What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?
I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.
There is not a nation on earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour. Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotism of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without rival. - Frederick Douglas, July 4, 1852.
Thank goodness that on October 1, 2000, no Nigerians felt so disgusted and fed-up with the nation-state to vent Frederick’s anger.
And God forbid that any Nigerians or ethnic groups should be so tortured to forte such damnation. But how can these be said affirmatively?
For what is known of Nigerians, they are given to being supple and accommodating the worst and could curse their being mutely, lest they threaten their very lives whose sorrows they expect to be rewarded for, by God in heaven, after they had ingloriously kicked the bucket.
While many suffering Nigerians today cannot be compared to the black people of Frederick’s America, evidence abounds to show some similarities. Without mincing words, it is the fear of Frederick’s America in Nigeria - the next-to-nature existence of the populace, that propels Nigerians who are calling for a national conference. Yet, the leadership has remained adamant and their praise singers are leading the reasoning that the so-called existing representative government already has the mandate to address the wrongs that the national conference is supposed to address.
These proponents are adducing the concern that a national conference would nullify the elected leadership. Are Nigerians that uncompromising as to participate in tearing apart the house they sweated to build? Obviously the leadership may have genuine reason not to submit to a national conference, given that Nigerians would always remember how they skirted the voting process to get elected.
That process was a sham at best, and gave no leader credibility. But nobody is yet challenging the leaders’ continuity in office, despite their illegitimacy. On the contrary, the call for a national conference is partly based on the fact that the leaders exude distrusts, in an unfairly structured nation-state, that deny them an enabling mandate to negotiate the country out of the throes of a possible Frederick’s America.
Granted, today there is freedom in Nigeria. Things are generally better than in the times of the military. But different sets of problems, which are rooted in the sudden realization of the people that life could be better, have made it impossible for the leaders to continue to rule with a refurbished armed-robber mentally.
The northern military and their feudal proteges induced such barbarity, and Nigerians are tired of it. Those northern agents of neo-colonialism really attempted the enslavement of Nigerians; hence, the call for a national conference that can establish new guidelines on how to cut from the national pie, or dip into the national purse.
It looks obvious that in the current democratic dispensation, Nigeria is not far from Frederick’s America for many of her citizens. All over the country the woes are bare.
Tribalism is still affecting decisions - be they public or private; and the deprivations heaped upon some Nigerians since the end of the civil war are continuing.
Marginalization has become a household word because the leadership cabal’s invisible hands are feared to be controlling and benefiting to the exclusion of many Nigerians.
Recently fuel shot up to N45 a liter and, even in the oil capital of Port Harcourt, there is shortage. The government has been importing fuel ever since, but it now appears it’s not able to import enough. And it is not able to build refineries to locally refine the abundant crude oil in the country.
Is there any reason why Nigeria cannot have working refineries in Nigeria when the military armed robbers dismantled so many functioning refineries that were built during the civil war by the Igbos in Biafra? Can this be discussed in a national conference?
When some Nigerians talk about marginalization, they mean also that their villages, their towns and their states have not benefited from the largess of the federal government. Just a year ago, Nigerians talked with abandonment about the neglect of the south by the PTF because the military was responsible.
Why is the federal government, now in a democratic dispensation, not able to know that what is good for the gander is also good for the goose and fix up the federal roads?
The southern states’ roads, like the ones running from Umuahia to Aba and Umuahia to Arochukwu through to Nkanna in Aqua Ibom State, are beyond comments. Comparatively, how many federal roads have the government abandoned since its inception in either the western or northern states? Isn’t fixing federal roads part of the basic function of the national government?
The neglect lurks in the government’s marginalization effort, and the confusion smacks of tribalism; it requires a national conference to etch the priority in stone, so to say. Peace results when there is fairness. Also, where there is peace there is justice. Expanding on this, Benjamin Disraeli once stated in his speech that Justice is truth in action.
People are sane because they can discern and think clearly and understand. Because Nigerians know who they are, and because some of them know that they are yet to completely shade the armed-robber mentality the military conditioned them with, they are loath to entrust their lives to any leadership without guarantees.
Other plaguing problems
Presently the Arewa Elders are planning future political strategy to take back power.
As they had stolen enough money during their military occupation of Nigeria, they are now saying they will use that money to buy southern support for their ill-motivated quest. What will this mean to Nigeria’s democracy?
Already the northerners’ Shariah confrontation is still unresolved; as of now, they have clearly subverted the sovereignty of Nigeria with it. Many people have died in the country because of it; yet, the nation is nowhere near coming out of the odium as President Obasanjo promised.
So far, some of the parliamentarians in the National House of Assembly do not know what else to do than solicit for probes that they cannot substantiate. These misfits - almost all of them minimally-/educated idiots and some of them ex-419ers - who bribed their way into the National Assembly, do not know what a de-service they constitute to the nation.
Should this set of legislators take it upon themselves to be the people’s constitutional conferees when they know that as parliamentarians they lack such mandate?
Earlier, President Obasanjo had promised (and I paraphrase) that he would sanitize and recondition Nigerians from the robber-mentally the military left them with, by probing the looters and jailing them, to show that such cannot be part of any Nigerians’ or soldiers’ job descriptions in the future.
To-date, Mr. President appears to have failed. This, I must of course say, stems from what Pierre Corneille in his Le Menteur meant when he wrote that Every man of courage is a man of his word. Another reason for a national conference!
Though no Nigerians tried to reflect the nation-state as Frederick’s America on October 1, 2000, the burbles in the country are omens that portend no good.
Looking at it from the perspective of a recent shortcoming, the northern elders who were complacent during their military occupation of Nigeria failed to show up to celebrate Nigeria day. Were these people striking against the democracy that has now liberated Nigerians? One would expect that a people like the northerners who want one Nigeria by all means would always support any issue that attempts to foster that oneness they so desire.
Based on the issues so far addressed and the fact that other matters abound that are equally not letting for peace, it is baffling to think of how Nigeria will forge on as nation without a national conference. It was at the height of anger, caused by extreme torture, that Frederick confronted the American establishment before the emancipation of the slaves.
The erudite Mr. Douglas, a black man who managed to educate himself at a time when blacks in America were enslaved and considered to be one-fifth of white people, damned the possibility of being lynched and laid bare an American way of life that was a direct challenge to the existence of God. Yet, Frederick’s America may not have completely changed. To this day, blacks have continued to be oppressed for whatever it is worth.
But, instead of enslavement in chains, since the practice was outlawed, it is subtle mental entrapment and deprivation by white controllers of government institutions, and white owners of financial institutions and industries.
In fairness to the country, however, she is presently opening up and doing a lot for black people. This is so because the founding fathers had secured the constitutional consensus whose platform blacks are now standing to speak to the nation’s conscience.
Fear of re-colonization
Nigerians have lived through colonization and have witnessed for 40 years how the colonial masters groomed a nomadic populace of the north to do their bidding by equipping them with the military might to kill their fellow countrymen, plunder and loot the nation’s treasury and siphon the loots to Western economies.
Within the years of the looting, Nigeria also witnessed their debt portfolio owed to the IMF and the World Bank grew from about $2.8 billion to over $30 billion.
The ex-generals who were then in control ignored the yearnings of the people and took their turns at the leadership pulpit of the country. At that time, the nation witnessed a continuum of draft constitutions that had no inputs from the people of Nigeria.
The successive soldier-leaderships orchestrated the constitutions drafting just to buy time to loot while the people hoped on end for a democracy that was not even pondered. Like it would never end, a supposedly elective leadership in the country’s young democracy is now displaying the same mindset of the "thieving" ex-generals - baring looting (I hope) and denial of freedom, of course.
The leaders always jitter at the mention of a national conference as if they know better, or love Nigeria better than the people who allegedly elected them.
At the moment, they have refused to budge on the issue even as so much confusion has engulfed the country!
At the time of military rules Nigerians were no Frederick Douglas and so could not challenge the military, letting the nation to droop throughout the 30 years of military occupation. As the country has today converted to a veiled diarchy in the name of democracy, the people could no longer endure the pangs of poverty.
It seems now that the people have crossed the Rubicon. And their caldron may soon seethe to overflow, as they continue to group in ethnic blocs to express their dissatisfaction with a system that has pauperized and kept them hungry for too long.
When Frederick faced America, it was understood because the white people were not black, and they probably never knew that black people have blood in their veins and could feel. They probably never knew that black people were human beings! Regrettably, there now seems to exist similarities between Frederick’s America and Nigeria.
As Nigerians are not Yugoslavians, and therefore failed to troop to Belgrade to sack the parliament and bring down Milosevic, it is discernible that given the woes surrounding them, many spoke mutely in more profound agony on October 1, 2000, than Frederick spoke to America on July 4, 1852.
It is for this reason, and the understanding that Nigeria could do better that some of the concerned citizens have consistently called for a national conference. Assuming the leaders of Nigeria would care not to continue to allow their civilization [to degrade] the many to exalt the few Bronson Alcott, should it be necessary to tell anybody that the poorly structured Nigeria is not for the good of the citizenry?
So far, everyone seems to have come to know that Nigeria was set up for the benefit of the colonial masters. Because of this, the country is filled with inequities that would never allow it to flourish. This simply begs for a re-negotiation of the terms of unity in the nation-state. Probably, if it were known then, what Frederick told America was equally what the colonial masters should have been told during their disruption of the unity and peace of African nations in their attempt at control through restructuring.
For slavery, which was akin to colonization and gave room to mental entrapment and deprivation, as metamorphosed by the IMF and World Bank, and internationalized by the continuing ploys of globalization, is in the same effort to oppress black people and rob them, all over the globe, of their wealth.
Due to the fear of being re-colonized by the northern nomads who are still plentiful in the army, for the Europeans, Nigerians want a restructured and secure nation-state. And since the citizens are distrustful of themselves, some of the ethnic groups want control of their natural resources - even though, in the process, they are sending fear to other ethnic groups that are without natural resources.
These issues can be better addressed in a national conference.
According to the maxim by John Clark in his Paroemiologia, men must ask [their] neighbors if [they] shall live in peace.
Since the Nigerian nation is an amalgam of nations, forced unity is an affront; thus, an anathema to the nation-state. It requires a consensus National unity through participation and co-creationism A while ago, I wrote in support of those who shunned the ongoing effort to enthrone ethnic fortress for the sake of peace in Nigeria. I tried then to show the beauty of a participative democracy that a national conference could bring about. I have appropriated culls here from that paper because they speak very much to the day’s misgivings - especially, given the continuing positioning known either as the northern or southern governors conference.
When Nigeria’s ex-generals were in power, they refused to allow a national conference for the fear that the country might split; yet, they looted the treasury and plunged the economy into ruins. In this theft, they left the country with a mammoth debt overhang.
The present dispensation leadership is also fearful of the countries break-up, even as it is facing undaunted forces in its effort to unite the citizens and wheel on progress in the economy for the masses. Nigeria’s past and present leaderships’ refusal to embrace an attempt at constitutional consensus, which is the bedrock of democracy, cannot unite Nigerians. And this is suspect, given what has been known of Nigerian leaders!
According to Peter Woll, American Government, Sixth Edition, Few men in the history of mankind have espoused a view of the ‘common good’ or ‘public interest’ that militated against their private status; even Plato with all his reverence for disembodied reason managed to put philosophers on top of the pile.
Due to the fact that we have grown to know what those in control do to those left out: the judicial injustice against the poor, the looting of the treasury to the detriment of the left out -- and you name it -- the people of Nigeria should be given a chance to decide their participation and representation in the governance of the country.
Reasoning with quantum physicists, humans can only accept better what they actively participate in creating. The scientists posited that reality, acceptance, etc. can only take place through an endeavor in which people participate. Specifically, in Gary Zukav’s metaphor of the Wu Li Masters, they advised that humans can be part of the generative dance of life if they eschew rigidity or predictability and connect in relationships, becoming evocateurs participating in a universe which demands diversity and thrives on plurality.
In another view, a social scientist, Fred Wolf, explained that the more participants we engage in this participative universe, the more we can access its potentials and the wiser we can become.
In a discussion about creating change from disorder, Weisbord and Janoff, also quantum scientists, summed up their participation in a process they attempted to create change with the entire system together. The process involved participants from all levels of an organization including the stakeholders.
The scientists reported that For two to three days, they worked intensely together to create shared visions of the organization’s past, present, and future. The richness of the interpretations and the future scenarios they created convinced [them] of the powers of participation. In the conference, surprising interpretations became available because the whole system was in the room, generating information, reflecting on itself and who it wanted to become.
For a while, as I dwelled on the unity issue of Nigeria, I have struggled with the relevance of the statement that human beings participate in the creation of everything they owned.
Nigeria appears to be now lost, like a ship on the ocean with neither a rudder nor a compass. The feudal lords have messed it up for so long that the citizens are ready to now accept the country’s demise. Do the leaders really have anything to lose if they gave in to the demands of the concerned ones, and the intelligentsia? Maybe it should be known that knowledge is not as disruptive, to be so feared.
The blind have led the country for so long, now let us grant the intelligentsia their day.
As an amalgam of nations that Nigeria is, the citizens are differently endowed. Being judgmental, trying to measure, denies them the wonders of co-creationism and the structures of participative relationships which can only evoke reality. People are a bundle of possibilities, and they are what they are because of how they perceive the people and events that shape what they are struggling with in their hamlets or spheres.
Since all life takes form as dissipative structure, Nigerians should avoid alienation, which forces others into stasis. The people should avoid elitism that encourages cronyism, sycophancy, tribalism etc., and invite co-creationism through the doctrine of participative democracy.
Nigeria has to evolve dynamics, adaptation and creativity in her citizens, institutions and polity through a national conference; this way, the people can better attain the freedom that will enable self-organizing and order for coherence and strength in the country.
Guides
