Nigeria today faces a serious dilemma caused by the development ambitions of the various nationalities making up the entity called Nigeria and that has become a big threat to her very existence as a political entity.
It is now a common refrain by many Nigerians to say that what we are currently experiencing in Nigeria is far from the dreams and aspirations of our founding fathers. It is apparent that the country is engulfed in confusion. We have suddenly become a nation that is dying because we have deteriorated to a polity with no values and national identity. The only thing we seem to value is money at all costs. Of course, this is not the Nigeria we all came to love in the 60s and 70s. The implication of this is that our generation of Nigerians has failed the nation and failed in our national duty to sustain and enhance the foundational values handed to us by our ancestors and the founding fathers who emerged in the late ’50s and early ’60s.
Therefore, it is not by mere coincidence that everybody is talking or pontificating about building a new Nigeria. Some call it restructuring. Quite recently, Yemi Osinbajo, the vice president, harped on the significant roles elites play in the development of a country. According to him, the weight of what happens in the society, whether good or bad, rests squarely on the shoulders of the elites. Osinbajo made the remarks at a recent dinner hosted by the Nigeria Bar Association Section on Business Law. In his submission, he said that elites, like the lawyers who formed the better part of the audience that day, “are the repository of knowledge and information,” and therefore, must use their knowledge for the common good of the nation.
That was not the first time the vice president was making such an allusion to the roles elites should play in the development of the country. At other fora in the past, he had spoken about the need for elites’ consensus in the country, while calling for a “new tribe of Nigerians,” working together to rid the country of corruption and other vices. The society, Osinbajo said, “would depend a lot on the elites in the coming years and that is a huge responsibility.”
In the same vein, Alhajji Sa’ad Abubakar III, the Sultan of Sokoto, recently said that those causing problems in Nigeria are elites who always cause trouble for their selfish interests. The Sultan was probably speaking in defence of the ordinary Fulani man or Fulani herdsmen who have been in the news for the wrong reasons in recent times. The Fulani herdsmen who move around with their animals have come under serious criticisms for destroying farmlands along their grazing routes and also causing death and destructions all over the place.
To understand the reality of the political situation in Nigeria, we must first recognise that the socio-political conditions that currently prevail in this society are uniquely Nigerian, and not those of any alien society. It is becoming increasingly clear that democracy as practised in developed societies cannot be transplanted wholesale in Nigeria as such transfers have proved inapplicable to our setting.
The Sultan who spoke at his palace laid the blame for the resurgence of violence among the herdsmen squarely at the doorstep of the elites. He said such elites, whenever they lose control of power, look for ways to create problems for the common man in the country. “When such people lose power, the next thing is to start using some few people to cause problems. They politicise everything in the country. That is when you hear things like insurgency in the North-East or Avengers in the Niger Delta. All these are problems caused by some individuals who do not wish the country well,” he said.
One cannot but agree with the views expressed by both the Vice President and the Sultan. The Nigerian political terrain is far more complex today than it was when the country first embarked on the path of nation-building. The challenges facing the country in pursuing the task of nation-building are daunting. Nigeria today faces a serious dilemma caused by the development ambitions of the various nationalities making up the entity called Nigeria and that has become a big threat to her very existence as a political entity. The principal factors identified in the nation’s roiling political crisis are the struggle for ethnic determination, true federalism, religious intolerance, resource control and the struggle for the centre, among others. Mixed with this is the fact that corruption and greed have steadily found their way to the long list of ills plaguing the country. These and many more are the causes of the country’s political upheavals and stagnation.
To understand the reality of the political situation in Nigeria, we must first recognise that the socio-political conditions that currently prevail in this society are uniquely Nigerian, and not those of any alien society. It is becoming increasingly clear that democracy as practised in developed societies cannot be transplanted wholesale in Nigeria as such transfers have proved inapplicable to our setting. In other words, a stable democracy which we envisage will not be feasible until such a time the society is ready to invent its own form of democracy, rooted in its own set of values and reality. The fact is, the norms and values that govern a society are distilled from the evolutionary development of that society. As the social conditions of the state evolve, the rules that govern its society must also evolve. Therefore, to survive, the government of each society must evolve and adapt along the lines of its own peculiar set of realities.
A close examination of the socio-political evolution of every developed nation, including the ones whose systems Nigeria has been trying to emulate, reveals the impact of the efforts of certain prominent intellectuals to formulate and design strategies for the positive development of their respective societies. These were men of outstanding intellectual ability who understood their societies and used their knowledge to generate viable ideas that were to prove invaluable in their guidance of political leadership in the task of building sound foundations for those societies.
…the Nigerian intellectual elite must accept the great responsibility of charting a new course for the country. This they can do by educating and motivating the various groups in our society to live in harmony with one another. They should help in changing the present narrative in which the affairs of the Nigerian state have been characterised by ethnic and religious rivalries, selfishness, laziness, jealousy and impatience.
The problem Nigeria faces stems largely from the failure of her intellectual class to make suitable distinction between the utility of the ideas developed by classical European intellectuals and that of the new ideas needed to meet the country’s contemporary political needs. The goal of the Nigerian intellectuals in studying classical theories should not be the theories themselves but, rather, the anatomy of political theorisation. As it is, our intellectuals must not be slow in reading the handwriting on the wall. Everything that is happening in the country today, from the bad to the ugly, are indications that there is need for a philosophical analysis of our situation in Nigeria. This analysis will result in the formulation of creative, rather than emulative, socio-political theories for the country.
The rapidly changing nature of the society makes this suggestion more expedient more than ever before. We must come clean and straight to our genuine friends in the international community and explain our situation. This is because, today, no single nation state can pretend to be in control of all events within its own borders. It is only then that necessary assistance can flow in without necessarily jeopardising our sovereignty. This makes the task of the Nigerian elite more thought-provoking and even challenging.
Just as Osinbajo and the Sultan said, the Nigerian intellectual elite must accept the great responsibility of charting a new course for the country. This they can do by educating and motivating the various groups in our society to live in harmony with one another. They should help in changing the present narrative in which the affairs of the Nigerian state have been characterised by ethnic and religious rivalries, selfishness, laziness, jealousy and impatience. This trend must be reversed if the country is to survive and become able to meet the needs and aspirations of its citizens. One thing is that an urgent change in attitude is required of every citizen of this country. To this end, Nigerian intellectuals should devote enough time and constructive effort to the creation of a society in which Nigerians will live in peace with one another. This will help a great deal to douse the present atmosphere of rivalries, intolerance and unhealthy competition blowing across the country.
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