In his summary of characterisation in the novels of Gunter Grass, Kunle Ajibade captures the goal of his new book, What a Country! It is to show us (Nigerians) “our flaws and strengths as we seek meanings among ruins and bliss of life” (p.44).

Living in post-independence Nigeria has been a persistent struggle in snatching some grains of order from a huge pile of existential rubble. With hindsight, one sees the sense in Oscar Wilde’s profound statement that there are two tragedies in life: getting what you desire and not getting it.

The country’s decolonisation and demilitarisation struggles of the 20th century seem to illustrate the two tragedies of expectation and fulfilment encapsulated in Wilde’s wry remark. No sooner than independence was achieved than its prospects were dimmed by bitter politicking of the 1960s, leading to a ruinous pogrom, civil war and long years of absolute rule. The struggle for democracy and demilitarisation in the 1990s also curiously produced a General Olusegun Obasanjo led civilian regime that was, according to Ajibade, distinguished by “arrogance of power, heartlessness and looting spree” (p.155).

Part of the national tragedy is the trial and conviction in 1995 of Beko Ransome-Kuti, the Chairman of Campaign Democracy (CD), Kunle Ajibade, George Mbah, Ben Charles Obi and other Journalists by a military tribunal set up by the regime of General Sani Abacha, for their alleged involvement in a military coup. This was a basically unfounded offence. Much of that strand of national history has been narrated in Jailed for Life, Ajibade’s prison notes.

Unfortunately, the post-Abacha years culminating in the fourth republic have not offered much respite in terms of human freedom and national development. Nigeria daily sinks into deeper confusion; a situation that provokes veridical angst as enunciated in What a Country! If the book sounds optimistic amidst its overall ambience of despondency, it is not out of tune, coming from a writer who, through a kind of providential dues-ex-machina, was once jailed for life, but is alive and free to tell the story. Thus, the author is lamenting the collapse of collective heritage while at the same time, affirming with confidence the possibilities of a re-construction.

It is an ode to resilience, a muse that is essentially Nigerian.
What a Country! offers mellowed but trenchant reflections on the state of the nation. It contains nine chapters of various lengths; each bearing the author’s candid evaluation of Nigeria’s collective “error of rendering” that is the hallmark of postcolonial governance and citizenship. At intervals, the author’s account elicits surprise and disappointment, both wrapped together into a resonant refrain: “what a Country!”

There is a paradox of existence ringing forth in Ajibade’s portrait of a country that is endowed with immeasurable oil wealth but has mass poverty, unemployment and collapsed infrastructure as dividends; a putative democratic republic that is ruled in succession by leaders who are weaned on the ethos of autocracy. The paradox finds a parallel articulation in the book with the author celebrating those who struggled for the expansion of democratic space and denouncing the perceived architects of socio-political anomie, both in one stroke of the pen.

On the list of heroism are journalists, writers, intellectuals, politicians and statesmen whom he holds in sublime veneration. On the contrary, he has harsh words for military rulers like Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha and more unsympathetically, Olusegun Obasanjo, for violating the spirit and essence of democracy. According to the author, they are responsible for making democratic governance in Nigeria, an irksome experiment in endless dictatorship.

The chapters can be categorised into three thematic concerns. Four chapters celebrate personalities whose achievements in the private and public spheres are deeply admired by the author – Beko Ransome-Kuti, Dele Giwa, Gunter Grass and Wole Soyinka. Two chapters contain interviews with Salman Rushdie, the endangered Indian novelist, and John Kufuor, the out-going President of Ghana. In two essays - “As we gather in Barcelona” and “What exactly is good governance?” - Ajibade mounts the podium and directly addresses his audience.

Both essays are refined versions of some earlier public lectures. The final chapter offers insights into the role of the civil society in a volatile democracy. Reflecting on the knotty question of what constitute good governance, he hangs the answer on the balance of responsible leadership and conscious citizenship. Good governance, he contends, is a collective struggle both from within and outside the officially designated spaces of power.

The author’s tributes to Gunter Grass and Wole Soyinka, both winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature are rendered in lyrical prose spiced with poetry. These are writers adored for their uncanny sensitivity to the march of history and the trends of politics. Grass is celebrated as a “sceptical social democrat” and as a writer “who has been truly made eloquent by the sufferings” of the twentieth century. Characters in Grass’ novels serve as the canvass for commentaries on human conditions in the contemporary world. In the process, a common bond is established across space, time and cultures among the ordinary people who are often regarded as the “scum of the earth”.

Interestingly, Soyinka attracts attention not for his literature and politics, but for his politics in the media as an essayist, a public affair commentator and a columnist. He is no less confrontational as he tackles media practitioners who violate “editorial integrity and ethical rigour” (p. 71).
As a writer and student of literature, there is something of both writers in Ajibade’s style. He weaves metaphors into intricate patterns of intelligible narrative like Grass, while he shares Soyinka’s vision of literature as a barb constantly honed against the perceived enemies of the people.

In the interview with John Kufuor, the Ghanaian President’s leadership model is contrasted with Obasanjo’s. While Kufuor is presented as a statesman, Obasanjo is declared a “self-seeker”. While Kufuor makes Ghana work, Obasanjo takes “politics to the threshold of the horrible” (p. 154). But the author seems to celebrate here too hastily.

It is unfortunate that in setting up Ghana as a success story, he relies on those statistical evaluations made by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank officials. These are the same set of people responsible for Africa’s perpetual dependency and underdevelopment. In the rankings that the author celebrates with glee, Ghana comes out a dismal failure; an index of how deep Africa is sinking head, body and legs in the swamp of globalisation.

On the whole, the essays find appropriate accentuation in photo art. Most of the pictures show different images of a sick polity, largely provoking spite rather than sympathy. What a Country! is not a straight-on cataloguing of Nigeria’s woes, neither does it provide an in-depth analysis of its political and economic sour-points. But both serve as the hub of motivation for the author.

More importantly, it shows the journalist as a fusion of the creative artist, the teacher, the historian and the interpreter of social events. Although the author denies ever looking back at the past in anger like John Osborne, the British dramatist, no phrase better captures the tenor of discourse in the book. Its candid stock-taking approach is in many respects, a welcome development, at a time when many of those who are to be held accountable for the country’s misery are attempting to re-construct historical facts through the genres of biography and autobiography.

*Dr Gbemisola Adeoti is currently a British Academy Visiting Fellow at the School of English, University of Leeds, United Kingdom. He lectures in the English Department of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife.