21st November, 2012
By Emmanuel Sulemanu
Abdul-Rahoof A. Bello of the Political Science Department, School of Arts and Sciences, National Open University of Nigeria’s contribution to Nigeria’s efforts at forging national unity and integration is an attempt at building a bridge of understanding of nation-building challenges as published in the P.M.NEWS of Thursday, 1 November, 2012 etc.
The article is a fall-out of a book titled “There Was a Country” which is Professor Chinua Achebe’s latest literary work but which is allegedly viewed in many quarters to contain venoms and polemics capable of heating up the polity. The statement has been corroborated by the Emeritus Governor of Anambra State, Dr. Chinwoke Mbadinuju who was quoted on page 8 of Vanguard of Monday, 8 October, 2012 as having expressed concern that the verbal warfare generated by the book could jeopardize on-going efforts to unify the people of the south. The high point of Abdul-Rahoof Bello’s critique is to examine the truth of allegations leveled against the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo and the Yoruba race that:
*Chief Awolowo’s role in the Biafra war was influenced by tribal interests for political advantage over Igbo.
*Starvation strategy advocated by Awolowo and the 20 pound prorate monetary policy was genocidal
*Yoruba betrayed Igbo by supporting the Federal side during the civil war instead of declaring independence as promised by Awolowo.
The purpose of this article is not to join issues in the controversial tirades that have created a misunderstanding in both the political and intellectual class circles, but to seize the opportunity to create a focus on leadership challenges that have become an emerging and contemporary issue in nation building.
My unbiased observation of the entire scenario is that some political and intellectual class persons are trying to whip up sentiments against effective national unity and integration which, if we fail to properly address, will continue to segregate efforts of Nigeria’s genuine bridge-building. I state this without any equivocation because if we relax now and determine to cross the bridge only when we get there, our efforts will have become wasted. The controversy needs to be attended with positive and genuine leadership capacity. Phrases like “the mistake of 1914,” “marriage of convenience,” “amalgamation discontentment,” “starvation strategy” etc must be seen as separatist idealist conspiracy theories to aid leadership challenge failures.
We should note that national failures that ultimately culminate in secessions or near secessions have not served humanity in good faith. Let us reflect on the following politically – motivated disturbance areas; — The Ethiopia-Eritrea fracas; the Iraq— Kuwait interregnum; the Ivory Coast election fall out, the Nigeria-Cameroun Bakassi disquiet; the Libya mercenary invasion, the Rwanda fratricidal war; the Somalia genocide and the current Syrian armed conflict, to mention only a few instances. Many of such conflicts started from disquiet to resolute resistance.
When people write to express facts or opinions, they should do so with circumspective sobriety. Circumspective sobriety does not imply timidity or simplistic humility towards a particular leaning but some wisdom to show maturity and intellectual capacity without any measure of wholesale transplant of self-opinionated ego-centricity. To this extent, intellectuals and politicians need to be unique in their approach to national issues.
Americans are proud of their country today not only because they have the arsenal to destroy anti-democratic systems but also because they allow patriotism to rule their sense of judgement and values. They have developed and employed indigenous techniques to ensure that humanity moves forward in all areas of human activities and also produced technology to attract human resources to complement their research and development effort without placing too much emphasis on ethnicity or racial superiority.
In my book, “Advanced Public Administration,” I defined ethnicity as a particular group or race of peoples’ peculiarities or contrasts premised on certain social and cultural factors. I went further to state that it is the dominant force behind our fragile federal system because there is always a subtle competition for political power and the trend has elicited rivalry among the various political parties or ethnic areas competing for political recognition. The ethnic sentiments that take the fore in determining political power have colluded to collapse the genuine balance of power needed to solve Nigeria’s North-south dichotomy and corruption challenges.
Most Nigerians ethnic groups are predominantly loyal to their primordial interests that make them see patriotism as not actually worth dying for and by the time we revisit issues like “resource control” and “employment for the boys” we discover that leadership tussle for political power is predominantly factored by interests aggregation.
The issue of minority rights has also taken a centre stage in the country’s attempt to streamline social priorities. Impliedly, without redressing ethnocentric issues like the ethno religious barbarity and the madness of the ethno militia superiority syndrome, such issues may one day overwhelm our peace and stability machinery.
Without any prevarication, I make bold to state that interests aggregation may not have the capacity to serve the greatest number of Nigerians in any given situation due to lack of adequate economic empowerment index. And that is one of the salient parameters that must attract the attention of our political leaders. This is patently true because a deluge of egocentric passion in our political leaders is capable of destroying Nigerian’s capacity to leverage herself assiduously in standard best practices. We therefore need to be cautious as intellectuals and leaders of thoughts. When that standard is achieved, we will be able to serve our country better than we are doing now.
It is necessary for us to recognize that one of the purposes of intellectual and political leadership is to develop general skills to boost human capital potentials for enhancing government solvency towards national development — a reverse from the trend we are witnessing in Nigeria today. When we are able to achieve that, the up and coming generations will be effectively positioned to live in a country where they can proudly call their own without any sense of guilt because they shall be empowered to earn a living from the common wealth which we may have established as a legacy. What this means is that Nigeria will be able to harness her human capital potentials in the proper direction to capture and strengthen all deficiencies of nation-building policies and programmes articulated so far since independence that are meant to reactivate her for developmental purposes. This re-branding effort, if painstakingly perused, will unbundle us from using our politics to destroy ourselves.
We should therefore resolve to leave the Igbo-Yoruba unhealthy rivalry behind us. That issue should belong to the archives and must be overtaken by contemporary issues that can aid our capacity to forge ahead as one country strengthened by our resoluteness to remain focused to:
*Checkmate our ostentatious money-flaunting habits;
*Metamorphose from egocentricity to winner takes all;
*Direct our energies towards qualitative education that will catapult us from teaching to acquire knowledge only to the level of both knowledge acquisition and leveraging our ability to think;
*Restrategise our aggressive passion for wealth looting where we have not sown or invested;
*Learn to be moderate in our self-assertiveness, especially that backed by opportunistic political advantage;
*Appreciate to be sober in shying away from deliberate grandstanding;
*Allow level headedness to direct our sense of judgment and values with regard to financial prudence;
*Develop a passion for resolute aversion against corruption or corruptible tendencies that are insidious to our corporate existence;
*Be united in our unflinching support for the government of the day to navigate this country through thick and thin;
*Learn to trust God in all our individual and corporate efforts and endeavours.
When all these strengths are properly tackled, we will be able to breathe a new air of true freedom that will make us retrace our steps to standard best practices, most especially the building of strong institutions that can save Nigeria from economic collapse and also relocate her from the present brink and return our sense of belonging and security. Cultivating an aversion for corruption will also go a long way to recapture the critical areas mentioned in this paper an automatically transform us into a people whose influence, excellence and achievements can be regarded in comity of nations because we already possess the potential to be a great nation.
But how do we go about it? We can adopt a public policy on leadership philosophy that will focus on equipping followership to achieve excellent results. Such policy should include requirements of political leadership and responsibilities that can be practiced either as a convention or be incorporated in the constitution as a statue.
In any case, we should understand that the controversial war in question was one of attraction without very convincing reasons to allow an exclusive set of ethnic leaders to get a country to govern. And this I would have expected the professor to have clearly perceived. That would have saved him the embarrassment of re-opening an old wound.