Nigeria: Unity at what cost?
It is proper to establish the fundamental premise on which one seeks to interrogate General Ihejirika’s position. One is not necessarily looking forward to, or campaigning for the breakup of the entity called Nigeria by disagreeing with the general. I guess many Nigerians believe in the unity of our country. What is at issue is […]
It is proper to establish the fundamental premise on which one seeks to interrogate General Ihejirika’s position. One is not necessarily looking forward to, or campaigning for the breakup of the entity called Nigeria by disagreeing with the general. I guess many Nigerians believe in the unity of our country. What is at issue is unity at what cost? How far are we prepared to go down the road of unity? If the cost of continued unity rises to the life and limbs of our innocent children, parents, friends and relations, can we still stay the course? If the cost becomes the fear of seeking our daily bread without being blown to smithereens, is unity still worth it?
We have watched as the entity called Nigeria serially failed to provide us good and affordable education, healthcare, electricity and the basic necessities of life. We did not regard these privations as sufficient to question our unity. Instead we have reached back into our ingenious armoury and learnt to generate our own electricity and water and pay through our noses for education and healthcare by private providers. But these donations of aspects of our life and liberties are not enough. Like the rapacious, inexorable shark off the coast of Eilat in Naomi Shemer’s poem/song, “The Shark”, Nigeria’s unity must swallow its victims for peace to reign. Unity presupposes an otherness as one thing cannot be united with itself. If in 2012, the Nigerian state has not been able to come to terms with the unity in diversity which its national ethos aspires to, then perhaps it is time to re-negotiate that unity.
The serial destruction of all the elements that make for unity is going to leave us with inertia as the only reason for continuing as one country. That inertia caused by the fear of the unknown is daily being challenged by the progress of neighbouring countries. In other words, those who would have squelched any irredentist thoughts because of the fear that they would be worse off as separate country, are seeing Ghana making progress.
They are seeing Chad and Niger republics with a miniscule of Nigeria’s resources having steady power supplies and exporting fuel to Nigeria. One day they are going to ask themselves what the Nigerian state is offering them for the much vaunted unity. Late President J F Kennedy’s admonition about asking not what your country can do for you is being challenged by a new generation of Nigerians for whom unity means united in mediocrity, corruption, insecurity and joblessness. This is because the subtext to that famous admonition is that your country has fulfilled that irreducible minimum social contract with her citizens. In 2012, we are seeing a Nigerian state that is failing to guarantee that irreducible minimum of securing its citizens like it did in 1966.
A federation should be like a marriage. If in the course of the marriage, all other ingredients of the union like love, companionship, children’s welfare and moral compunctions have broken down leaving the fear of divorce as the only cement holding the union, one day even that fear will be overcome. This is the implication of General Ihejirika’s warning. The army’s role in a healthy federation should be positive – that of advancing the cause of the federation. By the time the army has to define its role in negative terms – that of preventing the nation’s break-up, l’m afraid, that nation has long ceased to live. Real unity is fostered in the hearts of citizens through processes that are autonomous to the individual. Like love, you cannot force it. By the time unity is reduced to bullets and bayonets, it has been lost long ago.
Instead of flaunting its arsenal as a scarecrow against our separatist tendencies, the army should get proactive and not wait until “water pass garri.” What do l mean? I mean that other nations that have broken up all had standing armies some, more deadly than the Nigerian army. The former Soviet Union is a modern example. Also the Sudan, Yugoslavia and India. They all had standing armies. But those armies were overwhelmed by the water of separation which passed the garri of unity. The military does not have to take over governance to prevent a break-up. In the Nigerian case, many of the seeds of break-up were sown by the military in the first place.
What should rather concern us is that the military does not move to give effect to their political opinion through the force of arms. Soldiers definitely read our newspapers, watch the TV, hear discussion in buses and beer parlours and listen to Political Platform on radio! Though the system had sought to quarantine them from the shenanigans of the larger society through own hospitals, own schools, own housing (barracks) and the hedonistic mammy markets, these special arrangements have largely collapsed, swamped as they were by pressure from the larger population. For example, military schools at the secondary level are now hot cakes for the civil populace following the degeneration of the Federal Government Colleges which used to be the Ivy League institutions at that level.
Therefore, it is in the military’s self interest that things don’t degenerate to a shooting war or a break up. How they go about doing this demands a paradigm shift in their relationship with the polity. It is all well and good for the Chief of Army Staff to sound so Quixotic about unity at a reunion gathering. But beyond the posturing, what should occupy his mind is the higher goal of preventing Nigeria from reaching the brink and perhaps postponing the evil day indefinitely. For now the military plays the proverbial monkey, seeing all, hearing all but speechless. The polity gets unnecessarily nervous with any move by serving officers. But a leeway exists for the armed forces to engage the political leadership. That leeway is the agency of its retired corps of retired officers. We have all kinds of groupings of retired and extant interest groups including wives associations. But our retired military officers just play golf and polo. They can be mobilised to act as bridge between their serving colleagues and the polity.
They were witnesses to the degeneration and anarchy that proceeded the fall of previous civilian administrations. Some of them have had the misfortune of fighting against their colleagues and compatriots in Biafra.
Mike Ekunno is a freelance book editor and proof reader