OUR STATE OF MIND

"I have traveled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation."

The quote above went viral in India’s cyberspace in 2008. It is purported to have been extracted from a speech delivered in the British Parliament on February 2, 1835 (exactly 179 years today) by Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), a member of the British royalty, historian and politician, who played a crucial role in introducing English and Western concepts of education to India. Though there have been divided arguments as to whether Baron Macaulay actually made the statement, what cannot be denied is that Western concepts were carefully formulated and designed to erode existing rich cultural and spiritual existence of every colony once claimed by the Europeans, be they British, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, German or Spanish.

Macaulay also stated in his Minutes on Education that “We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” So I ask: How does the former differ in form and function from the latter?  Worse still, a colonial officer who held the view that “a single shelf of good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia” could either be speaking out of ignorance or a genuine and deliberate intention to subdue a people through cultural immersion. 

   

More than the physical conquests witnessed in the former colonies, European countries were mental conquistadores! This explains why virtually all former colonies are the so-called developing countries, while European colonizers are the developed nations. Here in Nigeria, we are a poorly cloned imitation of Western ideals. We used to live in communities where common goals, virtues and a sense of togetherness were core values. Our traditional and religious institutions preached and practiced peace. Respect and responsibility were taught as incentives earned through doing good, where honest ambitions were met with opportunities. We might not have recorded our cultures and traditions in the form of books, but does that invalidate who we are and don’t we have a responsibility to teach our history, culture and traditions to our offspring? 

Foreign adherents, who, for administrative convenience, embedded their ideologies into how the message of religion was relayed to us, introduced both Christianity and Islam. By selling religion to us, they sold to us also, the false belief that their socio-cultural ideologies were the ideal, the accepted.  Both religions do not preach violence and killing one another; it was the proponents of the religions who killed us, subverted our consciousness and stole our resources. Today, we throw away all that is ours that is good and accept hook, line and sinker foreign ways, which ideology we do not fully grasp. Our leaders have cloned the darkest practices of that era and have only replaced the colonial masters by mimicking their avaricious actions.

  

Of course, cultures must mix. The world is a global village, but our traditional ways of drawing elders together for conflict resolution and parley should not be discarded as is being done now for brute force and lawlessness, under the guise of democracy. Our consciousness has been enslaved, thereby making it a device to be tuned at will to any desired frequency. Today, nobody teaches or writes about our pre-colonial heritage. Indeed, our history has been ‘edited’ to begin with when colonialists set foot on our land and crushed our awareness. We cannot know where we are going unless we know where we are coming from. We would do well to retrace our steps.

The West appreciates the lessons learnt from their mistakes and experiences and is weary, lest they be repeated again.  This is the reason for their development and they are so much better for it. We would do well to take a leaf out of that book as the games we play now, the way we toy with our lives and our futures will come to haunt us if a great care is not taken in forging the way forward.

POLITICAL MAYHEM

Here we are again. Our politics is locked in a repeat performance with repercussions mounting. Each time, the awful implications of our leaders’ indiscretions and foul play run us further down the slippery slope to perdition and allow for more and more of us to run the risk of being labeled incendiaries. But as an African proverb puts it, as long as one’s hair is still infested with lice, one’s fingers cannot be rid of bloodstains.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission chairman, Ibrahim Lamorde, stated last year that forthright citizens are not in short supply in our country. The problem is that our system is designed to shut them out of the scheme of things. He lamented that those who had stolen from our treasury were “too powerful and too connected” to be brought to book.  Corruption has been formally adopted as a national way of life.  Our national “body language” has endorsed graft, and there isn’t a place where this is more embodied than the fold of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party.

What started with the curious Presidential Pardon granted an ex-governor Diepreye Alamieyesiegha, who was convicted for corruption and wanted elsewhere, has developed into a full-blown moral crisis fuelled by the desperation of 2015. Last December, the Supreme Court reversed the conviction of Bode George (a PDP heavyweight) and four others who had served jail terms for fraud. The man already has a national merit award, and now cannot be called an ex-convict, thereby allowing him to run again for political office! Another individual wanted over drug-related charges was imposed on the South-West PDP as their leader.  And now, as yet another sign of our “consensus” way of doing things, it has become clear that though we supposedly run a democratic system of government our leaders find “contest” odious, a factor that is breaking up the party as party members feel disenfranchised. This notwithstanding, the leadership have again gone ahead to appoint their “anointed” party chairman.

In May 2013, I wrote in Consensus Candidate “…where a small group behind closed doors can decide what is best for us without listening and hearing the cries and groans of the people.” I warned that we “should not lose track of the bigger picture, which is democracy, service to the people for the people by the people. The executive of the PDP will do well to remember that they are only executives by virtue of the fact that there is a PDP. They should not take out the “people” in the Peoples Democratic Party.” Evidently, these principles are lost to our leadership.

Adamu Mu’azu’s emergence as the new unelected PDP chairman is further evidence of this, apart from the fact that there is no confirmation yet that the EFCC, who is out of funds to do its job properly, has dropped its N19.8billion investigation of the new PDP chairman, which had him on the run for several years.  Their message is very clear as in November last year, he was appointed the Chairman of PENCOM before now being elevated to this new position.

 We have a state of emergency in Borno and Yobe. We need to look at the causes of this insurgency before we can adequately deal with it. What are we doing wrong that is causing fellow citizens to take up arms?

We watch in horror as we see what allegedly played out in Borno to bring about Boko Haram, beginning to be played out in Rivers State. The police in Rivers are allowing for acts of terror against the state and its indigenes -- people they have sworn to protect. Does this begin to explain why Boko Haram focused its attack on the police, stating that the police was an enemy of the state and those affiliated with the police were therefore their enemy?

There is a huge responsibility that a state has to carry, otherwise hoodlums will emulate the state and that can only result in anarchy, chaos and terrorism. We should be mindful that if we find ourselves in such a state, then it is all our doing. We need to stop wasting precious energy in endless litigations, cross carpeting and selective judgments and start looking to strengthen our weak institutions.  

Since 1999, we have witnessed large scale political decamping to the PDP. Now APC has turned the tide. Had the illegality of switching political allegiance without relinquishing the mandate been addressed when it favored the PDP, we would not be here now. Institutions exist to regulate and control this. For this to function properly there must be a separation of these powers and full autonomy, starting with the Law, the Judiciary, otherwise these politicians who share the same trademarks, whether it is the PDP, APC, LP or APGA, will destroy us all.

  

Vested Interests

“In 2009 this country paid $291 billion naira as subsidy for petroleum products. By 2011, this number had jumped to 2.7 trillion naira!!! Did we start consuming ten times as much petrol? Do we have 10 times as many cars? Did the population of Nigeria multiply 10 times?”

The above excerpt is from a speech delivered by the Central Bank of Nigeria governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, at a youth forum. Sanusi, in the fear of “vested interests” paper, reiterated the same sentiments some of us have been voicing for quite some time now. But there is a funny irony in how the speech has resurfaced. It was delivered in 2012, while its video was uploaded in August 2013. Curiously, it only went viral last week, obviously as a direct response to the letter written to the president and leaked to the public, regarding some billions of dollars unaccounted for by the Petroleum Ministry/NNPC.  There is no coincidence in the timing of the “release”, just as one wonders why such thought-provoking material did not make it to the public earlier. To cut a long story short, the paper itself was a victim of vested interests.

Naturally, the first casualty in a vested interest-infested society like ours is respect for the rule law. At the same time as we were asking questions of the management of NNPC, one bank MD took 200 billion naira from her bank. A few of her assets were seized and she spent 6 months in a hospital under the guise of being in prison. Another was saved by elders in his church and has never answered for his crimes. I can go on and on.

This is a recipe for anarchy. Yet, vested interests have plagued our country for too long. The situation has attained alarming proportions in Nigeria, where subordinates graciously and shamelessly deploy themselves as apparatchiks of vested interests. The latest example is the pathetic behavior of the police commissioner of River State, who has forgotten the oath that he swore to and has become a goon of the PDP. It is clear that there is nothing that he will not do for his oga. He has forgotten that his primary function is to uphold the law.

Sadly, the same crime that is being perpetuated by the Centre is being perpetuated at state level and that is why Amaechi or any of the other 5 governors are so powerful and are supported blindly by the legislators in their states. What we have is a double-edged sword. The Centre has been weakened by the quasi autonomy of the governors and that is why they are resorting to lawlessness. Some power has however been arrested from them, they recognize this and are trying to take that power back. This is why there is a tussle for the Governors’ Forum and this is why there is a massive crisis at the top of the PDP. We should all accept that this is the status quo in the Nigerian polity but it has to change.

It is the same reason that the Centre has refused to allow state control of the police and the governors have refused to allow the local government chairmen autonomy. They will lose too much power and will not be able to dictate and do as they please with impunity. Do you see the pattern? For us to be able to control these vested interests and secure our democracy, we must weaken this power and not allow emperors to remain in our polity. It will be impossible otherwise to curb the excesses of our leaders. We must strengthen our institutions. Dismantling vested interests is in effect a mirage without a system strong enough to destroy the machinery that creates them. This is the vested interest that Sanusi is talking about, which de facto is more important than the constitution of the country today. This is the style of leadership that our politicians practice daily. We must break it. It is the reason for state in which we find ourselves.

          

We must jointly take responsibility for strengthening our institutions by standing firm in unison when institutions set up to serve and protect those very rights infringe upon our rights.  If we fail to do so we will pay for the consequences of our inaction with our lives.  We should remember that our growth and development in other sectors depends largely on our making the right political choices. We now have a semblance of balance in the polity. It is progress but we should however not allow these politicians (their tactics are the same) to carry on business as usual and only at best exchange batons, which they will still use to batter us. We must protect our vested interest.     

CHAIN REACTION

I was casually reading a blog last week when I stumbled across a dear friend’s summary of the state of Nigeria today. I focused particularly on what she saw as double standards in the way our leaders were dealing, or rather not dealing, with the deep rooted corruption in our polity and the impact that this was having on the nation.

“In terms of corruption, we seem to have reached dizzying heights with a judge giving a convicted criminal two years imprisonment and the option of a fine for embezzling N23 billion. Not to mention all the revelations of the pension fraud cases and Maina’s disappearing act! Nothing came of that and it is not likely that the case will ever be concluded, but the National Assembly are still calling for the blood of the aviation minister for the purchase of two bullet proof cars at exorbitant prices. Whilst I believe she has a case to answer, I can’t help feeling that they should also be explaining why Hembe, Farouk Lawan and Dimeji Bankole are still walking free and they don’t seem to have an issue with it. Double standards if you ask me!”

I got a ping on my phone as a legislator responded to her blog stating as follows: “I must join issues with you on the point of the National Assembly asking for the aviation minister’s blood, as you put it, but not seeing anything wrong with Hembe, Lawan and Bankole walking free. First it is not the National Assembly asking for the aviation minister’s blood but the average Nigerian on the street. All the National Assembly did (specifically the House) was to investigate the matter as it should and as it is constitutionally empowered to and come up with its findings and recommendations based on evidence as any responsible legislature should. Checks and balances, it’s called.

“Secondly, as it relates to the 3 persons you mentioned, they were accused of impropriety and were investigated by the House committee on ethics and consequently stripped of their chairmanship positions and offices, whilst recommending that the law enforcement agencies should pursue the criminal cases against them. This is all the House is empowered to do. It cannot remove them from the House nor can it prosecute them or anyone for that matter. That is the job of the law enforcement agencies, i.e. the police and the EFCC. As we know in today’s Nigeria these are really extensions of the presidency and if they are walking free or have not been tried, then that blame should be put squarely at the doorstep of the EFCC, police or the executive and not the House. All the House is asking is that the President do the same thing the House did in respect of its erring members: remove the aviation minister from her position. I believe this is also the minimum Nigerians are asking for.”

What I found baffling here is that the legislator feels that they have done their job. He talked of checks and balances, where are they when nothing has been done except that these guys have been removed from juicy committees and probably been replaced with the same corrupt members who know that the worst that can happen is that they will be removed from a committee?

Why do they not understand that they the legislators are representatives of the people and should not distinguish themselves from us? We are they and they are us. They should be up in arms baying for the head of the EFCC and the police and ensuring that these checks and balances are protected. How can you feel as a chief engineer of a plant that you have diagnosed a problem and feel that your job is done? What we the masses need from you are solutions, corrections and representations of our will, otherwise you have no business representing us.

The result of their actions, which really is just sugarcoating, is the minister of aviation doing what she did and not feeling any way that she has done anything wrong. Little wonder Oduah travelled to Brazil amidst a fresh allegation over her education. What our legislators have achieved is giving the executive more bravado to do worse. What is being created is the fanning of a nascent dictatorship with the executive being all powerful. We are sliding down a slippery slope and need to arrest this situation now, before we find ourselves in a South Sudan or Syria situation. And in this, we the masses appear to be on our own. Our institutions only exist for themselves.   

‘THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND’

While attempting to summit the unconquered summit of a mountain, a mountaineer slips and falls down the far side of the mountain. At the end of his descent, down a snow-slope in the mountain's shadow, he finds a valley, cut off from the rest of the world on all sides by steep precipices. Unbeknownst to him, he has discovered the fabled "Country of the Blind". The valley had been a haven for settlers fleeing the tyranny of rulers, until an earthquake reshaped the surrounding mountains, cutting the valley off forever from future explorers. The isolated community prospered over the years, despite a disease that struck them early on, rendering all newborns blind. As the blindness slowly spreads over many generations, the people's remaining senses sharpened, and by the time the last sighted villager had died, the community had fully adapted to life without sight.

Nunez the mountaineer descends into the valley and finds an unusual village with windowless houses and a network of paths, all bordered by curbs. Upon discovering that everyone is blind, he begins reciting to himself the refrain, "In the Country of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King". He realizes that he can teach and rule them, but the villagers have no concept of sight, and do not understand his attempts to explain this fifth sense to them. Frustrated, he becomes angry, but the villagers calm him, and he reluctantly submits to their way of life, because returning to the outside world seems impossible.

He is assigned to work for a villager and becomes attracted to the man’s youngest daughter. They soon fall in love with one another, and having won her confidence, he slowly starts trying to explain sight to her. She, however, simply dismisses it as his imagination. When he asks for her hand in marriage, the village elders turn him down on account of his "unstable" obsession with "sight". The village doctor suggests that his eyes be removed, claiming that they are diseased and are affecting his brain. He reluctantly consents to the operation because of his love. However, at sunrise on the day of the operation, while all the villagers are asleep, the failed King of the Blind sets off for the mountains (without provisions or equipment), hoping to find a passage to the outside world, and escape the valley.

 He sees from a distance that there is about to be a rock slide. He attempts to warn the villagers, but again they scoff at his "imagined" sight. He flees the valley during the slide, taking his lover with him. 

The Country of the Blind was written by H.G Wells in 1911. The people in power did not heed Nunez’s warnings. They were content with the status quo and saw him more as a dreamer, than a concerned member of society trying to further improve the progress that they had made. He could see that their situation was not a stable one and whilst there was a lot to admire, the ignorance of this fifth sense and any danger that could be occasioned by it, was not in their consciousness.

The political machinery in Nigeria triumphs because it is united minority acting against the rest of us. I know that there are many out there who care and can see the impending danger, but how do we communicate this to the majority and galvanize them into action? What did the mountaineer do wrong? Why could he not convince the powers that be that they were treading the wrong path? The assumptions upon which they make their decisions are flawed and in fact it is they and not he whose imagination is making their reality difficult for them to grasp. Why were the ears of other members of the society shut off to this? They were blind but not deaf.

Are we all living by this assumed reality? Why do we accept our situation as OK? Do we feel powerless to change it, as this is the path that God has chosen for us, or is there a missing link somewhere? Are we blind to the ineptitude and corruption that eat away at our society and keep us ignorant and indigent?  We have a malaise, need help and must hark to the calls of our fellow citizens; outsiders, who can see, are real and warn of the rock slide which the vast majority of us will not survive. We cannot continue to allow our leaders to hack away at our laws and persecute anyone who dares to speak the truth or even a contrary view.

It is said that in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Are there any of us out there who can lead?