Amalgamation Day in Lagos, 1914
Showing posts with label Nigerian History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nigerian History. Show all posts
20 May, 2019
Picking up the blogging baton and running again
I started this blog in the second half of Olusegun Obasanjo's third term as president. Yes, I said "third term". The first was between 1976 and 1979. In total, he was the federal head of government for 11 years, which is currently the record ... ahead of Yakubu Gowon (9 years), the late Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (almost 9 years), Goodluck Jonathan (8 years) and Ibrahim Babangida (almost 8 years). If current-President Buhari completes his 3rd term overall (his second of the Fourth Republic) in 2023, he would leapfrog Babangida, Jonathan, Tafawa Balewa and Gowon to become the second-longest occupier of the top seat in the federal cabinet.
I am obviously counting the 3 years (1957-1960) of the Balewa-led federal administration prior to de jure independence. If we assume the current President completes his term in 2023, then 6 men would have led Nigeria's federal government for almost 55 of the 66 years between 1957 and 2023. A person could write a separate volumes of books on separate topic areas related to this fact ....
.... but that isn't what this post is about.
As I was saying, I started this blog towards the end of Obasanjo's third term. There have been periods when I have consistently written essays and commentaries, and periods when the blog has sort of lain fallow and just a little forgotten.
I am going to try to start writing consistently again .... since I have time on my hands.
As I've said from the beginning, I do not support any Nigerian (or foreign) politicians. You could say I am somewhat hostile to all of them. From the start in the 1950s, Nigeria's politics has never really been fit for purpose. Possibly the greatest problem with political discussion and political action in Nigeria is the belief that all debates, discussions, agreements and resolutions must take place within the still-existing framework of the politics we've practiced (under civilians and soldiers alike) since the 1950s. Then there are the thick, and thickly-problematic layers of danger and difficulty presented by African continental politics and global geopolitics, two paradigms designed and intended from the start to be functionally and consistently harmful to African (and hence Nigerian) strategic interests.
As always, there is a lot to talk about.
02 December, 2017
The building where "Nigeria" was "born"
I am not sure how to feel about the picture below.
On the one hand, it is the place where violent foreign invaders finalized the process of their conquest and domination of our peoples.
On the other hand, it is also the place where the "Federal Republic of Nigeria" more or less came into existence.
But whether you look at the place as a negative memory, or as a piece of the foundational story of "Nigeria", surely the place shouldn't look the way it looks? Shouldn't it be a place we visit to either remind ourselves of a bad thing we must strive to avoid (i.e. foreign dominance), or to remind ourselves of a good thing like Nigerian unity (it is a good thing, isn't it?).
Maybe the way the building looks is best understood as a metaphor for "Nigeria".
Whatever their propaganda might say, the British/European intervention in "Nigeria" was intended purely to benefit the British/Europeans at our expense. Nevertheless, they accidentally created a political platform from which we the people, peoples and nations of "Nigeria" could defend ourselves and our interests in a world designed to be hostile to our interests.
Except, that "Nigeria" has not, is not, and (if nothing changes) will not do for its citizens the things that it is supposed to do for its citizens. Take for example the issues involving "African" migrants facing danger and death in order to make it to supposedly better lives outside the continent. Notice that once the foreign news organizations started to give saturation coverage to the deaths of more than 20 Nigerians and the "slave market" in Libya, our federal government started making noises about doing things they would already have done years ago if they actually gave a damn about our citizens. Note I say "federal government" and not the name of any specific Fourth Republic president, as the "migrant" problem has existed for many years -- as has governmental disinterest in the fate of the "migrants".
Yeah, the state of the building where Nigeria was "born" is a metaphor for the Federal Republic that was "born" there. If "Nigeria" functioned the way it is supposed to function, the building where it was "born" would look a lot different.
This is the building Premium Times identified as being the place in Zungeru, Niger State where Mr. Frederick Lugard signed the documents that created "Nigeria" by Amalgamation.
On the one hand, it is the place where violent foreign invaders finalized the process of their conquest and domination of our peoples.
On the other hand, it is also the place where the "Federal Republic of Nigeria" more or less came into existence.
But whether you look at the place as a negative memory, or as a piece of the foundational story of "Nigeria", surely the place shouldn't look the way it looks? Shouldn't it be a place we visit to either remind ourselves of a bad thing we must strive to avoid (i.e. foreign dominance), or to remind ourselves of a good thing like Nigerian unity (it is a good thing, isn't it?).
Maybe the way the building looks is best understood as a metaphor for "Nigeria".
Whatever their propaganda might say, the British/European intervention in "Nigeria" was intended purely to benefit the British/Europeans at our expense. Nevertheless, they accidentally created a political platform from which we the people, peoples and nations of "Nigeria" could defend ourselves and our interests in a world designed to be hostile to our interests.
Except, that "Nigeria" has not, is not, and (if nothing changes) will not do for its citizens the things that it is supposed to do for its citizens. Take for example the issues involving "African" migrants facing danger and death in order to make it to supposedly better lives outside the continent. Notice that once the foreign news organizations started to give saturation coverage to the deaths of more than 20 Nigerians and the "slave market" in Libya, our federal government started making noises about doing things they would already have done years ago if they actually gave a damn about our citizens. Note I say "federal government" and not the name of any specific Fourth Republic president, as the "migrant" problem has existed for many years -- as has governmental disinterest in the fate of the "migrants".
Yeah, the state of the building where Nigeria was "born" is a metaphor for the Federal Republic that was "born" there. If "Nigeria" functioned the way it is supposed to function, the building where it was "born" would look a lot different.
This is the building Premium Times identified as being the place in Zungeru, Niger State where Mr. Frederick Lugard signed the documents that created "Nigeria" by Amalgamation.
23 October, 2017
Elections Without Purpose
There are certain people who keep saying we all must vote, and who keep insisting that anyone who doesn't vote will by definition lose the right to criticize the governments (all three tiers) after the vote.
But what are you supposed to do when the political system is designed to present you with different versions of the same thing you do NOT want as a citizen? Different versions of the same future disappointment? Are you supposed to keep wasting your time "voting"? By padding the turnout numbers, are you not merely granting the toga of credibility to the very thing you do not want? By picking one of the bad options presented, are you not empowering the bad option to claim that the things he does are done with your permission and approval?
In fact, why do we complain about "rigging" (and even about coups) when we are still going to be forced to stomach a type of government we do not want, even if there is a "free and fair" vote? It is not just that the same type of person will occupy political, bureaucratic and technocratic positions, but very often is is literally the same people.
Please, don't do that thing we sometimes do in Nigeria of looking at the name of the person speaking, and then interpreting everything he or she subsequently says from an ethnic or regional prism. Yes, I am Igbo, but the structure and fundamental nature of Nigerian politics has never made sense to me.
The first political thought I recall having was as a child during the Second Republic. The election was coming up, and I was excited by the pageantry of it all. But then I realized that underneath the facade, the election boiled down to little more Igbos vote NPP, Yorubas vote UPN, and Hausas/Fulanis vote NPN. The regional/ethnic chess game did not stop with the three legs of the so-called "tripod", but as a little child, and as an Igbo, it didn't make sense to me that I was expected to support a party (and the politicians within it) simply because I was Igbo. I wouldn't have been able to properly articulate it at the time, it just seemed to me that it was a stupid way to choose leaders of the country. I would later learn about the 1950s, the First Republic, the Civil War .... and all I could think of was how different it all could have, and should have been. All I could see were the errors and mistakes of people who were, and still are, surprisingly popular considering their decisions set us on a path to the kind of politics we still practices .... and the kind of violence our federal republic is still plagued by.
If we are honest with ourselves, we would admit our method of choosing leaders has not progressed much since the Second Republic, and political figures are wildly popular in specific regions for reasons that have nothing to do with whether they actually understand what our problems are, first of all, before we even ask if they understand the solutions. Actually, and more depressingly, not a lot has changed in our politics since the 1950s. In fact, if there is a so-called "national question" then it is comprised of several dozen questions (plural) that should have been answered in the 1950s, but have not been answered up till now, and do not look like they will be answered any time soon.
It is interesting that we are still being treated to the sights and sounds of people trying to break up the federal republic. There are those who advocate this openly, those who hide their real intent behind euphemisms, and those who aim to create enclaves within the country where the laws of the country do not apply. The biggest problem in Nigerian politics since the 1950s has been the absence of a basic understanding of the strategic interests of the various ethnic nations within the Nigerian federal republic. We would have interacted with ourselves differently, approached our continent differently, and (especially) approached the rest of the planet ... much differently. As it stands, it is 2017, and people are still talking about destroying the best platform from which we can protect ourselves and advance ourselves on this planet that has been designed to function with hostility to our interests.
Anyway, all of this is just rhetoric. Let me say something practical.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) goes on and on about how the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ruined Nigeria over the first 16 years of the Fourth Republic. But have you noticed something about the APC? The APC is comprised almost entirely of the people who ruled Nigeria in the first 16 years of the Fourth Republic. Some of them were PDP, some were AD/AC/ACN, some were ANPP/CPC, and some were APGA/PPA, but all of them, in one way or another, held significant power at the federal and state levels between 1999 and 2015. When they describe the first 16 years of the Fourth Republic as a time of failure, they are indicting themselves as well as their rivals who are still in the PDP for the time being (pending their eventual decamping to the APC. If they couldn't fix Nigeria's problems of Nigeria under their previous incarnations, why are we supposed to believe they will do so as old wine in a new bottle? In fact, is anyone surprised that they are not doing so?
By the way, President Buhari himself may not have held power in the Fourth Republic prior to 2015, but he has served at the highest levels of the Nigerian federal government since the early 1970s, in a variety of powerful portfolios, including that of military Head of State. There are a lot of things his supporters say he can and will do, but he has had more than 47 years in "politics" to do these things, and not only did he not do these things, but realistically he never showed the signs that he could.
Again, I am not an ethnicist and this is not about President Buhari's region of origin. I began this essay by asking whether there was any point to "voting" when there is never anyone on the ballot worth voting for. My critique of Buhari is applicable to all of his predecessors, to all of his would-be predecessors, and to his would-be successors. I started this blog during the Obasanjo Administration, and if you read my posts from the beginning, through the Goodluck Jonathan Administration, up till today, you will find my views are consistent, and are consistently applied to everyone. There may not have been an Igbo president during the Fourth Republic, but figures like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Charles Soludo (among others) have had strong influence on the direction of Fourth Republic (and on its predictable economic woes), and I have never hesitated in objectively critiquing anyone.
Okay, now that I am done with the unfortunately necessary disclaimers ....
Our politics have always been disconnected from our practical problems. Our politics follow an internally consistent logic that produces recurrent outcomes to "elections" and "coups". The thing is, the internal logic of our politics was never about ascertaining the source of the country's problems, deducing solutions to the country's problems, or vetting potential candidates according to how well they fit into the framework of problem-definition and problem-solution. If anything, your success in Nigerian politics is dependent on convincing "stakeholders" that you have no intention (perhaps no ability) to fundamentally change anything in a way that will put Nigeria on the path to having an economy like that of Germany or Japan.
But in 2019, we will be told we have to vote.
Why? For who? For what?
I'd like to say that before we hold another pointless "vote", our federal republic first needs to have a conversation about .... our federal republic. But in the real world, there would be no point to such a conversation, as it would be dominated by the same personages and voices that we would need to do away with if we are going to have any chance of having a meaningful discourse.
Something has to change.
But what are you supposed to do when the political system is designed to present you with different versions of the same thing you do NOT want as a citizen? Different versions of the same future disappointment? Are you supposed to keep wasting your time "voting"? By padding the turnout numbers, are you not merely granting the toga of credibility to the very thing you do not want? By picking one of the bad options presented, are you not empowering the bad option to claim that the things he does are done with your permission and approval?
In fact, why do we complain about "rigging" (and even about coups) when we are still going to be forced to stomach a type of government we do not want, even if there is a "free and fair" vote? It is not just that the same type of person will occupy political, bureaucratic and technocratic positions, but very often is is literally the same people.
Please, don't do that thing we sometimes do in Nigeria of looking at the name of the person speaking, and then interpreting everything he or she subsequently says from an ethnic or regional prism. Yes, I am Igbo, but the structure and fundamental nature of Nigerian politics has never made sense to me.
The first political thought I recall having was as a child during the Second Republic. The election was coming up, and I was excited by the pageantry of it all. But then I realized that underneath the facade, the election boiled down to little more Igbos vote NPP, Yorubas vote UPN, and Hausas/Fulanis vote NPN. The regional/ethnic chess game did not stop with the three legs of the so-called "tripod", but as a little child, and as an Igbo, it didn't make sense to me that I was expected to support a party (and the politicians within it) simply because I was Igbo. I wouldn't have been able to properly articulate it at the time, it just seemed to me that it was a stupid way to choose leaders of the country. I would later learn about the 1950s, the First Republic, the Civil War .... and all I could think of was how different it all could have, and should have been. All I could see were the errors and mistakes of people who were, and still are, surprisingly popular considering their decisions set us on a path to the kind of politics we still practices .... and the kind of violence our federal republic is still plagued by.
If we are honest with ourselves, we would admit our method of choosing leaders has not progressed much since the Second Republic, and political figures are wildly popular in specific regions for reasons that have nothing to do with whether they actually understand what our problems are, first of all, before we even ask if they understand the solutions. Actually, and more depressingly, not a lot has changed in our politics since the 1950s. In fact, if there is a so-called "national question" then it is comprised of several dozen questions (plural) that should have been answered in the 1950s, but have not been answered up till now, and do not look like they will be answered any time soon.
It is interesting that we are still being treated to the sights and sounds of people trying to break up the federal republic. There are those who advocate this openly, those who hide their real intent behind euphemisms, and those who aim to create enclaves within the country where the laws of the country do not apply. The biggest problem in Nigerian politics since the 1950s has been the absence of a basic understanding of the strategic interests of the various ethnic nations within the Nigerian federal republic. We would have interacted with ourselves differently, approached our continent differently, and (especially) approached the rest of the planet ... much differently. As it stands, it is 2017, and people are still talking about destroying the best platform from which we can protect ourselves and advance ourselves on this planet that has been designed to function with hostility to our interests.
Anyway, all of this is just rhetoric. Let me say something practical.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) goes on and on about how the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ruined Nigeria over the first 16 years of the Fourth Republic. But have you noticed something about the APC? The APC is comprised almost entirely of the people who ruled Nigeria in the first 16 years of the Fourth Republic. Some of them were PDP, some were AD/AC/ACN, some were ANPP/CPC, and some were APGA/PPA, but all of them, in one way or another, held significant power at the federal and state levels between 1999 and 2015. When they describe the first 16 years of the Fourth Republic as a time of failure, they are indicting themselves as well as their rivals who are still in the PDP for the time being (pending their eventual decamping to the APC. If they couldn't fix Nigeria's problems of Nigeria under their previous incarnations, why are we supposed to believe they will do so as old wine in a new bottle? In fact, is anyone surprised that they are not doing so?
By the way, President Buhari himself may not have held power in the Fourth Republic prior to 2015, but he has served at the highest levels of the Nigerian federal government since the early 1970s, in a variety of powerful portfolios, including that of military Head of State. There are a lot of things his supporters say he can and will do, but he has had more than 47 years in "politics" to do these things, and not only did he not do these things, but realistically he never showed the signs that he could.
Again, I am not an ethnicist and this is not about President Buhari's region of origin. I began this essay by asking whether there was any point to "voting" when there is never anyone on the ballot worth voting for. My critique of Buhari is applicable to all of his predecessors, to all of his would-be predecessors, and to his would-be successors. I started this blog during the Obasanjo Administration, and if you read my posts from the beginning, through the Goodluck Jonathan Administration, up till today, you will find my views are consistent, and are consistently applied to everyone. There may not have been an Igbo president during the Fourth Republic, but figures like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Charles Soludo (among others) have had strong influence on the direction of Fourth Republic (and on its predictable economic woes), and I have never hesitated in objectively critiquing anyone.
Okay, now that I am done with the unfortunately necessary disclaimers ....
Our politics have always been disconnected from our practical problems. Our politics follow an internally consistent logic that produces recurrent outcomes to "elections" and "coups". The thing is, the internal logic of our politics was never about ascertaining the source of the country's problems, deducing solutions to the country's problems, or vetting potential candidates according to how well they fit into the framework of problem-definition and problem-solution. If anything, your success in Nigerian politics is dependent on convincing "stakeholders" that you have no intention (perhaps no ability) to fundamentally change anything in a way that will put Nigeria on the path to having an economy like that of Germany or Japan.
But in 2019, we will be told we have to vote.
Why? For who? For what?
I'd like to say that before we hold another pointless "vote", our federal republic first needs to have a conversation about .... our federal republic. But in the real world, there would be no point to such a conversation, as it would be dominated by the same personages and voices that we would need to do away with if we are going to have any chance of having a meaningful discourse.
Something has to change.
29 August, 2016
A Return To Discourse
It has been a couple of years since I posted regularly on this blog. You know how it is with life. A lot has happened, and I have been busy.
There is a new president, but the issues remain the same.
I hope to restart regular commentary.
There is much to talk about.
I am embedding Sunny Okosuns 1980s hit "Which Way Nigeria". It is interesting that he references mistakes make during the 1970s Oil Boom, considering the mistakes we made during the 2000s Oil Boom.
It is also interesting that President Buhari is back for a second stint as Nigeria's Head of State. His first tenure, beginning in 1983, was separated from President Obasanjo's first tenure by a 4-year administration led by a lifelong civilian who took office as the 1970s Oil Boom ended and the emerging global economic environment of the 1980s turned problematic for Nigeria. Decades later, their respective second tenures in the Fourth Republic were separated 8 years, and two lifelong civilians who took over from Obasanjo just as the 2000s Oil Boom ended and the global environment of the 2010s turned problematic for Nigeria.
Many things have changed in our economy, notably telephony and the internet, but fundamentally nothing of real significance has changed.
Add to this a political system that never answered any of the questions raised in the 1950s, opting instead to recycle the same questions tediously without solution. Back then, they worried about which Region was to produce the Prime Minister. Today, the argument is over which "geopolitical zone" should produce the presidents (and which senatorial zone is to produce the governor), with little or no discussion of anything that can be termed an issue of importance or substance. Let us be honest with ourselves; everyone who has served as president in the Fourth Republic did so based on "geopolitical zone" calculations, and not because they ever did or said anything that would lead anyone to think that they understood our problems much less had deduced a solution to any of the problems.
Anyway, enjoy the late Sunny Okosuns (RIP) singing "Which Way Nigeria".
There is a new president, but the issues remain the same.
I hope to restart regular commentary.
There is much to talk about.
I am embedding Sunny Okosuns 1980s hit "Which Way Nigeria". It is interesting that he references mistakes make during the 1970s Oil Boom, considering the mistakes we made during the 2000s Oil Boom.
It is also interesting that President Buhari is back for a second stint as Nigeria's Head of State. His first tenure, beginning in 1983, was separated from President Obasanjo's first tenure by a 4-year administration led by a lifelong civilian who took office as the 1970s Oil Boom ended and the emerging global economic environment of the 1980s turned problematic for Nigeria. Decades later, their respective second tenures in the Fourth Republic were separated 8 years, and two lifelong civilians who took over from Obasanjo just as the 2000s Oil Boom ended and the global environment of the 2010s turned problematic for Nigeria.
Many things have changed in our economy, notably telephony and the internet, but fundamentally nothing of real significance has changed.
Add to this a political system that never answered any of the questions raised in the 1950s, opting instead to recycle the same questions tediously without solution. Back then, they worried about which Region was to produce the Prime Minister. Today, the argument is over which "geopolitical zone" should produce the presidents (and which senatorial zone is to produce the governor), with little or no discussion of anything that can be termed an issue of importance or substance. Let us be honest with ourselves; everyone who has served as president in the Fourth Republic did so based on "geopolitical zone" calculations, and not because they ever did or said anything that would lead anyone to think that they understood our problems much less had deduced a solution to any of the problems.
Anyway, enjoy the late Sunny Okosuns (RIP) singing "Which Way Nigeria".
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