The Grid Shift Theory (I)
By Huzaifa jega It is unlikely that we will succeed as a people, as a country, perhaps even as a race as soon as we want. When aggrieved Nigerians talk about restructuring they mostly mean the devolution of powers of governance to the federating units – the states. The fact that state governors are warlords […]
By Huzaifa jega
It is unlikely that we will succeed as a people, as a country, perhaps even as a race as soon as we want. When aggrieved Nigerians talk about restructuring they mostly mean the devolution of powers of governance to the federating units – the states. The fact that state governors are warlords in their turf – and how determined they are to resist the cascading imperative of local government autonomy is sometimes proof we are not being inspired by the sincerity of purpose when we parrot that sentiment.
In the desperate heat of the battle to evade a marauding cat, a mouse whose thoughts are fixated exclusively on a refuge will more often than not end up being eaten by a snake. A mouse will throw itself down anything that remotely looks like an escape, even a snake’s burrow.
Initialising the variables from the Nigerian picture, the equation above becomes a telling testimony to how little confidence Nigerians have in the governance system. It is trite a fact that humans have a predilection for falling back on sentimental identities. The state mechanisms supposed to take care of the cumulative interests of Nigeria’s mutually antagonistic ethno-religious interest groups was probably dead on arrival and that was why it took the reign of only one generation of politicians for the country to go up in flames. Perhaps the cause-effect sequence is in inverse gear, meaning that it was the latter that caused the effect in question instead of vice versa.
More and more, sections of this country are succumbing to the reactionary values of isolationism, xenophobia and identity teaching. Where will that take us? One of the things I agree with Nietsche on – is his idea of “teaching” the Superman, or Superman – or Ubermensche. That is a hypothetical super-human transcending the abject pettiness of the human condition of being “true to the earth”. The propensity of a typical Nigerian ethno-religious section to convoluting and doctoring reality to suit its interest is legendary. We are all guilty of that. Looking at it from the perspective of Nietsche’s Zarathustra, we teach underman, we advocate for an evolutionary regression – back to the great ape kingdom we emerged from (according to him). And what is an ape but – “a laughing stock and painful embarrassment ”?
Without realising it in full colour, we are not only halting the propagation of natural order – which is obsessed with an organic cross-integration of divergent social modules – we are also taking two steps back for every step forward in a Darwinian misadventure that will take us back to the crude emptiness of primeval humanity.
A big part of our problem is that we spare no effort for social reinvention, after emerging from the great shock that came with colonisation. The engineers of our fate, the leaders of society seem to have lost the touch of leadership to marshal the wills of our peoples for a particular productive purpose or ideal. Maybe it is the society that has lost the ability to both identify and enthrone leaders that are leaders in the abstract manner of round pegs in round holes. Altogether therefore, our civilization is left bereft of the ability to think, plan and act strategically. And I don’t mean planning for the next month or next decade. I am talking about long-haul sociology. Planning for the next generation, planning for the next century, and creating and consolidating an organic social identity among divergent groups we must live with, for instance by shifting and transposing sociological grids according to the instantaneous currents and requirements of the times.
If there is anything we need to learn from history is that it favours collective strengths. None of the people we want to be like became what they are or had any chance of becoming just that before they learnt to aggregate more and more entirely different ideas, more and more entirely people into one. They went as far as enforcing this by blood and iron.
Fortunately, we know how to do it without the blood or the iron, and with glad consent of all interests involved. I am from the North, and as such, should I ever say anything with a bearing that excuses political and administrative measures such as the quota system, I am liable to be accused of hypocrisy. But the federal character being engineered is supposed to create a sense of functional agglomeration of every part of the Nigerian society as a way of creating and sustaining a country first, before the rest could even be worked on. Without that, without subordinating merit to this affirmation, there will be no country so we might as well all go home. But we do want a country and therefore must work for it. Same of course cannot be said about some of the countries we love to draw parallels with when we discuss Nigeria.
We are not those people… we are different and everything about us is different too. That was our problem before independence and that is still it. The way I see and believe it, a political firmament is an overriding raison d’tat for us and that kingdom must be sought and everything else will naturally follow. Once again, permit me to use the “American democracy” as case study. It will probably only amount to fascinating trivia to note that the American president and his vice have emerged from the same state time after time. No one will bat an eye as long as there is a strong argument in favour of them where merit is concerned.