Guiding political philosophy for a democratic Nigeria (II)
The scars of the war and the psychological damage on both sides were covered with the wall paper of oil boom denying the country an opportunity for introspection and catharsis. On the Nigerian side, the psychological damage arising from a bloody three – year war to keep the country one did not find a healing […]
The scars of the war and the psychological damage on both sides were covered with the wall paper of oil boom denying the country an opportunity for introspection and catharsis. On the Nigerian side, the psychological damage arising from a bloody three – year war to keep the country one did not find a healing outlet. We talk today of the Unknown Soldier and perform some perfunctory ceremony ostensibly to honour that soldier whose purpose and reason for dying remains unknown to the post-civil war generation or even to those who fought alongside the soldier.
On the Eastern side of the country the three Rs of Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation provided the convenient ointment to soothe the pains of the bitter pogroms and war. Together with the oil boom and the quest to survive, the necessary soul searching and existential interrogation that ought to accompany the reconciliation never occurred.
Taking an example from the United States of America, a country founded on the idea of freedom and inalienable rights, we look at the way those who lost their lives during the American Civil war and the Second World War are treated. Every June 6, the world celebrates the D-Day, the landing at Normandy. On the 50th anniversary of that landing, veterans, Presidents, Prime Ministers gather at Normandy to celebrate the most audacious military campaign by the Allies to fight back Nazism. At the National D-day Memorial located in Bedford, Virginia, the community suffering the highest per capita D-Day losses in America, the memorial is described “…as a permanent tribute to the valour, fidelity and sacrifice of D-Day participants. The memorial is encompassed by the names of the 4,413 Allied soldiers who died in the invasion”
Where is the memorial to the valour and the sacrifice of the soldiers who fought to keep Nigeria one or the memorial for those who lost their lives in the pogroms and the Biafra side? What is the reminder for ‘‘Never again”? What will make a post war generation conscious of the triggers of that war and the human and material cost of the war? We must confront our past to help in ensuring that a new generation does not repeat the mistakes of the past as the prevailing situation across the country suggests.
The generation that fought the civil war did not and have not defined the reason it fought to keep Nigeria one. We do not have the equivalent of our own Gettysburg speech that raised the reason for the war above the mundane. We have not honoured those who laid down their lives so that the Nigerian State will survive and exist. Since the colonial government amalgamated Nigeria, have we defined the concept of Nigeria along values and ideas? We talk about unity and faith, unity for what? Faith in what? For what purpose?
Our ethnic, tribal and religious diversity ought to provide the inspiration and aspiration to build a nation out of our different tribes and tongues. Our founding fathers missed the opportunity to inspire and construct a nation of ideas and not a mere inheritor of a British convenience store. It is in trying to sustain and build on the British foundation and scaffolds that we have missed our way and continue to do so.
As a Freedom child born on a Nigerian soil watered by the blood of young men and women on both sides of the war, I have decided that we have come of age to set new scaffolds and construct new pillars that will give new meaning to the idea of Nigeria. Those born after the war are gradually ascending to the commanding heights of the bureaucracy, economy, politics and academia and will sooner than later assume responsibility for managing Nigeria.
Our national motto speaks of unity and faith, peace and progress. Unity for what purpose? Faith in what? Our national anthem asks us to arise and obey Nigeria’s call to serve our fatherland, service to achieve what? That the labours of our heroes past shall not be in vain. Good enough we are at President Obasanjo’s Library and he is here with us, it will be good to know what informed the change of our national anthem in 1978.
Our first national anthem composed by a British expatriate Lilian Jean Williams, who won the contest to compose an anthem for independent Nigeria gave an indication of the Nigeria we should build as it talks of standing in brotherhood though tribes and tongues may differ, of sovereign native land and proclaimed that our flag shall be a symbol that truth and justice reign whether in peace or battle we shall honour truth and justice. At the end of the first stanza it demanded us to hand on to our children a banner without stain. Let’s look at the lyrics of the two national anthem again
The concept of truth and justice, of standing in brother though we differ and the promise to handover a banner without stain resonates and have the aspirational qualities of an ideal.
The first stanza of the Obasanjo (yes, he gave it to us) anthem calls us to arise and obey Nigeria’s call. It demands us to serve our fatherland with love, strength and faith hoping that the labours of our heroes past shall not be in vain. It ends with a declaration of a nation bound in freedom, peace and unity. The current anthem is a product of our post-civil war experience which has as its defining ethos peace and unity. The issue is, to what purpose?
Looking at the second stanza of the two anthems I have no difficulty aligning with the old anthem which asks the Creator to grant our one request, to help us build a nation where no man is oppressed. The idea of a black nation where no man is oppressed appears to me as a foundation upon which we can construct a nation so diverse and yet similar; where though tribes and tongues differ we can stand in brotherhood. A country where minority rights are protected and individual rights guaranteed.
My sympathy for the first national anthem notwithstanding its weakness was the fact that it did not emanante from Nigerians. Its foreign origin elicited strong protest at that time and made the words to lose its deeper meanings to its audience.
Sadly our first republic started without a coherent national aspirational philosophy and more seriously it took off as a divided country. This fact was well captured in an article by Ezekiel Mphahlele writing in African Today, a few months to independence, in an article titled Nigeria On the Eve of Independence.
Describing the three regions on the eve of independence Mphahlele wrote “So here we have three regions marching confidently to independence: practically three nations, the smallest having not less than five and one-half million in population. The British Colonial Secretary believes Nigeria could not have chosen better than to opt for a federal structure. But there is a body of enlightened opinion that holds that the worst legacy Britain could have left Nigerians was to have regionalized the country. Indeed, each regional government has over the years been “developing along its own lines””. Three strong regions sharing no unifying philosophy and dedicated to no ideal.
More disturbing is Mphahlele’s thoughts on the Political Parties of the day at that time. He posited that each regional ruling party generally reflects the traits of the national group it governs. He described the N.C.N.C thus “N.C.N.C. has a looseness of structure that has something to do with what one may call the republican spirit of the Easterners – the individualism and independence of mind of the Ibo.”
For the Action group he thought the “A.G. reflects the profound sense of authority of the Yoruba: almost as if, without someone to pay obeisance to, a man would not survive one day.”
The Northern People’s Congress was in his words “Equally authoritarian is the N.P.C. Muslim sanctions give it a feudal look and character and indeed it is often feudal in its attitudes and in its dealings with those it rules.”
(Continued next week)
Text of a paper presented on the occasion of the public lecture organised by the Youth Development Centre of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, Abeokuta, May 2017.