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Anthony Akinwale, The Nigerian Project

PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS OF THE NIGERIAN PROJECT[1]

By

Fr. Anthony A. Akinwale, O. P.

Dominican Institute

PMB 5361

Ibadan, Oyo State

A Pious Wish

With a pious wish as my starting point, the Nigerian project is the focus of my intervention. What is the Nigerian project? Why is it necessary? How can it be accomplished? These and some related issues are what I hope to address. Addressing them, indeed, addressing the issue of the Nigerian project is, in my opinion, a necessary condition for the successful implementation of any other project in Nigeria. But before addressing these question within the question, some preliminary remarks will not be out of place.

In addressing these issues, the pious wish I have is that the geographical space contrived and called Nigeria since 1914 be left as one and undivided entity. This pious wish comes from a conviction, and the conviction is itself reinforced by the fruits of my contemplation. Each time there is a crisis in this geographical space, the faith of the people who live in it is shaken, their faith that any semblance of common life is possible in Nigeria, their faith that this geographical space will one day be a haven of comfort, prosperity and security for every Nigerian. Each time Nigerians have expressed their shaken faith, many have expressed the wish that we all go our way. After all, prior to the advent of British colonialists, and prior to the political invention of Frederick Lugard, there was no Nigeria. There were kingdoms and states that governed their various peoples with varying degrees of political sophistication.

But each time I have contemplated the dissolution of Nigeria, I have always come to the conclusion that, whether such dissolution is accomplished through peaceful means or otherwise, whether Nigeria goes the way of Czechoslovakia or the way of Yugoslavia, the cost of breaking up Nigeria will be more staggering than the cost of keeping her intact. Such an action would be strategically unwise considering on-going efforts at economic integration in Europe and in the entire northern hemisphere. Europeans and other countries of the northern hemisphere have demonstrated their awareness that economic integration almost certainly secures abundant life for present and future generations. Their effort to unite Europe is being emulated by Asians in one way or the other, and ought to be emulated by Africans. And here, the pan-Africanist posture, policies and initiatives of leaders like Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Thabo Mbeki, John Kuffour, to mention but these, must be lauded. The idea of an African Union, if implemented, will guarantee the prosperity of generation of Africans yet unborn.

Yet, an African Union cannot be realized where citizens of component states are not living in unity and harmony within their respective borders. There cannot be an African Union where there is no Nigerian Union, or Congolese Union or Ivorian Union. It is in the interest of Africans to unite and work for the liberation of this continent from poverty, starvation, disease, senseless wars, and all dehumanizing conditions. But each country will have to get its acts together. And this is the wider context of my thoughts on the Nigerian project, a project whose realization is threatened by the manipulative tendencies of a political leadership largely constituted by visionless actors and actresses, a political leadership that thrives in ethnocentrism, religious fanaticism and religious fundamentalism.

Calls for the convocation of a “Sovereign National Conference”, the restructuring of Nigeria, and resource control have attained a crescendo to the point where the Obasanjo administration organized a National Conference. The calls have no doubt been inspired by real and perceived injustices within the Nigerian polity. At any given period in the history of Nigeria since independence, there is always one group or the other that cries about marginalization. This country has witnessed serious crises: the political fiasco of the first republic which culminated in the first military coup of January 15, 1966, the massacre of the Igbo which culminated in the Nigeria-Biafra war of 1967-70, the irresponsible and unstatesmanlike approach to government during the second republic of 1979-83, the arrogant and mindless brutality of the second coming of the military which culminated in the inexplicable annulment of the June 12, 1993 election and the dark days of Sani Abacha’s despotism, and in recent times, an electoral process driven by thuggery, financial inducement and rigging.

After the mutiny of soldiers of July 29, 1966 which led to the assassination of Ironsi, Fajuyi and other military officers, Yakubu Gowon, who became ruler of Nigeria at the tender age of 32, observed that there was no basis for Nigerian unity. More than thirty years later, Wole Soyinka would write in his book The Open Sore of a Continent, in terms that would question Nigeria’s claim to nationhood. I too subscribe to the opinion that Nigeria is yet to be a nation. It has been said that she is a geographical expression. I would go further to say that rather than be a nation, Nigeria is a state held together at gunpoint. And this necessitates embarking on the Nigerian project, a project I will now attempt to describe.

What is the Nigerian Project?

By the Nigerian project, I mean a project whose achievement would be a double transformation—the transformation of the geographical space called Nigeria, and the transformation of the people who lay claims to citizenship within that geographical space. From the perspective of geographical space, the Nigerian project is the transformation of Nigeria from a state held together at gunpoint into a veritable nation whose citizens share common core values and work for the concretization of a common ideal, or of common ideals. The attainment of such ideals will be the result of a holistic development—by which I mean the material, moral, intellectual and spiritual development—of the human persons who go by the name Nigerians. The pursuit of this holistic development of the human person leads me to my description of the project from the perspective of the citizens. The Nigerian project is the achievement of a great country, that is, a country whose potentials are actualized because the country itself has been transformed into an aggregate of citizens whose potentials are actualized. In concrete terms, the Nigerian project would have been achieved when two conditions are met. The first condition is the transformation of this geographical space from a state held together at gunpoint into a nation, a union of citizens who are willing to live together as citizens of one nation working towards a common ideal. The second condition is the transformation of the citizens from being underachievers into persons whose potentials are actualized, because the greatness of a country is measured by the actualization of the potentials of its citizens. I propose, therefore, that the common ideal towards which Nigerians should work and walk is the holistic formation of the Nigerian citizen in view of the actualization of his or her potentials.

The necessity for such a project has already been specified at the beginning of this intervention. In an era when the rest of the world is busy with economic integration intended to maximize prosperity, Africa and Africans must not allow themselves to be left behind. Africans would be left behind if the states of the African union remain fragmented states, each held together at gunpoint. Africans must work for their own prosperity so that long queues at foreign embassies of Africans seeking greener pastures in foreign land will be significantly shortened. But there cannot be an end to poverty in Africa if the abundant resources of the continent are not tapped by and for the children of Africa. There cannot be any economic integration of Africa if the various states and peoples of Africa do not organize their common life. That is the sense in which I said there can be no African Union if there is not Nigerian Union.

With this brief description of the Nigerian project, and a brief statement of the necessity of implementing it, I would like to propose steps to be taken for its implementation. In this respect, it is my contention that the road to the achievement of the Nigerian project necessarily passes through the organization of common life in the organization of the market, the polis, and the academia, that is, in the intelligent ordering of the economic, political and educational sectors of life in this geographical space.

Organizing the Economy and Politics in the Nigerian Project

In the absence of a health economy, the Nigerian project will be nothing but a fleeting illusion. In this respect, my thesis is that economic union must precede political union. An economic union is a necessity that stems from the fact that no human being is economically self-sufficient. And the necessity that economic union is necessitates another necessity, that is, a political union. The thesis, I believe, is corroborated by the description of the emergence of the state in Plato’s Republic. In the Republic,Plato began to draw the blueprint for his state by envisioning people who came together because of their economic needs. Their economic activities necessitated the formation of law enforcement agents, those he called combatants. And the combatants would need to be subject to the control of the wisdom loving political leader—the philosopher-king. Either the political leader loves wisdom or the one who loves wisdom becomes the political leader.

Among philosophers, Plato may be rightfully branded an idealist. But experience and historical facts buttress his position. From experience we know that the carpenter and the farmer need to do business with the welder or else they would have no carpentry or farming implements. The welder needs to do business with the miner or else there would be no iron to weld. The bus driver needs fuel to drive his bus, so he does business with the oil company through the filling station. The same bus driver needs a roof under his head so he has to rent a house from a landlord. The list I have just drawn is not exhaustive but illustrative. It illustrates how human beings are entwined and related in a network of commercial activities.

The tendency to steal, to defraud or to cheat in buying and selling cannot be ruled out. Therefore, dishonest and unscrupulous business practices need to be prevented and or sanctioned, and that necessitates the formation of a political union with adequately formed and adequately remunerated law enforcement agents, those Plato called combatants. Theirs would be to ensure that the merchants carry on their business without any threat to their lives and property.

From history, we learn that here in Africa, the rise and fall of the kingdoms and empires of western Sudan were largely determined by economic factors. Even when military strength was deployed, such military strength was attained and deployed for economic reasons. Centuries ago, the termini of the Trans-Saharan trade were commercial cities, and these commercial cities formed the nucleus of the kingdoms and empires of western Sudan. Thanks to the Trans-Saharan trade, people came together to exchange goods. This brought about the need to form a political union. Men like Mansa Musa, Al Bakr, and Askia Muhammed imposed a political union in other to secure economic advantage. People came to do business in cities, and whoever secured political and economic control of such cities controlled the wealth of the city.

This is how experience and history show that the economy comes before politics, and if there is politics, it is to regulate the common life of people who come together for economic reasons. But in the case of Nigeria, the reverse has been the case. And therein lies a major problem. The problem is, in Nigeria, political union is placed before economic union. Political power is assumed and used to control the economy. Everybody wishes to attain political power so as to use such powers to secure a large portion of the so-called national cake. But no one seems to want to embark on the task of baking the national cake. In such a situation, when government controls the economy, the wealth of the land does not end up in the hands of the people. It ends up in the hands of the government. To be more precise, it ends up in the hands of the political office holder. Since government, and not the people, controls the wealth, whoever is in government controls the wealth. And where the political office holder controls the wealth of the land, to become a political leader is to secure an avenue to enrich one’s pockets. If you become President of Nigeria you will be in control of all the oil wealth. And, with the lopsided and half-hearted federalism operated in Nigeria, if you become State Governor or Local Government Chairman, then you will be in control of the portion of the oil wealth accruing to your state or local government area. That is why, in Nigeria, being in government is such a lucrative thing that elections become a matter of life and death. Since government controls the wealth, whoever controls government controls the wealth; and since whoever controls government controls the wealth, the political system becomes well programmed to persistently produce coup plotters, election riggers, thugs, men and women who care so little about their personal integrity. Experience shows that most of those who go into government belong to one or several of these categories. Since such people did not work for the wealth that they are controlling, they have no incentive to manage it well. Their disposition is such as to mismanage and misappropriate the wealth for their personal advantage.

When government controls the wealth of the land, people tend to believe that unless vital positions in government are occupied by sons and daughters of their tribe there will be no benefit for their tribe. That explains why the political class legitimizes the ethnicization of government positions in general and of the presidency in particular. In practical terms, zoning of offices is a euphemism for ethnicization. You do not have to be competent to occupy strategic positions in government. You only need to belong to the ethnic group whose turn it is to provide the President or Vice President or Senate President. Rotation of offices according to regional or zonal criterion has become a euphemism for the enthronement of incompetence and corruption. If you happen to have been nominated by your tribe or zone, and if your tribe threatens hell fire, brimstone and mass action, you will most likely occupy the post.

But if the Nigerian project is to be a reality, then, in concrete terms, politics in Nigeria must be organized in such a way that the wealth of the land will no longer be in the hands of the politician. The economy should be in the hands of the people, not in the hands of government. In other words, it must, decidedly, be a private sector driven economy. That will substantially reduce, if not altogether eliminate, the tendency to get into government by hook or crook. Moreover, I cannot fail to point out that Catholic social teaching has consistently argued in favor of private property and private ownership of the means of production. The words of Pope John Paul II suitably summarize and reiterate the position of the Church here:

It is necessary to state once more the characteristic principle of Christian social doctrine: the goods of this world are originally meant for all. The right to private property is valid and necessary, but it does not nullify the value of this principle. Private ownership, in fact, is under a “social mortgage,” which means that it has an intrinsically social function, based upon and justified precisely by the principle of the universal destination of material goods.[2]

It is important to state, for the purpose of clarification, that what I am proposing here is more radical than the resource control that governors of southern Nigeria have been advocating. They are proposing a shift from the control of resources of the land by the federal government to the control of the same resources by state governments. I am saying here that the resources should not be controlled by federal, state, or local government. I am of the opinion that every government is tempted to be corrupt and inefficient, and almost every government falls into this temptation. The people of Nigeria will have nothing to show for all the riches in the land if resource control merely shifted from a corrupt and inefficient federal government to a state or local government that is not less corrupt.

Imagine I secure a piece of land in the Niger-Delta. If I find crude oil on that land it should belong to me and not to any government, federal, local, or state. But commonsense dictates that I cannot mine the crude oil without employing people to do it for me. I will most probably need to set up my own oil company to market the oil and to manage the proceeds from the sale. With that, I am compelled to provide employment for people in the area who otherwise would have been jobless. As an oil producer, I need grains for my food which are readily available in northern Nigeria. The farmer in the north needs diesel or petrol to use his tractor on his farm. With that, I sell the Nigerian in the north my petroleum product, he sells me his farm proceeds. That is how an economic union begins. From this union will develop a political union, which is the formation of a government, on mutually agreed terms, to provide enabling environment for our economic interaction. The role of government is neither to appropriate my oil well nor to appropriate the farmland of my friend up north. Government may tax both of us so as to have enough money to train and pay those who are to provide security—the law enforcement agents.