A word about service with honour

On Saturday, 9th of November, Barewa Old Boys Association (BOBA) held its Annual Dialogue and Awards event in Abuja. As is characteristic of BOBA events, this one promised and delivered even more. The excellent organisation was surpassed only by two segments that defined the event. The first was the celebration of the association’s historic, defining […]

On Saturday, 9th of November, Barewa Old Boys Association (BOBA) held its Annual Dialogue and Awards event in Abuja. As is characteristic of BOBA events, this one promised and delivered even more. The excellent organisation was surpassed only by two segments that defined the event. The first was the celebration of the association’s historic, defining centrepiece, General Yakubu Gowon, GCFR, who turned 90 just a few days earlier. The second was this year’s addition to a routine of the annual event; the celebration of people associated with the College or past students who stood out in the service of the nation. The two segments were merged by the thoughtful decision to ask the celebrated General Gowon to express the appreciation of families (of mostly deceased) recipients of honours and awards, of which he was one. There was a sobering interlude to the celebrations of service and sacrifice when Professor Ango Abdullahi’s lecture was built upon by searing critiques of governance and leadership which have shaped our lives in at least the past three decades. Professor Jibo Ibrahim conducted an accomplished panel made up of Professor Reverend Obaje, Dr Usman Bugaje and General Abdurrahman Dambazau through a tapestry of issues and threats our nation must challenge if it is to mean what it meant to past generations. This interruption of celebrating great individuals and institutions provided the corrective in the general perception of history as a record of the past, and reminded the hall which held at least seven generations of Nigerians that the true value of history lies in its capacity to influence the future.

 The list of those selected for mention and honour this year, like earlier years, said a lot about the long journey of our nation from the promises of its challenging history to its many stumbles, viewed through the achievements of some of its guiding lights nurtured by an institution with a century of history. It was a list that should serve many purposes.  The obvious first is that most great works of service and sacrifices were never intended for future’s applause. They were simply everyday activities undertaken with commitment, humility and a strong sense that there are good and proper ways of achieving positive results which should not be compromised. Two, there will always be a time when great works of service to the public will be remembered and appreciated. History never forgets: it is the double-edged sword that reminds us that there are also times when breaches of trust and abuse of opportunities to do good for others are remembered and condemned. Three, young Nigerians in the hall who only heard of ancestors (now being celebrated), also  got to hear of the fading voice of a nation which once upheld excellence, service and positive values. Finally, events that hold up humble, honest and hardworking citizens;  leaders with vision and characters strong enough to chart difficult courses for the nation, and simple, honest and hardworking citizens content to do what is right will serve to lower the head of a nation that is today deeply worried that it is divided sharply between those who do as they wish because there are no consequences for failure or abuse, and others who have to bear the tyranny of mediocrity, impunity and corruption, defined simply  as the abuse of trust for personal gain.

The sterling records of those celebrated, from the Head of State who saw the nation through one of its most challenging traumas and then led it through an amazing healing and recovery, to Imams and teachers and cadet instructors, appeared to have only one goal. It was to hold up core values of service to the community and the nation and personal integrity. There was strong evidence that the present was being challenged to look back at a past that was not by any means easier. The difference was the impact of those who nurtured future generations for little more than a sense of service; upheld and punished transgressions against being and doing good; a clear sense of being accountable and very strong sense of a vision and a mission to work for a better future with honour.

When he stood alone on the stage to thank fellow Nigerians and colleagues who received so much from the nation and gave back as much as they could, General Gowon appeared to embody much of Nigerian history. That history today haunts a nation that seems paralysed from rediscovering a mission that befits it. There stood an elderly man who once had the job of providing leadership that could determine the future of Africa’s greatest asset, with nothing more than a good upbringing, an excellent training as a military officer and a handful of colleagues and officials who shared in his conviction that the country’s survival as one was worth preserving. It could all have simply become worse, given the nature and outcome of a messy attempt to replace a democratically elected government with military rule. By July 1966, Nigeria had few champions. Every part was aggrieved enough to walk away. The military bungled a delicate imbalance cobbled by a colonial master who had more faith in his handiwork than the citizens of the country he created. It took 30 months to end a civil war that was won more by the way it was fought and ended than the muscle of the combatants. History will record the immediate decisions of Gowon and his colleagues at the end  of the war as the most decisive weapon that gave the entire nation victory, more than all the military campaigns during the war. Nigerians walked away from an imminent end to their union, and commenced another chapter which had no relationship with its immediate past.

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More than five decades after the civil war, it is not unfair to say you have to search very  deep to find evidence that old ghosts were buried by generations that should have benefitted from the pains and privations of past mistakes. Why did Nigeria have to be re-united at great cost to life and limbs and resources? What was at stake that has been so spectacularly absent since other military officers routinely pushed their ways into power, starting with the uncontested overthrow of  General Gowon; dwarfed and perverted democratic aspirations and systems; laid foundations of a parasitic state and the gradual end of an emerging middle class; frittered and plundered the commonwealth; mutilated a federal system through political engineering that showed all the hallmarks of ill-bred workmanship. After the military and its cheerleaders had run themselves into a cul-de-sac, they released the nation to predatory leadership which got successively worse as it fed fat from the only goal of political power: corruption of unimaginable proportions in a nation bereft of core values such as honesty, hard work, respect for diversity and a place for the citizen in influencing how he is governed.

Even as he clocked 90, murmurs around versions of history of the events between 1967 and 1970 and his role in that history competed for attention in a country that had since created new monsters. Indeed, a case could be made for the assertion that Nigerians killed history as  they perfected the art of progressively making bad situations worse, although many of the new challenges had  uncanny resemblances to the major preoccupations of the 1960s and 1970s. Irredentism has had  a comfortable place on the table of Nigerian politics for decades. Use of violence to achieve political ends has routinely fed on a weak state with no moral clout to take it on. Citizens fear state agents as much as they fear those who terrorize them. Leaders seek only illegal accumulation of wealth, relying on corrupt and compromised regulatory institutions to protect them from the public. Young Nigerians grow on staples of morality defined by the superiority of the individual’s interests and needs over the collective’s. The guardians of the nation’s integrity and survival have long abandoned ship. We are adrift in dangerous waters. Staying in the boat is dangerous. Jumping ship is not a better option.

A few hundred Nigerians sat through a rendition of a time when the nation dreamt big and had the vision to try to turn it into reality. We were reminded of the primacy of reclaiming the challenge to change direction from consistent failure to gradual recovery; from despondency to hope; from running away to fighting back and from living better than our children, to laying foundations for better lives for them. If we will to do that, we have to remember that some Nigerians once believed in one country that could do  right for all of us and worked and died for it. We have to draw a line for future generations in the quality of leaders we elect; in the values of integrity and competence which should design our institutions; in the rediscovery of values of service and honour which should guide our conduct and provide the contexts in which we bring up our young. More than 50 years ago, General Gowon and a few colleagues showed it could be done. Now we face a future with two choices: a regeneration engineered by a recognition that we must chart a different course for Nigeria, or collapse that has no parallel in human history. We do not have the luxury of assuming things will right themselves, one way or the other. One way will be to continue to tolerate mediocrity and complacency, until the country sinks with us all. The other is to recognise the dangers of our situation and organise to re-engineer a country that should be a source of pride for future generations, because they have been served with honour and respect.

Dr Baba-Ahmed sent this piece from Abuja