Anticipating the birth-day boy: Options and possibilities for a besieged nation at 60

IT must be a matter of continual debate among the enlightened savants in and outside the groves of our Academe to call a territory of disparate people or peoples or groups a nation. Essential or important or significant as the debate is or may be, the different ethnic groups living in the geographical territory called Nigeria today have been living together, in my view, long enough to be truly, factually, historically, politically and psychologically regarded as a people, as one people, called Nigerians. We are one people of succeeding generations of persons and groups who have been living together for decades (and even for centuries). But I am jumping the gun.

The coinage, ‘Birthday Boy’ in the title, pretty well dictates our choice of compositional thought and inspirational guidance in this enterprise. We must not lose sight of the phrase ‘Besieged Nation at Sixty’ which clearly is explanatory and anticipatory at the same time of our compositional and inspirational direction. But I must put at ease my listeners’ (and readers’) suspense and anticipation. Our ‘Birthday Boy’ is Nigeria your country our country, your nation our nation. In this year 2019 it is fifty-nine years old. Next year 2020 it will celebrate its sixty years of birth as a besieged boy, as a beleaguered young country and nation where heavy guns will continue to roar. What a patient anticipation, what a poetic, metaphorical anticipation of our historical, political and psychological reality! Again, I am jumping the gun. Clearly, the preceding words and paragraphs make apposite the direction of this enterprise. But this is not quite so. Why? You must allow me to appeal to you to submit your attention and follow my submission to the end in order of its afflatus sign-posted in its subsections before any anticipated conclusion. And the subsections that govern it are these: Conception of the Boy; The Boy as an Infant and as a Growing Child; The Child in His Boyhood State; The Boy as an Anticipated Man; The Boy as an Anticipated Elder; Options and Possibilities for a Besieged Nation at Sixty, and Conclusion.

Abuja-Kaduna train service generates N100m monthly ― NRC MD

I have adopted greatly a historical as well as a literary approach or style because it will help to reveal momentously why the besiegement and stunting of the growth of Baby Boy Nigeria at sixty. We must take stock of our past before we examine possibilities for tomorrow and the future, near or distant future. When the wine ferments and starts to settle and clear one must help oneself to take stock to see how one’s life has grown to the point of searching for options and possibilities for something new or better or both. This must be the case of Baby Nigeria. And deliberately I have tried here as much as I can to impose myself on the topic without any confusing or absurd hint at introductory quibbles or theoretical quiddities, although I may be seen to apply speculative haecceities in some places.

 

Conception of the boy

We all know how a child is conceived and eventually given birth to – biologically-, physiologically- and psychologically-speaking. Who were the mother and father that engaged in the erotic act(s) that led to the conception and eventual birth of the boy? This may be a simplistic question relating to the birth of the ‘birthday boy.’ But is it? Obviously, it is not. We must rightly pre-suppose that our boy was consciously given birth to as a result of a series of subjective and objective factors, even though mostly of a politically heterogeneous nature. In this wise we cannot disregard the historical, social and legal agents that slept, sat, stood and embraced to produce the boy that grew up to be the one to celebrate soon his diamond year. The boy’s conception and birth thus may rightly have been devoid of biological acts of eroticism but the historical, social and legal agents that conceived of him and partook in his birth in 1914 were more or less agents who anticipated the birth of babies! Our boy was born through the political test-tube of amalgamation proclamation of 1914. Fundamentally, Lord Frederick Lugard and his lover (and eventual wife) Flora Shaw in their erotic moments in 1898 conceived the boy, who before his ultimate birth in 1914, had already being given his birth-name that he has been bearing ever since. Their biological, physiological and psychological romance was consciously transformed into the birth of Baby Nigeria. This is one way of speaking of the psychological relationship of Lord Lugard and Flora Shaw who were biologically childless, but whose legally, historically, politically adopted child was ‘ Baby Boy Nigeria’ (after sixteen years of pregnancy!). Now I must descend a little from the realm of metaphor.

Those with little familiarity or of no  knowledge of this country’s birth story must know that Lugard was in our part of the world the colonial representative of the British Home Office that instigated the seizure of our respective lands and communities prior to their merger historically and politically called the “amalgamation” as one people and one government/administration. Lord Lugard and his sweetheart Flora Shaw were more than a father and mother of their born child. In fact, Lord Lugard quickly adjusted from being a caring, conscious father to be an uncompromising subjugator of his ‘Baby Boy Nigeria.’ He gave the impression that the “fathered” and “mothered” peoples of Southern Nigeria and Northern Nigeria must be properly brought up to share a common point of coming into being and of growth and advancement as evidenced in Lord Lugard’s amalgamation proclamation of 1st January, 1914: You are all aware that His Majesty’s Government, after mature consideration, arrived sometime ago, at the conclusion that it would be to a great advantage  of the countries known as Southern and Northern Nigeria that they should be amalgamated into the one Government, conforming to one policy and mutually cooperating for the moral and material advancement of Nigeria as a whole.(Qtd. in The Guardian, Wednesday, March 5, 20014, 2)

This quotation obviously tells us that Father Lugard initially fathered twin-boys, who, through his political surgery, which had the nod of his scientific superiors in the Home Office, were carved into one. The twins who ostensibly were not identical were subsumed into a condition of “unconscious oneness,” to borrow Carl Jung’s term (181). One of the boys presumably returned to Flora’s creative womb so that one government of “one heart and soul” should benefit ‘Baby Boy Nigeria’ that must live (to) beyond manhood and forever. I am not oblivious of the generated contradictions so far of my critical narrative. But I must gloss over them without critical explanations – at least for now. Yet we must be aware that the contradictions we witness in Nigeria arose from his birth.

 

The boy as an infant and as a growing child

To help Baby Nigeria to grow well Lugard cleverly got some tenders to nurse it. And the tenders were traditional rulers who he expected to be the foster fathers and the nurses of the little one’s well-being in its time and years of infancy. The royal personages were five in number and of different ethnic nationalities of the aborted Southern Nigeria and Northern Nigeria. They were without any dot of doubt the most influential, the most revered and the most powerful royal personages of the time. They were Paramount Ruler Dore Numa I of Warri Kingdom, Alaafin Siyanbola Ladigbolu I of Oyo Kingdom/Empire, Paramount Ruler Henshaw I of Calabar Kingdom, Sultan Muhammadu Attahiru II of Sokoto Caliphate and Emir  Muhammad Abbas I of Kano Emirate.

They made up the Royal Council of Five that had the onerous task of helping Lord Lugard to nurse the child’s cough or any ailment for that matter. In fact, we may not be wrong to refer to them as Lord Lugard’s nannies who must fondle the child to grow properly along the line of its historical, social, political and psychic consciousness and destiny. Maybe in the context of our present realities and advantage of hindsight we may call them spineless natives who were ill-conscious of their psychological destiny on behalf of their subjects in their pre-Nigeria landmass of consciousness. But I must call them clever, wise men, who knew well enough that Lugard was the “ruthless destroyer and conqueror of native peoples who opposed British Colonial rule,” to borrow Gordini G. Darah’s words (The Guardian, Sunday, March 16, 2014, 26). The royal personages were not oblivious of the British Colonialists’ atrocities in many parts of pre-one-Nigeria terrain. In doing what they did it is hard for me to say or to accept that they were on the un-favourable side of history – as some persons, for example Gordini G. Darah, may wrongly argue. But I must give thought to a crucial question: What language did the royal personages use in the Royal Council of Five Lugard 9999presided-over visibly and invisibly? As my father, Dore Numa’s nephew, informed me, long ago, “Dore spoke English with white men.” But in his real area(s) of jurisdiction he communicated in his native Itsekiri, Ilaje/Yoruba, Ijaw, Urhobo, Isoko, Kwale (Ukwuani), Benin, as the case might be.He was a polyglot. (At the time of my putting these thoughts together I did not find any credible evidence that the royal personages communicated efficiently and effectively in the English language, although they had a smattering of the language, which stood them in good stead.)

What, however, was ironical, paradoxical and even oxymoronic as well was that the royal personages were not categorically aware – or so it seemed – that they were in the eyes of Lugard adult-children (if not sub-humans) who were un-freed people in their land of birth where they were now “second class citizens.” Like the child they were to nurse, they too needed to be nursed along the line of civilization. In other words, they were elderly children who must equally be engaged in the art of nursing Baby Nigeria! The British theory of racial art and science was naturally, symbolically and fundamentally applied in their creation, nursing and treatment of the child unconditionally under British consciousness that compelled natives to reject their sense and sensibility of primitive identity. The bitter-sweet or visible darkness of denigrated nurses became the subject of the alienation of the child from its nurses, tenders, masters and subjects. As the child grew, almost everybody connected with it became a mournful optimist. I hope I am not over-flogging the oxymoron.

The Child in His Boyhood State

Nigeria’s childhood lasted for eighteen years – from 1914 to 1932 or thereabouts (which was only two years longer than its sixteen years period of conception!). Of course, it was a long (or better stated) an over-long period of childhood for obvious reasons. The lumping together of different, disparate, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-linguistic nationalities and peoples into one union, no matter the success or otherwise of the surgery of the surgeon(s) that constructed it, posed serious challenges – as the nurturing process began. The challenges stunted the child’s growth “biologically and otherwise.” As Bode Steve Ekundayo puts it, in another pertinent context, “[T]he dynamics of culture, nature and environment, the juxtaposition of opposing religions, ethnographic and linguistic heterogeneity, political immaturity, level of education and literacy, political (un-)consciousness, conflict of interests, among other predicaments, characterize[d] the tottering fabrication [called Nigeria]”(The Guardian, Sunday, May 6, 2012, page 50). Our royal idols and personages, who were really not in charge of the fragile child they were compelled to foster and nurture, at least to the state of boyhood, could not do much to give it the stability of boyhood. Apart from the enumerated challenges, they were products and offspring of cultures that were bereft of the science of their race (and of human races in general). As Nancy Stepan states, “By the middle of the nineteenth century, a very complex edifice of thought about human races had been developed in science that was sometimes explicitly, but more often implicitly, racist”(ix).

At the time Nigeria was growing to a boyhood mode this “science of race and anti-black racism,” as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. puts it, in a different context, were inextricably intertwined” (58). So Nigeria and the black persons, the mulatto-less persons (who were not of mixed Caucasian and Negro (Black) ancestry in spite of Lugard’s surgical feat) that made up the landmass could not be expected (and were not expected) to have the same abilities and enjoy the same powers of growth with citizens of “His Majesty’s Government” contrary to Lugard’s postulation and claim and un-serious and wild expectations. But our royal personages were wise enough to understand that for Nigeria to attain a boyhood state he must be nurtured, encouraged and compelled to show the same “natural dispositions as citizens of “His Majesty’s Government.” Thus citizens, children, of Nigeria must acquire education that would give them enlightenment and the key to open the door that would entitle them to enter the place of human society as Lugard and company. It is worthy of fundamental note that “His Majesty’s Government” equally encouraged and spear-headed the education and citizens of Nigeria. The intention of “His Majesty’s Government” was, however, not the same as our royal personages’. In any case, the late 1920s/early 1930s constituted the real boyhood state of our country, no, of our nation.It was a prolonged state similar to his prolonged childhood condition.

Within the period of this state several children and citizens successfully acquired education, the kind of education that enabled them to challenge the white man’s theory and attitude relating to the “science of race and anti-black racism.” This was against “His Majesty’s Government’s” intention of lumping the peoples of “Southern Nigeria” and “Northern Nigeria” together in the form which appeared to well educated Nigerians as some form of punishment. “His Majesty’s Government’s policy of like it or lump it must not go unchallenged. The boyhood education in the form of university degrees and diplomas in the professions and in the arts and sciences which Nigerians acquired enabled them realise that the birth of their country and his growth and development had questionable implications, which violated logical laws of Nature whose course it equally altered. J.P. Clark, a very distinguished scholar, prose stylist, dramatist and poet of ours, in his poem entitled “The Sovereign” in The Poems: 1958-1998, states as follows:

It was never a union. It was at best

An amalgamation, so said in fact

The foreign adventurer who forged it:

Four hundred and twenty three disparate

Elements by the latest count. (147)

 

J.P. Clark and his kind refused (and still refuse) to accept that amalgamation is a lump that we should forever accept. The educated boy is querying his birth or kind of birth. Gordini G. Darah, in his already cited article, opined that “His Majesty’s Government’s” motive and conduct in the “saga of the amalgamation were not at all altruistic. The educated boy had truly come of age!

 The Boy as an Anticipated Man

The boy was properly prepared and groomed for manhood – despite his prolonged boyhood as well as his lengthened childhood, as already indicated. The local press of the 1900s, run by Nigerian citizens, who were not superbly educated were in the forefront of the breeders and champions of the growth of the boy into manhood. Their sparse education was put to maximum use. According to a well-educated Nigerian “boy” in the person of Michael Omolewa, a highly distinguished historian, in colonial Nigeria the press was the chief weapon of resistance employed by our nationalists against British colonialism and domination of our land. The colonial lords who Lugard typified, to quote Omolewa, “loathed the educated native and lived in constant dread of the Native Press, which at every turn overshadowed his sinister movements” (The Guardian, Wednesday, April 23, 2014, 17). The Native Press in the 1900s consisted fundamentally of the Lagos newspapers. They were boisterous and fearless in their condemnation of Lugard’s punitive wickedness against the indigenous people. Indeed, the press groomed the boy for manhood duties and bents relating to the art, nature, form and system of government and how courageously to resist the “foreign adventurer.”

The 1950s, however, truly saw the beginning of the manhood of Nigeria. It was the period when our political nationalists were remarkably relentless and fearlessly fearless in their literary, legal, cultural and political resistance of “Surgeon” Lugard and his ilk. The series of constitutional conferences and meetings attended in London by Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello, Tafawa Balewa, Aminu Kano, Anthony Enahoro, Festus Samuel Okotie-Eboh and other nationalists across the nation underlined the manhood stature and status of Boy Nigeria that was no longer Baby or Boy Nigeria. In their series of constitutional meetings and conferences in London with “His Majesty’s Government’s” representatives they showed and proved their mettle in literary, legal and political combat. They wanted the British out of the landmass of Nigeria that had since ceased to be a fickle child, boy and person of Lugard’s creation. Indeed Nigeria was no more a changeling of “His Majesty’s Government.”

But did our nationalists behave as men who confronted the British in unity of voices, spirits and minds and of skins as anticipated? This is a fundamental question which cannot but confirm to us that at a crucial and dire time in our quest for true freedom and liberty our nationalists did not behave as well groomed gladiators and heroes entitled to the natural rights of the colour of men of valour. The antagonistic tendencies of “Southern Nigeria” and “Northern Nigeria” endowed with equal political ambitions and powers which our nationalists displayed in London on several occasions confirmed to “His Majesty” in his chambers of government that the political manhood of Nigeria was yet to be a proper political manhood. The anticipation and expectation were misdirected. (In this wise, part three of Sylvester Akhaine’s recent essay “The Nigerian troubadour: statehood or nationhood” which he published in The Guardian of Friday, 28 June, 2019, page18 is apposite , although his approach is different from mine. He is a political scientist while I belong to the discipline of the creative imagination.).

The Boy as an Anticipated Elder               

When Nigeria    eventually got late independence from Britain in 1960, and shortly after became a Republic in 1963, it was believed that it would not fail as a republic of democratic regions despite the differences between the reptilian “Northern Nigeria” – “all cold and dry reason” – and mammalian “Southern Nigeria” – “all warm and wet feeling.” (I hope that the “reptilian” and “mammalian” metaphors are beautifully understood within the context of “Northern Nigeria’s” and “Southern Nigeria’s” historical and political relationship and reality)1. Now that the British had been eased out of the land, after perturbing characteristics of manhood displayed by our nationalists in the pre-Independence period, the massive potential of the black race would be fully realised in Nigeria. Sooner or later Baby Boy Nigeria of the covered period above would be the ultimate elder of Africa in every respect of human endeavour. But, first, the climate of sincere democratic rule of equal rights for all, and under elderly men who would not allow the superiority or inferiority of any group to the other must see the light of day.

Our students are not to be trained to graduate with a vague notion that the period of Baby Boy Nigeria, as I have tried to cover it up to this point, has provided the clearest historical or political functional label that can be applied to it. However, it fits my compositional and inspirational purpose. I have not led anyone (and I am not leading anyone) into a story of Nigeria, but into a process of dwelling on a story of Nigeria. So anyone is free or may be free to wonder what will follow next or what we should meditate upon next.

Let me suspend my suspension of your appreciation of this lecture. As un-anticipated, we entered the reactionary period after we got Independence. Our Nigeritopia, our dream, became a dream that was not a dream. Our expectation turned into an illusion. Our manhood heroes became constipated geniuses, and elderly masters and leaders of discord who deliberately created discord in the land for their varied selfish reasons and motives. They assaulted our ears and eyes than even the British did. Romanus Egudu, a foremost critic and social poet of our country, in his book of poems entitled Prayer of the Powerless, depicts the situation creatively but very truthfully and very factually. Much, much earlier before him, Chinua Achebe, universally acknowledged as Africa’s foremost novelist, had dwelt on the tragedy of our manhood and elderly politicians in his novel A Man of the People. Also, Wole Soyinka, our Nobel Laureate, in his Independence play, A Dance of the Forests, had foretold what many people did not foresee.

One given explanation that is popular among many persons and (which is rife in our history books) is that Britain deliberately gave real power of governance to “Northern Nigeria” to teach the highly vocal and very educated “Southern Nigeria” an agonizing and tragic lesson in political and electoral gerrymandering. Thus right from the very beginning of Independence, conservative, reactionary politics akin to primitive, primordial politics unleashed on our country and nation periods of manic excitation which alternated with melancholic depression. And several critics and masters of agitprops have often postulated that the relationship between “Northern Nigeria” and “Southern Nigeria” is nothing short of failed married partners. But I cannot but ask: Who is the husband and who is the wife? Who, to employ the phrase of Carl Jung, is “the contained” and “the container” (183) in this erotically political relationship of two equal partners? Furthermore, if we accept the marriage postulation and metaphor to boot, is the relationship not an incestuous and a homosexual one? We must not accept hook-line-and-sinker the postulations, rhetoric and metaphors of the said masters of agitprops. In any case, when the nationalists who I hereby call founding elders failed to behave like true elders of our democracy, the soldiers, mainly youths or boys of fortune, struck to cleanse the country, which, however, they could not really cleanse. One thing led to another and we fought a civil war for three evil years (from 1967 to 1970) between the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the “Confederate Republic of Biafra.” For many years the military boys (or military men) ruled Nigeria, but they could not make or turn our nation into the true bastion and elder of governance in Africa! They became, agonizingly, far worse than their civilian predecessors who were envisaged or anticipated to be the democratic elders of governance of our nation. None of the military fellows, who even succeeded themselves, through various acts of underground activities and actions, succeeded in curing Nigeria of his boyhood syndrome.  Unfortunately, too, the new civilians they handed and re-handed power and governance to at every turn became worse and more demonic than those who handed and re-handed democratic authority of governance to them. Their sensibility was without question the sensibility of demons in power. Again, I am jumping the gun – or I have again jumped the gun. But my infraction should be excused and over-looked.

Chief Obafemi Awolowo, regardless of any failings of human nature he possessed, was a key proponent of healthy attitude and virtuous conduct of political government; and he was the nearest instance of the ideal elder and leader of administration and governance conceived of, especially as a future possibility for Nigeria – going by what he did in the Western Region, where he was premier (and what he was not allowed to do by the terminators of the First Republic). Let Femi Kusa, a distinguished journalist of our time, speak for me:

I always say I am familiar with what cocoa did to the economy of the Western Region of Nigeria’s First Republic. It built Nigeria’s skyscraper, the 25-storey Cocoa House in Ibadan.

It built the First Republic. It built Nigeria’s first skyscraper, the 25-storey Cocoa House in Ibadan. It built skyscraper Western House on Lagos Island. It set up the rubber plantations and farm settlements. It built Nigeria’s first housing estates in Ibadan (Bodija Estate) and GRA in Ikeja, Lagos. It built the University of Ife, the world’s biggest university in terms of land mass. It funded free, primary school education; it built the industrial estates in Ikeja, Apapa, Ilupeju, Yaba, Matori, etc. Cocoa money also provided Western Nigeria a television station, the first in black Africa and Liberty Stadium, in Ibadan, Nigeria’s first modern stadium. But for the military take-over of government in 1966, cocoa money was to have built a sea port at Ilaje, in Bariga, suburb of Lagos. Who knows what would have become of Epe, Badagry and other coastal towns in the region? What can we point out petrol subsidy money has done in terms of a performance ratio analysis?

When the state eulogizes and enthrones common thieves and non-performers as our role models, it only helps to remind one striving for nobility of spirit of some of those spiritual teachings which have helped me to maintain sanity in these times without over-grazing, jagging rapidly from anger or sadness or both. (The Nation, Thursday, March 20, 2014, page 55)

Allow me to react to Fem Kusa’s words, without sputtering, by way of quoting, by way of lifting, myself from an earlier delivery thus:

I have deliberately quoted this long passage because it graphically mirrors what governance is and means in all ramifications. It also captures the true meaning of politics as far as we understand politics to mean wealth distribution and infrastructural development.

Awolowo’s style of governance and politics gave Western Nigeria some good measure of “nobility of spirit” and enhanced the moral and spiritual education of young minds of Femi Kusa and other people in the Western Nigeria of their days, which Femi Kusa recalls with ample nostalgia. Certainly Femi Kusa would wish for those halcyon years to be re-born or to be re-entered into. Alas! How impossible this wish must be in these times of Nigerian Alarics of our affairs! (By the way, ancient history records Alaric (370-410) as the king of the Visigoths who plundered the Byzantine Empire (395-399) and thereafter the Western Roman Empire (401-410), pillaging and sacking Rome in 410. Will the current lords of Nigeria end up sacking Nigeria the way Lord Lugard and company could not or did not mean to despite their stiff, heavy hand in the governance of pre- and amalgamated Nigeria? The thought of what is going on in the governance and politics of Nigeria must imbue any sane mind with the emotions of anger and sadness.

But my glaring interest in the revisited passage and my principal reason for inserting it in this lecture and for focusing on it at this length must be made manifest at this point by way of re-stating and underscoring the fact that Obafemi Awolowo was the anticipated political elder and leader Nigeria never had as supreme administrator in the form of premier or executive president. Infact, as an elder statesman and political leader, Obafemi Awolowo was a supreme visionary and seer. As far back as 1979, as the presidential candidate of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), he had seen the menace of Fulani herdspersons who are besieging the nation today. He provided a workable solution which would make unnecessary the current proposal of Ruga settlement, a proposal that could lead to the disunion of our besieged nation – if not properly handled. Let me, in any case, pertinently quote a fellow Guardian columnist, Dare Babarinsa, on Obafemi Awolowo’s visionary proposal:

During the 1979 presidential campaign, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the leader and presidential candidate of the Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, promised that if he was elected President of Nigeria he would keep Nigerian cattle in the North. He said freight express trains should carry beef from the North every day to destinations in the South. By so doing, the beef would be fresh, inexpensive and healthy. He said the long trek from the North to the South was too much stress for both the herds and the herdsmen. (The Guardian, Thursday, July 18, 2019, page 9)

When Obafemi Awolowo lost the election his spectacular suggestion and solution never saw the light of day. And today we are faced with the option of “Ruga Settlement” that is a workable impossibility. When Obafemi Awolowo offered the solution or option he offered as per his electoral promise, he knew what he offered that would be an antidote to the herdspersons’ besiegement of the nation today. Let me quote Babarinsa finally: “As Premier of the defunct Western Region, he [Awolowo] created cattle ranches in many parts of the West, including Ibadan, Shaki, Ikun, Agege, and Ikare. He imported a new breed of cattle to the West from Argentina which produced bigger meat, more milk and were resistant to the dreaded tsetse fly. After the military seized power in 1966, the ranches were taken over by the Federal Government.” (Babarinsa, The Guardian, Thursday, July 18, 2019, page 9). Needless to say, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was an anticipated elder who prominently and supremely played his role in his elderly leadership position of our besieged nation. He was denied the right and privilege of putting the beleaguered birthday boy where he should rightly be before his sixtieth birthday.

Options and Possibilities for a Besieged Nation at Sixty

Everything I have said so far leads to this point: Next year on the first of October Nigeria will be sixty in terms of when it was weaned from the milk and nourishment of his imperialistic mother and father.

What are the options and possibilities for Baby Boy Nigeria that at sixty years will still be called a baby – not even a Boy Man but a Baby Boy? At sixty years, is it right (or will it be right) to call Nigeria or to  still see Nigeria as nothing but a mere boy whose growth and development have been stunted and distorted right from its/his abnormal birth? Our political and intellectual Talibans will affirm these questions and provide a collective answer that will not be in the positive direction. It wrenches me to say that I seem not to see immediate viable options and possibilities to get this nation out of its/his current besieged state before next year. To say this does not mean or does not imply that I am a Taliban of any sort.

Clearly, as I am thinking, talking and delivering now these little words concerning our subject, it is not clear to me that I have perfect or fragrant options to tender or render acutely or persuasively for the benefit of the besieged nation that has been “stunted like millipede,” to borrow Niyi Osundare’s words (129). In fact, whatever options I am to choose from to help pull out our hobbledehoy called Nigeria at age sixty from the strong grips of the hobgoblins constricting him must be from the vineyard of intellectuals who are political thinkers and activists, or must be from the nadir of misery of liberators and revolutionaries of supreme rank – liberators and revolutionaries in thought, logic, vision and action as well as inaction. But what are the possibilities of the success of these options or of either of these options?

In opting for the first option, to begin with, let me anchor my thought on the following words below I am wrenching from Noam Chomsky, Professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; who has been described as “arguably the most important intellectual alive:”

[…]take the question of the role of the intelligentsia in a society like ours. This social class, which includes historians and other scholars, journalists, political          commentators, and so on; undertakes to analyze and present some picture of social reality. By virtue of their analyses and interpretations, they serve as mediators between the social facts and the mass of the population: they create the ideological justification for social practice. (69)

What Chomsky says here must equally apply to our nation that is besieged and battered everywhere and from all sides and regions today as never before in our history. Boko Haram, Fulani herdspersons, Islamic Movement of Nigeria, Niger Delta militants, Indigenous People of Biafra and other various rebel and dissatisfied groups are everywhere beleaguering the nation. But if the current managers of the nation have the will and vision, before October first next year, there will be significant positive changes in the land. If the current regime can put together a solid team of Nigerian intelligentsia to study selflessly and analyse our current situation thoroughly from social and political perspectives devoid of special interests that will not breed partisan and ethnic situations we are likely to make Baby Boy Nigeria to begin to drop his boyhood sensibilities and propensities. And the “special interests” that must not be allowed to interfere with the anticipated vision to propel the hobbledehoy to his rightful destination include but not limited to ethnic, religious, cultural and submerged factors with ingredients of Freemansory and Ogbonism. What is, should and must be are factors, visions, tasks and actions solely to give us the ideology and system that will enable our makers of decisions and followers to reject every iota of human nature that will impede the nourishment of the Baby Boy and hobbledehoy to grow into real manhood and beyond – if not before his sixtieth birthday, at least in no distant time after his diamond birthday that will certainly be diamond-less.

Whether we accept it or not, the nation’s current condition is pathetic, and this pathetic condition and situation must grip our sympathies. When John F. Kennedy became the president of the United States of America in 1961, he dreamed the beautifully great dream of discovering and conquering the moon on behalf of America and mankind. He was barely two years in power at the time of his untimely death in November 1963. But before then he had put in place a solid team of intelligentsia to give focus, direction and reality to his vision to transform his society and country better than he met it. October first next year is not far away. But Buhari can halt the battering and besiegement as well as the batterers and besiegers today. Boko Haram, Fulani cattle-herders and other menacing groups in the Niger Delta and South East can be brought to their knees or made to fall on their swords as quickly or as urgently as possible if, I say it again, the right team of intelligentsia starts working now.

Even though I am not a pharmacist or a medical doctor who prescribes drugs for this or that ailment, because I am a literary artist, who does not provide solutions, but instead gives severe headache and chronic migraine, I am hereby submitting that this first option shall help to recreate and revive our deformed nation before next October first. The recreation and revival will not be total, but the buffeted and deformed boy and everybody connected or associated with him will inhale and exhale the air and joy of relief as there is progress in the right direction. This is not just a possibility but a hugeous possibility. I am not saying this for humorous effect.

Now the second option of anticipating liberators and revolutionaries from the nadir of misery to fix the condition a-right of the ailing nation is another viable and possible one, which we could explore. But the social and political issues it will raise will be devastating and out of the reach and control of the state of the Baby Boy that their grip of him is constricting-as already indicated. Nigerian university students, our labour unions and civil society organizations and sundry bodies, and professionals who are ready not to toe the line of orthodoxy are likely going to intervene sooner or later in non-customary ways. Some may doubt the possibility of such an intervention in view of our current realities of crushing diversity and plurality of interests that are ironically sustaining and safe-guarding the besiegement of the nation. Anticipated doubters of the said option and its possibility must be over-looking the sensibilities of genuine patriots, usually in the minority, whose collective voices, vision and status will be significantly remarkable with respect to their anticipated game of the change and true healing of our sick nation. However, I must not imply that we should not keep our expectations realistic in view of the chronic condition of the nation where disillusionment is high. What manner of true liberation or revolution can put sure smile on the face of everybody before October first next year? Am I not sounding ambiguous or speaking from both sides of the mouth? NO, I say resoundingly. This latter option is more practical in any endeavour to save the nation, but the possibility of this is what I am debating with myself – silently and loudly, and which I am submitting to your attention.. The nation needs a neutron bomb to cure him of all his maladies, before his anticipated birthday. But this won’t happen. And things will remain as they are – undoubtedly so. The Nigerian original will continue – undoubtedly so.

There is yet another option to be given attention. It is the option of strategic inaction which can also be called the strategic patience option. In this wise patriots who are deeply concerned about the ailing condition of the nation patiently wait for the constrictors to constrict themselves. In their waiting time of seeming inaction they engage in learning, scholarship and argumentation ceaselessly because of their belief in mass learning, mass education that is the viable and ideal weapon to employ to save the nation. The more universities there are, the easier the task to heal the sick nation. The process and anticipated period of wait are long and prolonged, but ultimately their healing benefit will restore Nigeria. This, however, will not happen at the nation’s sixtieth birthday! Is this not going to be a hope against hope?  Is this not a Nigeritopia, another Nigeritopia, whose possibility inevitably must be questioned? I think not because nothing succeeds better than patience and strategic patience or strategic inaction.

What does the future hold for us? Now I must re-quote, re-lift, myself fully and finally with a slight adjustment. What does the future hold for the birthday personage at sixty? The birthday personage is not yet, as I have indicated in diverse ways, a grown-up political prodigy who will rescue himself today and tomorrow from the evil forests of bad memories and experiences before his diamond year.  For a pretty long time he will keep dancing in the evil forests of changeless change which Wole Soyinka as far back as 1963, as already indicated, foresaw in his dark drama A Dance of the Forests. Since the 1960s our country, this nation, has been a dark swamp, a deep, dark swamp at the beginning and end of a dangerous river stretching from the coast to the desert. It has really been dangerous to fish properly in this place because of the muck on the bottom and the fast, deep water that many times has whirlpools that drown anything down with it. I hope that these metaphors are not too deep to find relevance here. But nothing can be sweeter or stranger than to ponder the thrills the metaphors generate. They belong to the fruitful imagination of one who every now and then meditates on how one’s country, one’s nation, of horrors can be rescued and be totally rejuvenated.

However, it’s a long walk to the cosmos of harmony for Nigeria, Africa and the black race. But education will help greatly to curtail the anti-people activities of the emperors and their generals wounding the boy who has been compelled not to grow as he should. It is the best option and possibility for the would-be diamond birthday celebrant. That’s why I must recommend and re-recommend it as the supreme and great weapon, indeed, as the protagonistic weapon to be utilized to realize the dream of the future. The German socialist poet and dramatist Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), told us long ago that it is education that can redeem all suffering peoples the world over. I must quote Brecht in full, from his exquisitely pertinent poem entitled “In Praise of Learning:”

Learn the simplest things.

For those whose moment has come

It is never too late.

Learn the ABC, it’s not enough, but

Learn it. Don’t let it get you down!

Get on with it! You must know everything.

You must take over the leadership.

 

Learn, man in the mad house! Learn, man in the prison! Learn, woman in the kitchen!

Learn, sixty-year old!

You must take over the leadership.

Search out the school, you homeless.

Secure yourselves knowledge, you who are frozen!

You who are starving, grab hold of the book. It’s a weapon.

You must take over the leadership.

 

Don’t be ashamed to ask, comrade!

Don’t let anything dissuade you.

See for yourself!

What you don’t know yourself

You don’t know.

Check the bill

You’ve got to pay.

Put your finger on every item

Ask: how did that get there?

You must take over the leadership. (78)

Learning, that is, education will answer our country’s and continent’s moral and political dilemmas. It will also give Nigerians, Africans and the black race the atomic or neutron bomb that will enable our future to be the future that we want and which must become a veritable reality. Brecht was a writer of the people, of the masses. In writing for the suffering masses of his beloved Germany and Europe, he equally was speaking to us in Nigeria. We must hearken to him and pull down the barrier of distrust between our humanity and ourselves as Nigerians who must continually share the same vision of cherished brotherhood despite the besieged state of the nation. With the help of education that will enable us to utilize the-pen-and-the-book as a joint weapon to fire our collective imagination we certainly shall enjoy the pleasure of this dream of our future. The time shall come when we shall defeat political oppression and corruption in our country, this nation, this baby nation, that will be sixty years next year. Education will enable us to ask the right questions to secure our future and nation’s future. Education will imbue us with the spirit and virtue of collective heroism which will guarantee us this future. And lo, we don’t all need to be in government to secure the future of ourselves, our country and our besieged nation. So nobody listening to me should be crazy about being in government. And nobody who shall read this should think of having crazy dreams about being in government in order to be of service to Nigeria and humanity. Not everybody in government is useful. But everybody needs knowledge, learning, education to change themselves and their country. Clearly, the education needed by all is the protagonistic education that will enable all to take over the leadership, the right leadership to prosper our country, our nation, our race and our human – and beyond human – cosmos. This is the education that will and that must fundamentally devalue materialism, and promote the noble ideals of goodness, good neighbor liness, tolerance, prosperous morality, auspicious ethics, virtuous acts and actions, humanism, diligence and justice and all other behavioural tendencies to enliven the nation. My vision here is the vision of our possible Nigeritopia that we should and must make possible after we stop the bleeding of the bleeding besieged boy.

Conclusion

If the birthday boy must realize what we itch and wish him to realize, education must be it. As the protagonistic weapon, it will halt the needless conflicts and buffetings wanting to crush everything within the sight of the diamond-seeking celebrant, who really should think of soaring and sojourning scientifically to the moon and beyond there. Perhaps this is the right and apposite note to end this lecture.

However, I must aver here before I close it that the approach I have adopted here is deliberately chosen. There are repetitions and contradictions and reiterations in my presentation. This is willfully done to draw attention to the contradictions and feckless repetitions of events and tragic misdemeanours and complexities and enigmas that have contributed immeasurably to constrict and plague the birthday personage. Whether I have succeeded or not in my approach and historical dimension and literary sensibility that I have adopted is my sole baby that is not looking forward to any birthday celebration as we truly anticipate what this nation currently of ceaselessly flowing blood will look like October 1st next year.  Perhaps, what I am ending with, ultimately, is an anti-conclusion! Hence it is perhaps fitting to quote here and now the following lines from my poem “An October Ballad for Fatherland” from my poetry collection called A Spring of Sweets:

Another October

And we hear harmony’s bells foretelling roaring horror

In the bosom of an icy wind of un-delight

From Maiduguri of palpitating cactuses

To Warri of once rapturous rivers now rivers of chilling pain

Horrifying, terrifying and drowning our turtle-doves. (98)

I thank you all for your rapt, kind attention. Thank you for listening. Thank you very much. Thank you and thank you indeed for your patience.

 

 

Notes

1  These terms and the idea they generate are derived from Northrop Frye (see his Fables of Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology( New York: 1963Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.,130).

 

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