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| I am hopelessly befuddled. I do not know what to
think, or where to turn for ideas. In my waking hours, and sometimes
even in my dreams, I seem to be constantly reaching out for an idea,
or some kind of inspiration, anything that might bring about a rebirth
for my country. But whatever it is, it always recedes beyond my grasp.
Sometimes I think it is a curse to be born Nigerian. At other times, I
see Nigeria’s many woes as just the terrible and terrifying challenges
that we must face if we are ever going to forge a country of which one
could be justifiably proud. |
Let
it not be thought that I do not have my own ideas about how to turn
Nigeria around. Ideas are plentiful. Fools have lots of them. No, it is
not a lack of this very common commodity that prevents Nigeria from
forging the right path to progress and true nationhood. Those Nigerians in
our United States diaspora, who have ever ventured forth from these shores
to immerse themselves in Nigerian politics, usually go home brimful
of ideas about what to do to stop the rot.
We believe – perhaps just because we live far from home, and in the
world’s most developed country – that we are better than the goons and
goofs that have been running the show at home. We go home full of
righteous anger. Then what happens? The answer, not to put too fine a
point upon it is: NOTHING! In some cases, it is actually worse than
nothing. We join the goons and goofs in whatever it is they are doing, or
not doing.
Even
the most cursory examination of how we, as a community, live and interact
here in the United States, shows that we are, at core, what we are: your
quintessential Nigerians! Sorry, I should say: Igbo, Yoruba, Edo,
whatever! We find it extremely difficult to shuffle off our ethnic
cocoons. And then we wonder why we cannot come together as true
compatriots. Why we cannot, for example, form a Nigerian association that
has a real chance of enduring the buffets of narrow sectionalisms. Last
year, an all-inclusive Nigerian Committee did a marvelous job organizing
the Nigerian Flag-Raising on September 28, 2002, during which the Governor
of New Jersey celebrated Nigeria’s Independence Day, and accorded due
recognition to the Nigerian community in his state. The Flag-raising went
off without a hitch. But internal dissensions, of truly Nigerian
dimensions and flavor, pretty nearly rent the committee asunder.
Among
members of even the same ethnic group, the story is just as sad. Take a
brief moment and look at the Igbo community, of which I happen to be what
is fondly described as an elder statesman. (Sure, I am an elder. But I
think I know my limitations, and statesmanship is definitely not my
forte.) What is painfully obvious to me, notwithstanding that limitation,
is that my people sometimes act and behave as if we are not quite clear
what it is that we really want. We are at each other’s throats, just as
soon as a piece of meat is thrown our way. The meat (or bone in some
cases) takes many forms. But the one that most gets us aroused is when an
organizational position, that carries the illusion of authority, is
vacant. To get elected, we seem to lose our sense of balance and common
decency. Amazingly, this does not stop us from scurrilously criticizing
our Igbo leaders at home. And God knows that they deserve sharp criticism.
It makes one want to cry.
The
Nigerian situation is unspeakably desperate – which, sadly, is no longer a
statement that would cause the raising of an eyebrow! But what to do about
a country commonly classified as the most abysmally corrupt in the world,
but which, with her God-given natural endowments, should have been, by
now, arguably the most developed in Black Africa. Where does one even
start to try to bring some order into the confusion, or light into the
almost impenetrable gloom?
Let me
say right out that I have long questioned the very viability of the
haphazard cluster of ethnicities (nationalities actually, in some cases)
that make up the Nigerian entity. I have asked myself, again and again,
how I can share, or be compelled to share, a common nationality with
peoples whose notions of everything that make life livable are so
aggressively (even murderously) antithetical to mine, as to render shared
values all but impossible.
The
Islamic North, almost certainly seeking to destabilize the regime of
President Olusegun Obasanjo, introduced the Sharia legal system in several
of their States. Their timing was more than purely coincidental; it was
coldly calculated to test the resolve of the government to stop them. The
same North had ‘enjoyed’ a stranglehold on power for thirty-five of the
thirty-nine years of Nigeria’s independence, from October 1960 to June
1999, when Obasanjo became the President. Time enough, I believe, to have
introduced Sharia into the Islamic North, if they were so in love with the
system as to not be able to live without it!
Speaking personally, I am glad that they did not. And I wish they never
did! But the question remains: why did they wait until the current
dispensation to impose a system that they must have known was sure to play
havoc with Nigeria? It is extremely disingenuous to pretend, as the Sharia
States have done, and amazingly seem to continue to do, that the legal
system applies only to Muslims. To give one very commonplace example: bar
owners have had to close down in the Sharia States, whether or not they
are Muslims. Bars sell alcohol, which is forbidden to Muslims. Christians
and persons of other faiths (examples: Hindus and Buddhists from Asia, and
our own home-grown Animists and other Heathens), if they wish to imbibe,
must find some way to import the drink from the non-Sharia States.
Meanwhile, persons who, hitherto, had been pursuing a perfectly legitimate
business, now find themselves suddenly deprived of their means of
livelihood.
Perhaps the thing that is most troubling to me is the fact that most
Islamic countries have moved away, totally or partially, from Sharia, and
have increasingly embraced modified forms of Western law. Saudi Arabia
remains the most significant exception; so would Afghanistan, if the
Taliban had remained in power.
I have
struggled and, if truth be told, am still struggling with the idea of
sharing a common nationality with those who fervently believe that the
appropriate punishment for thievery is the chopping off of an arm. Or
those who consider it God’s justice to stone an adulteress to death!
Apropos of which, why does it seem to be nearly always only the women who
suffer this fate? I suppose I should not forget to acknowledge that the
application of this law tempers justice with ‘mercy’: a pregnant woman is,
I understand, allowed to deliver, and then wean her baby, before the
stone hurlers go into action! It is probably irrelevant to quote what
Christ said: about ‘he who is without sin…’ It makes me want to scream, or
tear my hair out (if I had any)! In any case, what good would that do? I
suppose I have not been very successful at trying to live by the
scriptural dictum: to love my neighbors, even those who despitefully use
me and mine, as I love myself. But I am trying, and in time it is possible
that my Muslim compatriots will truly be my brothers and sisters.
I
profoundly respect all religions. I just happen to think that mine is the
best for humankind. I also sincerely believe in our shared humanity, and
therefore cannot even begin to comprehend how a legal system that is so
anathema to me, as a non-Muslim, can be so attractive to others, though we
all profess belief in the same God.
Uniform laws help enormously to bind nations, especially when the nation
is a haphazard mix of culturally diverse peoples. Contrary laws, by the
same token, divide peoples. I want to live in a country where,
fundamentally, the laws controlling my social interactions and
personal behavior are the same, North, South, East or West. I say,
fundamentally, because I am well aware that even in these United
States, otherwise known as God’s Own Country, the weight of judicial
sanctions on crime can be so dishearteningly disproportionate from one
state to the other; sometimes from one skin color to another.
Is
it right that in a shared Nigeria, Christians (mostly the IGBO) resident
in the North, should continue to live on tenterhooks, never knowing when
Islamic fundamentalism, often artfully manipulated by politicians with
chips on their shoulders, or questionable agendas, might set off the type
of conflagration that has so far consumed thousands of lives?
Here’s
a frightening thought: one of the candidates for the Presidency of Nigeria
(and one with reportedly a chance, however slim, to win what passes for a
democratic election) has been quoted as expressing a wish to see the
Sharia system imposed on the rest of the country. This cannot, and should
not, be taken lightly.
If the
problems that threaten to stifle Nigeria were simply the incompatibility
of Sharia with our Western-type legal system, the situation would be very,
very grave indeed. But just about everything else that one can think of,
adds to the mix, and makes confusion worse confounded.
Take
the Igbo people, my own people. We raise cries of marginalization, and
with good reason. In the past two or so years, this cry has risen to a
deafening crescendo. We declared as non-negotiable, our desire to put an
Igbo son or daughter in Aso Rock, the elegant seat of supreme power in
Nigeria. I, too, would like to see an Igbo become President of Nigeria
ASAP. But I hope I can be forgiven by my Igbo brothers and sisters if I
declare that I have never been among those who hold that an Igbo must be
President in 2004, or somehow the skies will cave in. In the life of any
nation, four years – even four times four years – is like the blink of an
eye.
The
Igbo would love nothing better than for all of us to speak with ONE VOICE.
I am afraid that that is quite impossible. In my limited judgment, I do
not think one political voice is an absolute necessity for our progress.
The AREWA may claim to speak for the Hausa/Fulani; the AFENIFERE may
presume to speak for the Yoruba. In contrast, the apex Igbo organization,
the OHANEZE, will just have to continue to do the best it can for a people
that are arguably the most recalcitrant of all Nigerian ethnic groups. We
are what we are by our very nature: a people who will probably always be
as individualistic as any people on God’s earth. Do we not sometimes, when
it suits our peculiar perspective, pride ourselves on being the most
republican people anywhere? Well, folks, we cannot have it both ways.
But
the matter is really quite simple. We need to be a people of INTEGRITY!
This is a quality to which all Nigerians must aspire. But, Umu-Igbo, let
us call it as we see it, and let the chips fall where they may. If we must
attain the position that truly belongs to us in the Nigerian polity, we
Igbo need a double dose of that moral uprightness, that probity, that
basic honesty, without which we are merely petulant children noisily
sounding off like empty kerosene tins!
The self-inflicted debacle our politicians
suffered at the recent PDP convention for the selection of the
Presidential candidate for 2004 is a case in point. I am not an apologist
for Dr. Alex Ekwueme. And it is always an uphill task to unseat an
incumbent President, especially in Africa. But the stories of the
shenanigans that were perpetrated by the majority of the Igbo delegates to
the convention, where they had a golden opportunity to help Dr. Ekwueme
win the nomination that might have seen an Igbo in Aso Rock, are almost
too bizarre to believe. The dust has not yet properly settled. But it is
clear that, for the second successive PDP primaries, our people sold their
votes for a mess of potage. Surprise? Not at all! Whatever the explanation
for this twice-repeated fickleness, the trouble, dear Umu-Igbo, “is not in
our stars, but in ourselves…,” as the Bard would have said. What else
explains the obscenity of the re-emergence for a second term in office of
a Governor who, in his first term, had practically destroyed the state
that he was supposed to nurture to good health?
The
insistent question is: WHAT IS THE SOLUTION? I am afraid I have none.
None, that is, that we can apply to the festering sore, and expect a quick
healing. My suggestion: HONEST LEADERSHIP. Is this impractical? Perhaps,
seeing how the typical Nigerian mind works. But I see nothing much beyond
this desperate necessity for every individual Nigerian to sit back and
really ponder the matter. Why should it be so difficult to change, however
slowly, our habit of always grabbing, and grabbing, and again grabbing
anything in sight that might enrich us personally, even if it calls into
question our sense of public probity? It is trite to say that our leaders
must somehow find it in themselves to lead by example. But what other
ideas are there?
ENOUGH
SAID!
Mr. Momah writes from Somerset, NJ. Email:
ChikeM@aol.com
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