day.

If you follow Nigerian affairs, you know that on April 22, this year, a female member of the House of Representatives, Onyemaechi Mrakpor, was allegedly slapped by a member of the security detail in a convoy in which the Director General of the Nigerian Prisons Service was travelling.  And this, because, according to her “slapper”, she was not smart enough to know what a convoy was and how to behave—get the hell out of the way, of course!—in such a situation.  Ignoramus that she was, she overtook the motorcade of Dr. Peter Ezenwa Ekpendu, the prisons service boss.  What is more, the alleged incident took place nowhere else than on the very grounds of the National Assembly.

Given how fast news travel these days that slap was definitely heard around the world.  If you don’t believe me, here is the BBC’s report based on Nigerian papers: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-36111331.  Their correspondent also spoke with the victim on an edition of “Focus on Africa” that same week.

As is usual with the illiterates who run our affairs, for whom noise is always preferable to reflection and to be seen to be “acting” always trumps rule-following, the slap became the object of a hearing by the House.  To be sure, a hearing is in order.  After all, if the incident was true, it was not merely an affront to the honourable member who was slapped, it was just as bad an affront to the institution—the house of the people—of parliament in a representative democracy.

It was the sad spectacle of the hearing that prompted my reaction in this piece.  There they were, the dramatis personae of our collective drama of shame: the representatives who formed the committee and their chair; the victim herself, and most important of all, our real rulers, who created the mess that we are still labouring to clean up, seventeen years and counting, who are supposed to have faded into their professional roles, rarely, if ever, to be seen dominating our public life, totally subject and subordinate to our elected officials; I am speaking, of course, of the men and women in uniform, in the present case, the prisons service.  More about this later.

Now to the show of shame watched around the world.  First, the hearings took on the character of “two-fighting”.  First, the representative was subjected to the humiliation of having to, as it were, state what happened.  Then, the men in uniform got up and collectively took the oath to tell the truth, I might add, as they see it.  A national assembly official looking ridiculous in the ubiquitous vest that is now the preferred wear of all officials across the country—a version of the addiction to uniforms now ravaging the land—identified by Channels Television as Sergeant-at-Arms said he did not see the officer hit the representative: according to this fellow, “the office merely touched her face and her glasses fell off”.  The alleged slapper took the stand and did his best to fudge the issue and deny, deny, deny.  Then came the Ọ̀gá Pátápátá, the Controller General of Prisons, himself and what he said was to the following effect: It is unfortunate that an incident happened.  You all [representatives, that is] have been good to me and the service.  We all know that these boys can sometimes get “overzealous” [his word].  Then he turned to the victim who, at this point, appeared to be sobbing, to forgive the infraction and its perpetrator.

That appearance is shame personified.  In a decent society, and I would not tire of saying it, we are not a decent society, the Comptroller would be cashiered on account of his sheer lack of professionalism in his appearance and self-presentation before that hearing.  And he has a Ph. D., according to the records!  So inured are we to the culture of abjection that we are now absolutely petrified of applying rules and letting the chips fall where they may. 

Obviously, Dr. Ekpendu did not seem to know that it was the responsibility of his service to investigate the actions of one of his officers accused of committing an illegal act while on duty and decide what to do in accordance with the rules regarding the performance of his officers while on duty and even while not.  Rather than discharge his duties, he resorted to begging!

The members of the House of Representatives fared no better.  As a Yorùbà proverb puts it: Irú ìró n’ìborùn, irú u baba ni tọmọ [The sash is one piece with the wrapper; the offspring is a chip off the father’s block].  The rush to useless committee hearings to adjudicate matters that are best left to the civil service and its rules and regulations speaks either to an assembly that does not really know its place or has an overabundance of time on its hands.  I doubt that the latter is the case given the extremely bad shape the country seems to be in at the present time.  So we are left with the sinking feeling that our national assembly is made up of functionaries whose knowledge of their function leaves much to be desired.

Ordinarily, the facts of the case do not seem to warrant any basic intervention by the House of Representatives.  What happened was a simple case of assault and\or battery, on the face of it.  The arm of the state that should pick up the investigation once the lady representative claimed that she was assaulted is the police.  Only they should determine whether or not there was a prima facie case to warrant arresting and charging the prison official accused of slapping the lady and ensure that he faces the music.  The victim, too, could sue him in tort for causing her injury, physical and\or emotional.  The Nigerian Prisons Service, seized of concern for its image and the fact that the officer involved committed the alleged act while on duty, would be within its rights to investigate the officer’s conduct and if it found that it compromised the integrity of the establishment or was in breach of laid down rules for the behaviour of its officers, would discipline him according to its regulations.

Finally, the House can conduct its own investigation geared not, repeat not, towards adjudicating a case of assault that is possibly felonious, but to see whether something about the organization of its premises might need to be changed to prevent future occurrences—for instance, what is a convoy doing on its premises?  Why is a civil servant—the controller is one such, the last time I checked—travelling in a convoy at all?

By way of conclusion, I would like to share what happened in 2009 in another country when a similar incident took place involving its men and women in uniform and an ordinary citizen, not even a parliamentarian or other notable.  It was in Kingston, Jamaica, at the home of one of the country’s reggae superstars, Luciano.  A joint police\military team was there to arrest a wanted murder suspect who they believed was hiding there.  It was on live TV.  At some point a gentleman—it turned out he was mentally ill—started hollering at a policewoman and would not cease even when he was admonished to stop by other officers on the scene.  Then, suddenly, one of the officers, an army Sergeant, had had enough and proceeded to slap fellow.  I remember saying to myself on my couch, “no, you don’t do that!” 

The following day, it was discussed in parliament.  But there was no rush to hearing.  Rather, the army conducted its own investigation and before that week had elapsed the sergeant had been cashiered. In case our big men and women in the national assembly need any reminders, Jamaica has a parliamentary system, our judicial systems are similar, founded on the same juridical principles, and it is a country of African-descended peoples, for the most part.  I have no doubt that many of our functionaries are regular visitors to that country.  It is why I ask whether when we travel, the only things we have eyes for are freezers, flat screen televisions and designer suits.

As another Yorùbá proverb puts it: when there are lice left to pick on our clothes, we cannot be rid of blood underneath our fingernails.  I ask: when are we going to retire permanently uniforms from our public life.  I treat this issue in a future feature piece.  But we cannot end our drama of shame till we rid our public lives of the scourge of men and women in uniform.

A REGIME OF ILLITERATES, BY ILLITERATES, FOR ILLITERATES, AND THE REST OF US

In his “The New Deal”, the late great Gil Scott-Heron intoned: “I’d said I was gonna write no more poems like this, but the dogs are in the streets….”  Yes, I had promised myself to stop pointing out the negatives about our existence as a country.  But it seems that our capacity for finding depths to plumb when I could have sworn that we had hit rock-bottom means that it would be next to impossible to keep my promise.  No, human foibles and the stupidities of the American government and society at large kept Scott-Heron writing poems like that till he passed.  I am more than proud to follow his lead.  Except we be rid of the last louse, we cannot but have blood under our fingernails.

Few who are knowledgeable about Nigeria and its affairs in the last two or so decades would deny that, pound-for-pound, the country must be in the front ranks of the countries with the highest number of degrees and other formal qualifications per capita in the world.  And this not just because of the exponential growth of institutions handing out degrees by their thousands within its borders.  It is that Nigerians would go to the ends of the earth, hell even, to obtain a certificate, any certificate.  As a result, the country is awash—I nearly said drowning—in a sea of formal qualifications across all demographic and economic sectors.  Ordinarily one would expect that a country like that, one that even wrote into its constitution—such as it is—minimum educational qualifications for eligibility for elective offices across the length and breadth of the country, would do the most things right when it comes to running its affairs. 

Unfortunately, a degree does not an educated person make.  One sees a persistent disproportion between the proliferation of certificates and the quality of leadership in all areas of life in Nigeria.  In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the infiltration of university-educated types into the business of the country has witnessed the calamitous decline in the quality of the nature, level, and scope of services in all aspects of our life.

Over the years, I have often wondered why this has been so.  Here is what I have come up with for an explanation.  I am convinced that, contrary to received wisdom, the principal functions of public life in Nigeria—government and its related institutions, education system, health systems, agriculture, etc.—are designed by illiterates and run by same.  It is a self-perpetuating regime of illiteracy with only the personnel changing from one set of operatives to another.  This is why successive occupiers of these institutions, their functionaries, from the president on down to the lowliest local government councilor, from the chief of defence staff to the newly-minted second lieutenant, from the primate of major church denominations and chief imams of major mosque congregations to the fresh inductee into either clergy, with all their fancy certificates in multiples, no less, form one of the largest coteries of illiteracies the world has ever seen.  Notice how little change there was when we had our first doctorate holder as president.

If the knowledge of our functionaries is notable for its deficiencies, if the ranks of those who know better have no say in determining how things are, what we end up with is exactly what we have in Nigeria as I write this: a state of illiterates, designed by illiterates and run by illiterates for the benefit of illiterates.  The rest, including the vast masses of our people who expect that their functionaries would at least have some idea of what they are doing, be damned!

I can only give you what I take to be representative samples of the ways of this confederacy of illiterates that passes for functionaries in my homeland.  The question that keeps recurring as I write this is how, with all our talents and formal qualifications, we could be so consistently inept, inefficient, clueless, etc.—supply your own adjective.  I can only hope that the irony is not lost on us that the country that proclaims its mostest in everything in the African continent could at the same time suck at the most basic task of organizing life and thought within its borders.

Where does one even begin?  A plane flies into one of those prestige badges that have become a must-have for Nigeria’s beggared constituent states: an airport.  I don’t think that one requires degrees and similar qualifications to know that a runway and an enclosed terminal do not an airport make.  That if you are not flying those small planes that have their gangways built into their main doors, you need gangways for embarkation and disembarkation of aircraft.  Yes, our local airlines fly jet aircraft but Bauchi Airport, on that fateful December day, had no working gangway for passengers to disembark on their arrival there in this most recent illustration of our capacity for high-class ineptitude.

The pilot, aware of his professional responsibilities, insisted on flying back to the port of origin.  But, trust our multi-degreed, formally educated, Nigerian passengers, some of whom I am certain included the functionaries whose behaviour is referenced in this article.  They asked the “officials”, not minding the pilot’s preference for the right thing—fly back if conditions were not right for disembarkation—to improvise.  Lo and behold, a ladder materialized and our elite—few amongst the masses fly—disembarked.  The cash-and-carry, let’s-get-it-done-somehow mentality that ruins our lives, corporate and personal, won the day, again.  It is not beyond imagination that, given their conviction that that is how life goes in Nigeria, they might have turned their flowing garbs into rope ladders had those aluminium ladders not been available. 

This incident encapsulates all, repeat all that is wrong with how we live, and die, as the elite segment of our society.  To start with, airports now vie with universities as the latest-chieftaincy equivalents for states and communities in our land.  Everyone can have one and with time, must have one.  There is no rhyme or reason to why they are established, how they are built, who builds them, who will use them and, most important, how are they to be funded in perpetuity.  After all, in the places from which we borrowed these ideas, building an airport is much more than laying asphalt and enclosing a terminal. 

Aircraft are responsible for two major types of pollution that decent societies led by thinking men and women worry and talk endlessly about when they think it is time to have an airport built or expand an existing one: noise and air.  Has anyone ever heard of a debate in Nigeria in the last half-century over whether or not to build an airport with due regard to the environmental impact of such a venture?  When was the last time the public was consulted on whether or not an airport should be built, where, and so on?  The elite decide they need an airport because their peers in other states have one and they need to be spared the indignities that road and rail travel entails in Nigeria, etc.  Pronto, one is built!  No cost-benefit analysis, no studies on whether it would repay the investment, who will use it, and are the personnel available to run its very advanced operations?  We build them in exactly the same way that newly-empanelled chairmen of local government councils put a wall around a dirt pitch and launch a new ultra-modern motor park!

What happened in Bauchi is the harvest of planlessness that is itself a fruit of our thoughtlessness.  Of course, once the incident happened, all the other manifestations of our multiplex illiteracies kicked in.  Certainly, you cannot have anything happening at the airport that answers simply to the officials on the ground as the agents primarily responsible for what transpires in their neck of the bureaucratic woods.  The Minister has to intervene and has to appear to be doing something in the heat of the moment.  Like clockwork, the minister has promised a “probe into the incident”.  This is now part of the DNA of our functionaries and our fresh bevy of doctorate holders and other degree-wielding equivalents never pause for a moment to realise that the smell around them is coming from their own farts.  Worse, sometimes as often happens, what are essentially crime scenes are contaminated by ministers—massive illiteracy!—and their retinue in tow appearing to be doing something by visiting the scene and ‘condoling’ with the victims justice for whom has been made unavailable because the scene has been messed up by the minister’s intervention!

Why do we need any ministerial intervention into a simple bureaucratic-cum-technical snafu at Bauchi Airport?  They had equipment that was not operational.  The pilot did not know or, what is more likely, pretended he had no reason to believe that he was flying to a destination that was nowhere ready for his flight.  Meanwhile, the passengers, all clad in their flowing robes complete with the ‘shmiling’ in the face of ‘shuffering’ that is a hallmark of life in our homeland—apologies, of course, to Fela—had no difficulty defying, yes, defying the pilot.  In civilized societies, in those situations the pilot has the last word and whosoever should disobey would have committed a felonious act for which they would go to jail.  And the pilot, knowing full well the culture of impunity in which he operates could only shrug and watch his professional integrity flushed down the drain of collective lack of capacity for shame.

Pray, what would the minister’s intervention do that would make a difference?  What did interventions by previous ministers do to ensure that what took place never happened in the first place?  Sadly, given the generalized illiteracy of our elite and the functionaries we put in charge of our affairs respecting the nature, scope and mechanics of government and its operations, we have no reason to believe that things would turn out differently. 

We are already seeing the signs that that is one area where change would not occur no matter how many changes of regime we witness.  The new minister in charge of aviation who has already put in the ritual fulmination is not likely to step back and ask himself: why is it my business to ensure that things are done right at a regional airport with all the necessary functionaries already in place and paid, no less, to ensure that things are done right?  Does the airport in question have a management?  What is the management there paid to do?  Where is the structure of responsibility?  Who ought to have done what and when in the command chain of the airport where the incident took place?

When we have ministers in place who take a deep breath, take a hard look at what they have been appointed to superintend, some of them might begin to wisen up and see how often they play the fool in the name of performing their official functions.  It may actually make some of them conclude that it is more honourable for them to decline the fool’s errand that their portfolio has saddled them with.  But, first, they must be thinking men and women; not ‘action ministers’.

Has the transportation minister ever travelled outside Nigeria?  Have those trips ever included stops in any major airport in the United States of America?  I use the United States because we pretend that our present system of government draws inspiration from and is modelled upon that of the United States.  What is more, one can only marvel at how much of our scarce foreign exchange continues to be frittered away on earning American credentials for those who govern us at all levels.  And outside of government, as I have said in the past, [See “Of Intellectuals, Politics and Public Policy-Making in Nigeria” [http://www.westafricareview.com/war/issue5/toc5.htm2004],

Nigeria must have the most active alumni associations of elite schools in the United States and the United Kingdom with minimum, if any, value added to the lives of ordinary Nigerians.  What the latter get from them are the occasional low-paying jobs that the elite alumni and alumnae have them do at the regular shindigs hosted by the likes of the Harvard Business School Alumni Association and the OxBridge Club.

Let us go back to our functionaries and their regular visits to the United States.  Many of them own property in the United States.  Do they make it their business to observe—forget study—how things are done in that country?  If they do, is it the case that what they see does not register with them or they are convinced that such things as make life more livable in the United States are beyond their ken or beyond what they themselves, not to talk of ordinary Nigerian humanity, deserve to have?

A disclaimer is in order here.  What follows is not written to score points.  What I say here is so ordinary, all it takes is a bit of curiosity and deep dissatisfaction with our quality of life in Nigeria to wish to see similar things done to make living vastly better for all Nigerians.

The Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Atlanta, Georgia, United States, just celebrated its 100 millionth passenger.  It has not always been that way.  Until about fifteen years ago, O’Hare-Field Chicago International Airport was the world’s busiest airport.  The City of Atlanta never thought that they were destined to playing second fiddle to Chicago in perpetuity.  Its successor mayors and councillors, its business moguls, its academic elite and all others seized of civic pride decided that their city was capable of attaining higher heights.  Time did not hand over the status of “the world’s busiest airport” to Hartsfield-Jackson.  The “federal government” did not pre-select or designate Atlanta as a “centre of excellence” by fiat.  The President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of the United States of America did not decree that “federal character” should determine at what pace the United States’ cities or states could march towards excellence or decree that Atlanta in the southeast not exceed Chicago in the midwest in the city attainment stakes.  Hell, no!

The reason all the preceding did not happen is awfully simple: Atlanta is a city, incorporated in its own right, with a right to home rule, able to parlay its local wealth in land, infrastructure, quality of life for its citizens, and taxing powers, combined with solid political leadership and sound management of its resources and able to determine how high it wishes to fly.  Additionally, its relationships with its neighbouring municipalities, its home county, the government of the State of Georgia where it is located, and the federal government of the United States, are all imbricated in a network of conventions, laws, regulations, political culture, all of which are modulated by serious philosophical principles respecting separation of powers, sovereignty of the person, limits on the powers of the state, and so on.  What is not easily perceptible in all this is the sense on the part of everyone that it takes everyone doing his or her own part in this delicate choreography of modern living in order thereby to ensure for all the kind of life befitting their status as citizens and, more important, as human beings.

Why bother with all I just said?  I wonder if we are not, on our junkets to other parts of the world, those proverbial strangers that Yorùbá say have eyes but don’t see with them.  When you go to the website of Hartsfield-Jackson, under ‘Airport Information’, the top link is “Welcome from the Mayor” and the second is “Welcome from the G[eneral] M[anager]”.  No message from the State Governor?  No mug of the President?  And consistent with this, when anything happens at the aiport, there are procedures in place for the different subordinates of the General Manager to discharge their functions in coordination with other units, each of them having clearly delimited functions and responsibilities.  They would surely be called to account, both individually and as a group, when anything goes wrong at the airport.  And the General Manager would be the face of the response, the first port of call for journalists, investigators, regulators, etc, right there at the airport. 

Most important of all, the airport is owned and run by the City of Atlanta.  Say what?  A city owning lock, stock and barrel a major airport?  Yes, the Mayor of Atlanta and his City Council are jointly the final authority on what happens at the airport and no federal authority or state authority would dare interpose itself in the business of that airport without risking illegality.

Now, I suppose it would be asking too much of my VIP compatriots to burrow into airport websites.  But do they notice the ubiquitous signs outside those airports announcing: “Mayor Kasim Reed Welcomes You to Atlanta”; “Mayor Rahm Emmanuel Welcomes You to Chicago”?  If they do, does the message of those signs ever resonate with them?  If any evidence be needed, many people that I shared it with were surprised that they did not notice any incongruity in a group photograph taken at a conference of the world’s mayors with Babatunde Fashola as a participant.  I am surprised that there has been no pushback from any corner of the ex-governor’s team against his being repeatedly identified in publications as “mayor of Africa’s largest city Lagos”.  I am even more so that he did not see anything wrong with attending a mayors’ summit as a state governor.  But that, precisely, is the problem.

Thanks to the march of illiteracy in our ranks, we no longer have cities in Nigeria.  All the things that municipalities are supposed to do as the first, most-proximate-to-the-people tier of government have become buried in nebulous, completely unimaginative, almost no-name “Local Government Councils”.  No state government dare try to change the arrangement.  And no municipal governments dare think of working out arrangements with one another to secure the synergies that cities can create to make the likes of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport happen.

Does anyone suppose that our deservedly celebrated ex-governor who is now a new minister is thinking of how to dismantle the behemoth that stands in the way of Nigeria realizing its historical destiny?

Sadly, the signs we see are portentous.  Nothing in the mantra of change of the present administration suggests that the governing party and its newly-minted bevy of degree-wielding functionaries all along the line think there is any problem with the structure of things as they are.  This is where the full picture of the confederacy of illiterates that we call government and its functionaries emerges.  I have merely used the Bauchi Airport incident and the contrast with Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to set up the big indictment that is at the heart of this essay.

Hardly a day passes without some members of our confederacy venting on the issue of federalism, how we need fiscal federalism, how true federalism is the way to go and so on.  But with very rare exceptions, few are those who go to the very heart of the matter and show some awareness of how radical the idea of federalism is in practice.  That is, many who canvass federalism do not seem to realize some of its most radical ramifications.  And it is our illiteracy concerning this mode of organizing our politics that explains our repeated failures, post-Civil War, to make our country run better for the benefit of all who reside within its borders.

Let me recount another incident.  It was 1997.  I was having a conversation with one of my old peers at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, regarding the state of our universities.  Of course, those who know me from my days as a teacher at Ife know that I did not back then think anything good could come out of the penchant for centralization and micro-management that was beginning to characterize the operation of the National Universities Commission (NUC) back in the late 1980’s of the last century.  So I asked my friend, while making a case for dismantling the NUC, how much sense it makes, in a federal system, for a state to set up a university and put it under the authority of a federal institution like the NUC and its twin, Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board. 

My friend was genuinely surprised.  He had never thought of it in those terms.  Then I reminded him that federalism is a model of conflict management in pluralist societies, that the ultimate authority on any issue under state jurisdiction in a federal system is the state governor and the state legislature.  End of story.  If there is any conflict with another state, a municipality within the state or the federal government, it is for the courts charged with the responsibility for constitutional interpretation to resolve.

My friend is not atypical.  This partly is why I decided that we are either illiterates or frauds.  But I don’t think that we are frauds.  I sincerely think that many of us who run our affairs are somewhat not up to speed where it concerns what the institutions of foreign provenance that we insist on running our affairs through are or require for their successful operation.  That is why we would have governors who shout about true federalism but think the idea of local government or municipal autonomy is anathema to them.  It is why we would enter government and just go blindly shooting darts in the dark hoping something might stick, never pausing to find out why some of our best brains shipwrecked in government in the past.  And I am not talking of the light-fingered office holders.

I see some of us in the current administration going down the same cul de sacs.  What is the business of the federal government running retail educational institutions like high schools?  What are “federal medical centres”?  Why do they exist while the big, necessary institutions needed to set the parameters for lower level institutions and train staff for the latter as well as generate research results the lower tiers could profit from are languishing?  Why dissipate scarce energy and resources on small fry when the federal might such as it is is better utilized on broad policy and macro-management models?  Why is it a federal responsibility to monitor traffic on our roads?  Why have we been contented with continuing military rule in mufti?  That is all we have done since 1999.  Why is the registration of vehicles, one of the best revenue earners for state and municipalities in other climes, a federal responsibility?  Why do our governors think it is a good investment of their scarce time hosting carnivals and carol services?

How can we be a secular state but open legal years with religious services?  Why is the judiciary of a state under the thumb of a so-called “National Judicial Council”?  Why is it necessary for an Inspector General of Police in Abuja to be the one to decide how many police officers are needed in Ògbómòsó?  Why can’t people in Òkè Ògùn, through their incorporated municipalities, use their land as collateral to raise capital to generate power from their thermal energy resources without having to have a minister in Abuja poke her nose into their affairs?  Why does a state governor have to humiliate himself before any national assembly to obtain approval to raise a bond to build his state?  Why do we insist on running a federal system on one constitution?

Such is the regime of illiteracy under which we live that its functionaries do not pause to ask some of the preceding questions before they enthusiastically plunge into the muck that masquerades as government under the present dispensation in Nigeria.  What all this points to is that, as things stand right now, the military never left and only the illiteracy of our confederates and the lucre that accrues to many of them stand in the way of their realising  that, in spite of occasional successes, the repeated need to come up with new blueprints for power and housing, solid minerals and railroads, agriculture and education, after each change of administration, points to the inevitability of failure until we decide to act as if we know what the true nature, level, and function of government is in a federal state.  Welcome to future ladders of stupidity.  Bauchi Airport will definitely not be the last of its kind.