We are living in critical and difficult times. There is, all over the place, an expression of tiredness, discontent and dissatisfaction. The country is at the crossroad, not for the first time though. The current dimension, however, given the prevailing circumstance, a circumstance witnessing the longest democratic dispensation ever in the country, one can safely maintain that the instant challenge is probably the biggest the country has ever encountered. Nothing is working. It is a season of anomie, a social interregnum and political wilderness. And the search for remedies and solutions, assuming there is any such search, does not appear to be any promising.
The mechanisms of decline do not sprout overnight. They are cumulative factors. The mutual resentment, the mutual mistrust, nepotism, ineptitude and impunity, factors that characterize our being as a nation-state, have their genesis in our political evolution. The causes have descended into oblivion but their effects linger on, to the present moment. They do linger on because we neglect the whys and wherefores of their coming into being, hence our failure to demystify them and throw them overboard, freeing ourselves from the shackles we have been under due to their persistence.
This stagnation, a sort of impasse, is due to the fact that we choose to ignore that genesis, consequent upon which we are still stuck with the mindset bequeathed to us by our so-called Founding Fathers. Thus, the many constitutional and political reform conferences, variously convened from 1966-2014, ended as nothing but talk-shops, vanity fairs that ended with no worthwhile outcome. We keep singing the same old song because we refuse to transcend the composition of that song by critically examining its background. We therefore skip our immediate concerns expending time, energy and efforts over less significant and farfetched issues.
It goes without saying that how Nigerians view one another, regard one another and interact likewise is more relevant to the people and the country than how they are viewed by someone else.
The late Chinua Achebe was an excellent writer. A pride of Africa. He was concerned and worried about the way Africa is depicted in Euro-American literature. He therefore chose to ‘write back’ by penning down Things Fall Apart, which is a reply to Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson. Likewise the upcoming novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, addressed the same issue in a lecture she gave the title for which was adopted for this piece, denounced the same perception, as that addressed by her model and source of inspiration in his pioneer novel and a later essay, An Image of Africa, in which he ‘wrote back’ vis-à-vis Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
But is the Nigerians’ perception of one another any better than the way the white peoples perceive, view and depict the Africans, the Nigerians inclusive? Don’t we have literary works written by Nigerians, about some other Nigerians, depicting those other Nigerians the same way as the Carys and the Conrads of this world did to the generality of Africans? Not only the literary works, aren’t our media, the newspapers especially, earned for themselves a reputation of denigrating one section of the country, distorting its image so much so that myths have been passed down as realities, stereotypes as empirical truths and outright lies as facts?
And this is not a new thing. It is a trend that has been in place from the inception of this political entity called Nigeria. As far back as 1943, late Abubakar Imam, the editor of the vernacular newspaper, Gaskiya Ta Fi Kwabo, aired this concern at the famous London Hyde Park, the political podium of the then African nationalists studying at or on visitation to the U.K. The occasion was the visit of West African Press Delegation, conceived, initiated and led by Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe, to the United Kingdom. Imam’s speech, as reproduced in his memoirs edited by Abdurrahman Mora, is worth quoting in full, in spite of its length, as the issues addressed there are very much similar to the ones we are grappling with now. It is a testimony that we have not moved forward seventy-four years after. The speech appeared in pages 58-62 of the said publication as follows:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have listened with great interest to the speeches made by my brothers on conditions in West Africa, and also on our efforts for political autonomy, which is, certainly, our ultimate goal. But there is one thing we should realize, which is that the political co-operation essential to autonomy must be constructed on firm foundations, and that these foundations must be laid by us before we can ask our freedom of the Europeans. I cannot speak for other countries but certainly there remains a great deal to be done in Nigeria as regard these foundations. So far there is not yet sufficient mutual trust between Northerners and Southerners. But whose is the fault?
“If the matter is viewed dispassionately, it is clear that it is the Northerners and Southerners themselves who create differences amongst themselves and not, as some maintain, the Europeans.
“Anything I am about to say is not meant to curry favour with the Europeans. I have no blood connection whatsoever with the whites and my sentiments are with the Africans. If I were able to speak English as fluently as an Englishman, I should still not be considered a Whiteman. However, in case there are some members of WASU among you who are informed on certain matters, let me tell you of the barriers to full understanding between North and South. The first is that we despise each other. We call each other ignorant. The Southerners are proud of Western knowledge and culture, we of Eastern. Theirs is the knowledge of the day, of the type desired by the Europeans, and since power is in the hands of the Europeans, their type of knowledge is the one recognized rather than ours.
“Let me give you an example of the sort of attitude in the Southerner which the Northerner objects to, and if there is anyone here who will tell us the faults of the Northerner from the Southerner’s point of view let him get up and speak too, thereby with contributions from all of us, we can make some headway. If we wish for progress, the truth must come out. Now, if a Northerner does anything which is at all irregular, the Southern papers will go all out in giving the incident the widest publicity, with sensational headlines: ‘HAUSAMAN STABS A COUNTRYMAN WITH KNIFE…’, ‘TWO HAUSAMEN LOCKED IN FIGHT AND EACH LOSES HAND…’ ‘HAUSAMAN EATS TOO MUCH RAW CASSAVA AND DIES…’
“Such things do not promote friendly feeling. They show the Hausa up as a backward sort of person. Then, when the Southerners have finished humiliating us this way, they turn round and say that we are brothers, and that it is the Europeans who are trying to separate us from them.
“Take another example. If any of you were to dress themselves as Moslems, like myself, and attempt to sit on the same seat in a railway carriage with a Southerner dressed like a European, there would be trouble unless he knew who you were. I myself, whenever I am travelling, have had to argue with a clerk before I could get a seat in a second class compartment. When I first speak to him sometimes I speak in Hausa, pretending that I do not know English. I do so in order to find out how far this unity has gone that we are trying to foster. If you saw the reception I got you would be amazed! You would never say that we were people of the same country. When I saw the matter had gone far enough, I would change my language, and he would become friendly as soon as he realized I could speak English. In the conversation that would follow you would hear him bringing up the question of unity between the North and South. But the only road to unity is for Northerners and Southerners to give more consideration to each other.
“Last year an article appeared in one of the Southern papers in which disrespectful language was used against our emirs. These results were directed not only at our emirs but even at Shehu Danfodio, our great religious leader. The article was alleged to have been written by a Hausa. But even if that were so, was it necessary, seeing that it is unity that we want, for such a thing to be printed? It could only give rise to ill-feeling.
“I went on leave last year to Katsina and there I found a book called Axis Aims in Africa sent to the emir from America. The author was a Southern Nigerian, and in the book there was photograph of the emir. As I was there at the time the emir sent for me. He said: ‘here is a book which has been sent to me. I want you to take it home and read it, and then come and tell me what it says’. When I finished I went to see the emir and there I read out to him all that I had noted, chapter by chapter. All the people present were amazed at a Southerner being so rash as to make such statements about the North. I came to the last chapter which discussed the distribution of government posts in Nigeria and the condition of the country after the departure of the Europeans. It began: ‘Mr. So-and-so to be Treasurer. Mr. So-and-so to be our finance minister. Mr. So-and-so to go to England as our ambassador.’
The author’s mind must have wandered for he completely forgot the North in making his appointments. I was about to go on with my reading when a Palace Guard (Dogari) burst out laughing and said to me, ‘Mallam just a minute! Have all the posts been given out?’ I said ‘yes’. ‘Well, in that case’, he said, ‘I think you had better write to this man and tell him that he is not very fair in his distribution.’ The emir smiled. The others laughed heartily.
“Let us not deceive ourselves. If we want unity, the first thing to do is to build the foundations of mutual friendship. Northerners and southerners must not look down upon each other. We are members of one country, and we are all Africans.
“Now members of WASU, to tell you the plain truth, the common people of the North put more confidence in the white men than in their black Southern brothers. It is confidence in the Europeans which we now want to transplant and establish among ourselves. I therefore want to repeat to you that we must not delude ourselves. We must realize that a Northerner is as proud of himself as a Southerner. The two halves into which Nigeria is divided are of equal importance. One is not stronger than the other; and it is obvious that there can be no smooth operation between two forces if they are pulling in opposite directions.”
This is the end of the Imam’s speech. Next week we will continue this discussion, explore how this type of mindset persisted to the present day, its various manifestations at various stages of our evolution and the wounds it inflicted on our national psyche, leading to the formulation of the yet to be solved National Question in this country.
