Walid Jibrin's comments are symptomatic of an uncomfortable large majority of the ENTIRE Nigerian ruling elite, not just the ruling elite of a particular region. In different ways, on different subjects, an in different settings, the utterances of the titans that rule our polity, economy and society are more frightening than any horror film ever made. Oddly enough, the fact that their words provide rhetorical ammunition for communal violence is not the thing that scares me most. What scares me most is the things they say are so .... stupid that you despair of the fact that these are the decision-makers whose pervasive and direct influence on our country's past, present and future is, was, and will be unmoderated by anything so trivial as democracy, rule of law, constitutionalism, accountability, checks-and-balances, free market competition, economic regulation, or anything else.
Back in 2003, during the (rigged) elections, and years before the current imbroglio in Nigeria's banking industry, I read a very long, in-depth interview with the CEO of one of the big banks ... and the things he said were so daft that I could not believe he was the "decider" at such a large bank. Bear in mind that in our system of doing things, the "oga" or boss is all-powerful; any hint of initiative from his underlings is treated by the boss as a direct attack on the boss, an act of insubordination, a threat to the oga's position, an indicator that you wish to usurp oga's role.
It was neither the first nor last time I have been shocked by the silliness uttered by so-called experts. One that stands in my mind is a respected economist and university professors who has severally sat on advisory councils and panels for a number of Nigerian presidents. When a journalist sat down to talk to this man about the economy, policy issues and development, he said things that would academically embarrass a 100-level Economics student.
People keep thinking that there is something fundamentally wrong with Nigeria, some Nigerian Factor that explains why things are never normal in our Federal Republic, why our own dey always get k-leg.
There is nothing mysterious about it. The fact is the people charged with making the most important decisions do not have even the foggiest conception of what it is they are supposed to be doing. They know they should be doing something, so they do something. Ask them, and they will defend the something they chose to do vociferously, even if it is quite visibly taking us on the wrong path to the wrong destination. Because, and this is the second part of the problem, it is we the people who suffer the consequences of being on the wrong road; from the decision-makers' perspective, whatever road we are on, good or bad, they have political, economic and social power, and that is what really motivates us as human beings. Money, power, status, influence, and all that these things can bring you.
The bank CEO loves being a CEO; it doesn't matter that his bank is an empty shell heading towards collapse. The economist I mentioned above is respected across the country, is consulted by presidents, sits on important policy-making committees and is treated like a wise, experienced elder; it doesn't matter to him that his brand of "advice" is likely part of the reason our economy is dysfunctional (heck, he probably thinks the mythical Nigerian Factor is what ruined the implementation of his excellent advice).
Nor is Walid Jibrin the first Nigerian VIP to gladly say things that promote ethnic and religious fear, distrust, dislike, hate and at times violence. Some of them know what they are doing, and do it deliberately, using the old tactic of divide-and-conquer, divide-and-rule to protect the system from challenge by the masses. But others, and I bet Walid Jibrin is in the group, do not think what they are saying is dangerous; they honestly and truly believe that are analyzing the situation appropriately and correctly.
Hearing a Nigerian Big Man talk like that is .... perturbing, but what is truly scary is the number of regular, everyday Nigerian citizens who express the same sort of thoughts. In the case of we the people, there is little to gain from divide-and-rule, so when any of our number talk in such a fashion, it is usually backed up by belief.
Which brings me back to this forum commenter who took Walid Jibrin's words as his inspiration to go of on an ethnophobic rant about Northern Nigerians. If you told this man that his words are just as terrible and dangerous as those of Jibrin, he would probably look at you as though he thought you were mad. Indeed, if you pointed to the words of a politician from the commenter's region or state, expressing similar ethnophobic beliefs about Nigerians from the North, he would probably defend that person's statements, hail that person for telling it like it is -- which is exactly what Walid Jibrin and his supporters would say.
You see, the political/economic/social elite are not the only people who make the mistake of choosing the wrong path in the belief that it is the right path. We the people, we the masses of the Federal Republic, do the same thing everyday. The Big Men are able to stay in power, to stay in control, because we the people echo their missteps and mistakes.
It is why we are divided. It is why we are easily conquered.
It is why revolution, reform, restructuring and transformation remain unlikely.
And so we get to listen to our leaders say things that are either dangerous or silly. We watch them say these things with gravity and solemnity, as though they were sharing knowledge and guidance. Much of the time, they know neither the import nor impact of what they say, but they say it anyway because "protocol" requires them to say something at that point even if they have nothing to offer.
And we the people don't care. One citizen bluntly expresses a widespread attitude to the alleged "democracy" of the Fourth Republic:
“In the last two months, I have decamped to more than seven political parties because it comes with a price: a motorcycle, cloths or money. This is our period of harvest even though at the end of the day, I am going to choose credible candidates, irrespective of their political leanings,” Yunusa Abdulmumini, an Okada rider said. It is now very common to hear a story that party A, B or C had harvested “thousands of decampees” during its rally either in Maiduguri, Cibok, Gwoza, Monguno or any other place.
Funny, he seems to think "at the end of the day" his vote will actually count. If you do not bother to create a functioning democracy, you will not have a functioning democracy. Your vote will be meaningless, the announced "result" will not reflect your vote, and you have no business complaining about it because the time you should have spent fighting the politicians to create democracy you spent instead collecting motorcycle, cloths or money to jump from party to party making a little money as a rent-a-crowd to make each decamping Big Man appear to be bringing "his people" (as though they are his private property) into the new party he has joined.
You might say that other countries have similar problems. Politicians, generals, bureaucrats, technocrats and intellectuals the world over like to create the outward impression that they have a better-than-average understanding of their countries' major and minor crises, but the evidence of history indicates their much-vaunted expertise is more myth than real. Mostly, they muddle through. Mostly, they get lucky. Mostly, when luck runs out, they are unable to stop it happening, ameliorate it or shorten its duration.
So yes, this is a problem all over the world.
But when the chips are down or there is an opportunity for resource gains, the political, economic and social leaders elsewhere in the world will do whatever is necessary to seize (by economic, military, political or social force if necessary) a more advantageous position that our leaders have given ours. The never-ending global "war" for wealth and resources is almost never fought along moral, ethical, just, fair or righteous lines.
If the use of slaves will drive wealth-creation for some, they will go and get slaves. If forcefully taking the land and resources of other populations will give an advantage to some, they go and drive people off their land. If distorting global markets (or supposedly "multilateral" agencies) so they function in a manner advantageous to some will give advantage to some, then the potential benefiting parties go all out to first distort and then defend the distortion to the limits of their capability to do so. If they can get away with beggar-thy-neighbour mercantilism, enjoying access to other people's markets while denying access to their own market, they will do whatever they have to do to create the mercantile opportunity (even if the opportunity is given in exchange for committing their soldiers to potential death in a war that otherwise doesn't concern their countries).
Whatever needs to be done, they do, regardless of moral import.
Don't misunderstand me. You probably think I am making nasty comments about the rest of the world. You are wrong.
Our ancestors were confronted with iron ships, Maxim guns, superior military technology and tactics .... and we were all cheaply and easily (oh so easily) conquered and turned into colonies of Europe. Just like that. Their political/economic/social/intellectual leaders over time had made a sequence of decisions (many of them horrendous) over a long period of time (centuries really) motivated by a vast array of historical stimuli, emergencies as well as by the usual avarice of humanity and human societies.
Now, contrary to those who claim Nigeria is a "young" country, "only 50 years old", as an explanation for why we shouldn't expect any better than what we have got, the reality is our ancestry as human beings is as old as anyone else's. We are all humans, and we have all lived on this planet the same number of millennia. We the people of Nigeria and Africa ended up in a situation where we were technologically behind the conquering colonialists of Europe because our political/economic/social/intellectual leaders made a sequence of decisions across several centuries that resulted in our being behind on these indicators as of the era of colonial conquest.
Frankly, our "leaders" are so much more likely to devote their energies to governing us in a manner that satisfies the strategic interests of everyone else on Earth, while failing to even contemplate or understand, much less effectuate our own strategic interests.
And far from holding them to account, we are too busy dividing ourselves against ourselves, and fighting ourselves in the achievement of nothing of value to ourselves.
EDIT 01-03-11: Daily Trust ran a report on a statement issued by the Peoples Democratic Party asking opposition parties to leave Bode George alone.
The first response under the article starts out complaining that Bode George served only 2 years for a massive crime, while other people sit in prison 10 years for "mere allegations". My initial instinct was to agree with the commenter, because I thought he was talking about the tens of thousands of citizens who have sat in jail for years "awaiting trial" (or in some cases awaiting basic arraignment, or awaiting a family member to bribe the arresting officers), citizens who had never been convicted of anything but who had nevertheless served YEARS of hard time in our less-than-healthy prisons.
That is what I thought the commenter meant .... until I read further and realized the commenter's only gripe was that Sani Abacha's henchman Major Hamza Al-Mustapha had spent a decade in prison while Bode George had only spent two.
So he doesn't really care about our broken system of justice. All he is asking for is that we make sure the pervasive injustice is balanced along ethnic/regional/religious lines; if a Southwestern criminal is given a light sentence and a hero's welcome, then a Northwestern criminal should also be given a light sentence and a hero's welcome.
You see what I mean? It is such a self-defeating ideology, and it is shared by an unfortunately large number of our fellow citizens.
No comments:
Post a Comment