A writer’s appraisal
of Nigerian politics
By Desmond Mgboh
Sunday,
March 16, 2008
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Photo:
Sun News Publishing
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Ibrahim Ado Kurawa’s recent publication is one of the
latest and most profound entries into the complex, contemporary
political compendium of the Nigerian state. Admittedly, the
book is a handy dialectics, which is unmistakably controversial
and unpretentious about the complexion of its dissertations,
which is nevertheless, elegant in its tradition of political
rendition.
A groundwork of diverse and complex concerns about the political
theory of the Nigeria state, not excluding the inherent contest
for power among its various groups, its numerous affiliations,
its region of tribes and its two main religious concerns.
All through the texture of the book, one feels the strong
and simmering tension, the hidden feud, as he mounts a surging
offensive against the targeted casualties of his book.
Entitled Nigerian Politics and the National Political Reform
Conference, the book’s bounds of ideas and insights
are germane, given its promptings and motivations, given the
aptness of its timing –as the quest for reforms in the
nation’s political landscape is still on the top burners
–and given the very significance of the book, as it
bounds itself, with the responsibility of a historian and
a quest for justice, wading through the nation’s complex
and explosive political history, telling and retelling each
segment, most of all, from the perspective of a Hausa Fulani,
a Northerner, a Muslim and finally, a Nigerian, offended by
the assumed inaccuracies of the previous accounts of reality.
It is a commentary, no doubt, based on the author’s
own observations, his own varied perceptions, the fondling
of his own imaginations, and the works of previous scholars.
It contains four interesting chapters and a spice of well-written
pages that make it an easy read for all classes of readers
and scholars.
It passes its own verdicts on critical national questions
in the area of religion, resource allocation, politics and
history. Other issues that are perused by this thriller include
instances of inequality, regional imbalance, ethnic determinism
and cultural competition among the major players and groups
of the Nigerian nation, right from the colonial times and
beyond. For instance, in the first chapter of the book, the
author recognizes the question of deep ethnic and religion
cleavages tearing the nation apart, while noting that the
nation’s elite class have long made a grand exploit
of this intractable variable, in the pursuit of power and
other self seeking adventures.
Exploiting the underpinnings of the Dependency theory, the
Colonial theory, the Post colonialism, the Patrimonial and
the Rent Seeking theory, Kurawa made a bold attempt to explain
the unimpressive posting of the Nigeria state since its formative
years, providing political conditions that had made this possible.
One of such cases is the Sovereign National Conference, (SNC)
and its South West agitators. Kurawa held that that sadly,
the Yoruba elite has often misled their followers into the
thinking that the eventual emergence of ethnic nationalities
by a way of the breakage of the Nigerian state would solve
the riddles of all their problems. For him, the Yoruba region
is the crowned champion of parochial and ethnic politics in
Nigeria, arguing that many of their elite rely much on the
characterization and function of ethnic identity for the realization
of their goals.
He paints (for instance in Chapter two, page 36,) the restrictive,
fascist and undemocratic culture among the Yoruba and cited
the opinion of one of Nigerians founding nationalists, Dr.
Nnamdi Azikiwe, to buttress this label of the Yoruba people.
So much leverage is exalted by the forces of ethnicity in
this region that even their leader, Dr Obafemi Awolowo is
a consequence of this depreciated culture in a plural society,
a politician he tells us, is a reluctant ethnic leader who
was pressurized to succumb to the wishes of his immediate
constituency. Years after, he states, the Awo’s ethnocentrism,
particularly the Yoruba type of it, was to become the greatest
threat to the survival of the nation.
Even more intriguing are his rebuttal of the norms of the
Yoruba arguments, the very strand of their cultural superiority.
In this case, he knocks them hard for singularly isolating
the north as responsible for their failed and unfulfilled
expectations and for misleading the country across the years,
stating that the just terminated tenure of Chief Olusegun
Obasanjo has also proven, beyond contradictions, that ineptitude
in leadership qualities and in the leadership of the country
over the years, is not an exclusive preserve of northern leaders
and its politicians.
He accuses the Yoruba nation of the devilish invention of
ethnic politics in Nigeria, way back in 1953 Constitutional
Conference, apparently tucking the blame at the doorpost of
the revered icon of Yoruba politics, late Chief Obafemi Awolowo.
June 12th was also revisited as one of those reference points
in the nation’s landmark, where ethnicity rather than
germane national discourse, out shown and overshadowed the
readings and interpretations of the national questions.
No area was spared; none was excused among the regions, except
the north. Hence, the next chapter of the book takes on the
Igbo tribe and some previously held notions about the Igbo
race. Employing a smart combines of valid claims, tilted commentaries
and citations of scholars, he makes a sweeping and astonishing
revelation of the weeping tribe of the Nigeria nation: the
Igbos. But this ,too, is not surprising for those who have
followed his writings.
But in general terms, one cannot but appreciate this easy
and favored resort to the public sphere by some scholars.
Defeated in a civil war, abandoned by the people of the Niger
Delta communities, who were all part of the old Eastern block,
feared by the neighboring Yoruba tribe, who see them as a
tribe of astute competitors, the Igbo race, even in peacetime
and several years after the civil war, have become the scapegoat
of Nigeria’s politics. And some members of the intellectual
class have since caught up with this bug, without recourse
to the totality of evidence at each given time.
All these have hence brought to view the question of the creditability
of some of the citations in the book under review. Are these
writers, whose works were largely quoted the standard norms
and are therefore not in error in their submissions? Can all
these authors be described as intellectual authorities in
the particular area of citation? I hold that despite a fact
(that has been contended by some informal reviewers, that
some of them are of the Christian faith and from the Southern
part of Nigeria) the creditability of some of them, as scholars
is suspect.
For in this book and for all the author cared, the Igbo people
of Nigeria are, after the Yorubas, the second in the ranking
of the progenitors of ethnicity in the country. He claims
that the Igbos are once a diverse entity, while alluding that
the word, ‘Igbo’ is a word, which was pejoratively
used to refer to a densely populated upland, where slaves
were sourced and which by extension, refers to slaves. He
refutes claims that the Igbo tribe, (as they would have wished
to be identified), are essentially democrats and republicans.
Rather, he insists that they are, all along, a stateless entity,
which cannot afford a claim to the nobility of democratic
entrepreneurship.
In all, this book is really a great read of the finest brand,
with lots of spark of brilliance and promise and has an academic
aspect to it all, given that it interrogates reality and pushes
one to review the context of the nation’s collective
existence. It offers another view of Nigeria, altogether new,
relishing the reader with something humane, dramatic and unique,
especially for a reader, who wants to read the political history
of Nigeria, from the eyes of a Northerner and from the emotions
of a Nigerian Muslim.
•Mr. Desmond Mgboh is a Senior Correspondent with The
Sun. |
