Preface to Cover: Silence of the Drums
By Dan Agbese
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Nigeria is now 48 years old as an independent nation. It is an obvious statement; so obvious it sounds prosaic. That bare statement speaks truth to the many prophets of doom who found a creative job in predicting that our country would disintegrate - with each region going its separate way - soon after independence on October 1, 1960.
It nearly happened. Our independence brought us immense joy. The first few years also brought us uncertainties and fears of the bottom falling out. Political squabbles within and among the regions caused those uncertainties and fears. Our democracy suddenly came to grief on January 15, 1966. Five young majors staged a very bloody coup. They said they acted for the love of the country. They wanted to save it from our politicians and put things right in the context of the ordinary man’s dreams for its independence.
A wild shot. Military rule was not the instant cure for Nigeria’s many political and social ills. It opened the Pandora’s Box. It exacerbated the primordial fears among the ethnic nationalities. A second coup seven months later confronted the country with the ugly prospects of its demise. The Eastern Region felt truly injured by the political developments that turned against its interests. It took the axe to the root of the nation. It broke away and renamed itself the Republic of Biafra on May 30, 1967. That took Nigeria down the bloody path of a 30-month civil war. The rebellion failed. Biafra ceased to be. Nigeria triumphed and became one country of many peoples again. The prophets of doom fed on their fingernails.
Nigeria has been through a lot – countless political, religious and ethnic crises, a civil war, coups and counter-coups, an annulled presidential election - and survived. An impressive record. Few countries have waded through so much and are still standing. Thank goodness, anyone looking for Nigeria can still find it where it has always been on the map of Africa – still occupying a large chunk of the West African sub-region.
At 48, Nigeria is a changed country in both positive and negative sense. It is different from what the British bequeathed to our nationalists at independence. Its politico-administrative map has been vastly altered. From three regions in 1960 to 36 states; from a poor, agrarian nation to a crude oil-rich nation. It remains the most populous black nation in the world. It is rich in human and vast mineral, natural and agricultural resources. It is a nation of great scholars and dazzling footballers. It has the most vibrant, irrepressible and iconoclastic press in Africa, nay the third world. It mints more billionaires and millionaires in a year than all other African countries put together can come close to in a decade.
It should follow, as some researchers have found, that Nigerians are the happiest people on earth. This monumental discovery that stopped short of shaking the world did not require any research. A casual stroller on our poorly-maintained streets would see enough evidence of happiness – celebrations of births, deaths, promotions and release from jail or police custody.
Yet, an artistic sketch of Nigeria would show not a country with a smiling face but one whose smile is frozen in the ice of its contradictions. Nigeria is an oil-rich nation, right? But it is the 19th poorest nation in the world. Its army shot its way into political power 42 years ago in pursuit of the destructive demon called corruption, right? Yet, its current level of corruption puts it in a class of its own in Africa. The khaki uniform is as tainted as the flowing gowns. The nation’s treasuries at federal, state and local government levels are routinely picked clean by those entrusted with the keys to them. The country is famous (yes!) for the ingenious 419 scam.
Nigerians love celebrations. Their country’s 48th independence anniversary should be a natural for the drums, right? Not quite. The talking drums may be muffled by the shuffling of feet by a nation that has developed ambivalence towards what should rank as one of its greatest political success stories – independence won, not through blood as it was in Kenya but simply by out-talking the British colonial authorities. In English. October 1 has seen itself suffer the indignity of being reduced to a ritual public holiday and celebrated in a borrowed expression from musicians known as low key. There is a simple explanation for this descent of an important day into one we seem now to hate to remember. Here is one for what has happened to October 1. The hopes and the promises of independence are scattered before us like pieces of a broken water pot. Few things have gone right but many more things have gone wrong in and with the country. Nigeria’s post-independence history is an interesting record of endless experiments, each calculated by the experts to move the nation forward. These political, economic and social experiments have moved the nation forward in too many directions and frustrated the expectations of not a few Nigerians.
Some of these experiments are worth looking at this point in the political history of Nigeria. And that is what we do in this special edition of the magazine. Our military rulers were afflicted with what Jonah Elaigwu calls the messianic complex. Their political, economic and social experiments have fixed no single national problem. Not light, not health, not agriculture, not education, not security, not corruption.
We have some sickening national obsessions. Here are two of them. Our obsession with constitution-writing. We have written more constitutions than any other nation on earth – six in 48 years. This obsession has a grand objective: to produce a perfect social contract with no discernible wrinkles and capable of meeting the aspirations of all Nigerians all of the time. The national assembly is rowing the canoe again on the shallow lake in a circular motion.
Our obsession with the creation of states and local governments. Agitations for more states and local governments continue unabated in the face of a telling evidence that this grand political experiment aimed at killing the beast of ethnic domination is a systematic rape of our national progress. A nation that spends most of its money to keep its growing army of political office holders in the lap of luxury can do more than fool itself into believing that when these jobbers are happy it is developing.
We have no reasons to believe that Nigeria is broken. We have good reasons to believe our nation is frozen in a circular motion. Nearly half a century of independence is a long enough time for the country to realise the promises of October 1, 1960. We need to fix Nigeria: its energy, economy, its politics, its health, its education, its agriculture, its national security, its endemic corruption and the Niger Delta. We assembled distinguished Nigerians to tell us how to fix these problems. Our purpose, as a responsible medium of public information, is to challenge certain easy assumptions on our national progress and development. Easy assumptions are dangerous. They give a nation a false confidence and induce complacency.
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