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Africa: The Ontology of Failed States
By
Franklyne Ogbunwezeh
http://globalpolitician.com/articleshow.asp?ID=493&cid=6
- 3/27/2005
Never in the history of human reality, was an ode ever commissioned to celebrate
failure. This flows from a conventional metaphysic. In the halls of reason, only
perversity strives to roll out the drums, in honour of failure. Eulogising
failure is not an employment proper to the orchestra of optimism. Failure gets a
burial; never a funeral. Burial is for realities doomed to the isle of the
forgotten. What we want to forget, we bury. But funeral celebrates a life, to
immortalize a memory. Man naturally hastens to forget failure and its bitter
pills. But he glories in success. It is normal. He is primed that way by
default. Only a perverse appreciation of existence, celebrates failure amidst
pomp and pageantry. That is what we see, at least on superficial level. But
underneath our pretences lies an insurmountable paradox; namely: that success is
predicated always on deeper appreciation of failed attempts, and its festival of
lessons.
An appraisal of failure reveals its peculiar ability of spawning a chain
reaction, which forcefully compels its cognizance. It shocks the mind back to a
rethink of its shallow assumptions, in a way that success cannot. The failure of
one construct can have such concentric effect for all other endeavours in its
environment, as to forcefully warrant its imprisonment of our attention. In this
situation, failure then rises to be appraised; in order to serve as a critique
of the present, and a launching pad for future success. Here, then, failure
becomes a catalyst to success. It is only in this light that we look backwards
on the battlefields of African history, littered with the fractured and
fragmented pieces of African dreams. We are occupied in this piece, with the
appreciation of this history of our failures, to explore the lessons that are
imperative if we are ever to escape this present predicament, and bequeath a
future to our posterity.
The African continent is littered with failed states. Most of these states are
economic backwaters, social apologies and political ruins. This landscape runs
from the Casablanca to the Cape Town and from The Horn of Africa in the East to
the Island of No Return in the West Atlantic. Most of these states true to type
were the creatures of imperial convenience. To that end, they were meant to
serve a purpose after which their ontological legitimacy or raison d' etre would
then expire. At this expiration; the states, naturally not designed for
self-propulsion; were condemned to tether on the brink, and finally implode upon
the inglorious weight of their inherent contradictions. Colonialism designed and
inspired the problems. But the decadence was then driven along by a horde of
native pirates; trained in the fine art of piracy. These set of political actors
were rogues personalities, weaned on selfishness. They were brilliant students
of kleptocracy and political perversity. In about four decades they completely
outclassed colonial perfidy and bested them in thievery. They did an inglorious
job of mismanaging Africa, so much so that she is today the laughing stock of
the world.
1. In the beginning there were tribes
Before the advent of colonialism, Africa was a large mass of land, populated by
quasi-isolated tribal pockets, and ethnic nationalities. These constructs
interacted with each other through trade, intermarriage, and even wars. There
were no states so to say. There were villages, kingdoms, empires and republican
democracies. The Ashanti, the Kanem Bornu, The Ethiopian/Abyssinian, The
Egyptian, The Benin, The Yoruba, etc were empires in their own rights. Ndigbo of
Southern Nigeria had already fashioned a functional republican and egalitarian
democracy in antiquity, while ancient Greece slumbered in primitivity.
These social embraces were characterized by singular political and culture
centres within their sphere of influence. This gave rise to common identity,
both lingual and cultural. They ran their societies on their own terms, save
naturally, when conquered in wars. In spite of this, the cellular political unit
of African life was the tribe. It was so basic, and yet so primordial. It
transcends the clans, composed of families, to embrace a wider collection of
clans. This presupposed common ancestral or cultural ties, dating to time
immemorial. Most of these tribes pay allegiance to one heritage. It was a basis
of social bonding. It was the influential factor in the political matrix of the
African tribal community. This could be seen today, in the fact that politics in
Africa, despite its affinities to Eurocentric-Judeochristian vision of
modernity, and to modern conceptions of democracy, still conjugates the tribal
verb.
Politicians play the tribal card to advance their interests because they know
that it is so primordial, and remains the major perceptual goggle, through which
an African views reality. Democracy is real, when it patronizes his tribe, and
the military junta becomes oppressive, when his tribe is short-changed. This
runs through all African countries, without exception. This is what many fail to
appreciate about the African situation. The tribe is the Summum puncti of his
political consideration. And every idea or ideal is canvassed from the tribal
pedestal. To this end, when the colonialists oscillated from blunder to arrant
carelessness, in attempting to coax states out of these bunches of tribes, they
naively failed to address the issue from the tribal angle. Their metaphysic was
exploitation, and not nation building. Whatever achieves that in the short run
is patronized. And whatever runs contrary to it is eschewed.
The colonial mission was never a charity concert designed to benefit Africa. No.
It was an enterprise designed primarily to benefit the colonial power. Africa's
benefit was never the propelling consideration. It comes last on the list. This
was why the tribes were yanked together and conscripted without consultation,
into unions they never bargained for; to bear each other like crosses, after the
Whiteman must have had his fill of plundering their land. Little accounts for
the social restiveness and mutual platonic hatred ravaging many African states
today, more than the resultant hangovers of colonial political play-offs.
Prior to the invasion from the Sea, Islam came on the heels of the external
dynamics embodied by conquests from across the Sahara. Islam had an impact, but
cannot challenge comparison, with the second wave of assault, which came from
across the seas. Hence, it merits no attention in this piece.
2. Then Came the White Man
At the advent of the White man was tsunamic for Africa. Chinua Achebe captured
this well: Things fell apart! Africa and her centre could no longer hold. She
became embroiled in a dynamic, which would change her structure, her culture and
her future forever.
The former league of tribes coagulated into pseudo-states, at the instance of
colonialism. Strange bedfellows became fellow citizens over night. Consanguinal
relatives find themselves facing each other as citizens of different countries.
The African psyche was ripped apart. The changes were too radical, as his
culture was demonized and labelled as inferior. He had to forfeit his language
in so many cases. He was equated to dogs, when he seeks admittance into drinking
parlours because dogs are not admitted. There arose a miseducation on the
socio-cultural level, which as was well articulated by Chinweizu, deformed the
collective African psyche from which it is yet to recover.
To carve up Africa, drawing boards were built in 1885 Berlin. Africa was
scrambled up among the occupying powers. The aim was to ensure each power an
unimpeded and unmonitored freedom to loot as much as they could in their area of
influence.
The Belgian-Congo became an abattoir, where King Leopold's polymorphous
perversity, sought and obtained unrestrained ventilation. For the sake of
rubber, Leopold's men sacked villages, decimated cultures, and harvested a
pyramid of chopped hands, in an orgy of brutality, unmatched even by Hitler's
men. Congo bled, and haemorrhaged her resources into Belgian coffers. The
Germans tried the annihilation tactics on the Herero of Namibia. British
piratical treachery blossomed in Nigeria and her other territories. All in
Europe, Africa bled, so that Europe could have a river of wealth flowing through
her.
To effectively continue this when their various suns must have set, they created
states; which were simply neo-colonial dependencies. And to run these states,
the mass-produced a semi-literate, middle-class of yes-men, to complement the
paucity of men they have on the ground. This crop of creatures became the
collaborative vehicle of colonial exploitation. Hatred for them, which was a
rampant phenomenon, sometimes took deadly proportions, as was mirrored in
Achebe's Things Fall Apart, where Okonkwo had to kill a court messenger, to vent
his anger on an invading establishment that has despoiled the land of his
fathers, and insulted his culture.
Almost all the Modern states in Africa today were built on political ontologies,
oozing from this engineered political metaphysic. The people never dialogued
their differences as a basis for federating. They never talked to each other
about a political union. They woke up one morning, and saw themselves
conscripted into geopolitical constructs they neither chose nor bargained for.
For the natives, it was a bazaar of unfunny jokes, and for the colonial
officers; a duty for country and queen.
African states were created to facilitate and ease the efficiency of rapid
colonial exploitation. That was their raison d'etre. They were never designed to
be independent, or cease being a source of cheap raw materials, and slave labour
for colonial industries. They were equally meant to be a cheap market to cushion
the inflationary effects of mechanised mass production. The colony was a
laboratory of caprice. Every socio-economic, geopolitical or cultural hypothesis
was subjected to clinical trials on the hapless colonies. This accounts for the
fact, that every discredited socio-political, economic or eugenic theory was
once tried out in Africa.
3. The Metaphysic of a Failed State
Every failed social edifice translates into a jungle. The core operative
principle across its embrace perfectly mimics that native to the forest of
unreason. For us to appreciate the dangers posed by a failed social construct,
we must apprise ourselves of the transactions obtainable in the markets of a
jungle.
A jungle is an amorphous piece of territory governed by anarchy. In this arena,
survival is of the fittest, while the operative principle anchors on the
currency of "Might" is "Right". In every jungle, law and order are alien
concepts. The Orwellian principle of "some animals, being more equal than
others" abundantly holds sway in this dark world of inchoate randomness. In a
jungle, nothing is predictable. The only constant in this huge stew pot of
irreconcilable variables is lawlessness. Any participant in this concourse of
crudity who is able to carve out a territory for his whims by the agency of raw
and naked might, positions himself to intimidate the lesser mortals within his
vicinity, with threats and abundance of fear. Peace here is only a calm pond
with a subterranean current of turbulence and dissensions boiling like volcanic
lava underneath. It is no peace, as the least excuse is utilized to ventilate
the suppressed angst of the oppressed powerless. Stability is absent as anybody
who has the power is allowed to prey on those who are unfortunate to be
powerless around him. He is obliged to feed on them without qualms. Violent
death is a norm as fear rules. The only semblance of order is that predicated on
a balance of terror. Every one here by necessity sleeps with one eye open, if
not for anything to be conscious enough as to take flight before the predator
floors him or to be a conscious witness to the onslaught on him; or to be in a
position to negotiate an escape from the grip of those who have the power to do
him in. This was the Hobessian state of nature where the fear of violent death
paralysed development, rendered life nasty, brutish and short.
In the jungle there exists no common weal, public good, or social service. Every
animal in this arrangement strives to survive. Survival is the word. The weak
are crushed and eaten out of existence by the stronger predators. Every one
consults the instincts of survival in all transactional situations. Joy here is
of the instinctual order, while Love is fundamentally absent. Self survival
commands procreation, and the offspring commences his own independent struggle
for survival the moment it arrives. In a society that has degenerated into a
jungle, all these features are activated, enabled and are abundantly obtainable.
In Nigeria for example, law and order exists only in the statute books;
reminiscent of the jungle. The only law is survival. The stronger individuals
swallow up the weaker ones. The rich get richer by gobbling up what belongs to
all, while the poor are further impoverished into powerlessness. In this kind of
social situation, individuals make their own laws, interpret and implement them
according to the dictates of their caprice. This is a situation where a man for
example could get up, equip a private army drawn from the National Police, and
kidnap a democratically elected Governor, in a brazen contravention of the
grundnorms of the country; and yet he is feted by the powers that be. This is a
situation where anyone who dares criticize the President, is framed-up,
disgraced and sacked from office, without due process; and beaten up by armed
robbers in his house. This is a situation, where an auditor-general would sacked
for auditing government accounts and revealing that unrestrained corruption
thrives in the presidency. And this same presidency that has lost every moral
authority to talk about justice empowers a bulldog of an agency to track down
his opponents, both real and imaginary and blacklist them so good, as to
sabotage and compromise their political careers. Some instances later will bring
these from the pinnacle of arid theorizing to the tables of normal discourse.
Man engineered an escape from this primeval broth of unreason, when he hewed
society and developed law and order out of this assured destructive tendencies.
Reason and experience taught man that there needs to be a guarantee for the
sustenance of this order. It bid him invent government as a safe bastion for the
sustenance of these ideals. Government to that end arose as the last line of
defence of the society from its primeval tendency to destroy itself. It equally
rose to guarantee rights and responsibilities of all participants. It rose
equally to foreclose forever, the possibility or the ease with which violent
death lurks around every social nook and cranny. It became the bulwark against
retrogressive and anti-social forces that seek to overthrow the social order by
the forces of might. That was the raison d'etre of government; the common good
of its subjects.
In a situation, where a government fails to live up to its ontological raison
d'etre, that government has really failed. That government cannot lay claims on
its being overwhelmed by social forces as an excuse for its failure. This is
consequent upon the fact, that it remains the Leviathan, to whom we leased some
of our powers and rights; to whom we gave up most of our privileges, to enable
him agglomerate and wield an influence unparalleled or unequalled by any
constituent of the social order. To this end, no excuse is admissible for any
failure to act in defense of the social embrace left in its charge.
In Nigeria today, the government has lost the reason for its existence. Fear and
violent death lurks on every nook and fissure of our social firmament.
Development has gone with the winds. Hunger, ignorance, poverty and disease are
presently ravaging the land, while the government bulks feebly before it,
incapable of arresting its rampaging onslaught on its subjects. Might has
reverted to right; reminiscent of the state of nature and mirroring the first 24
hours of human social evolution. The society is now a jungle in the middle of a
city. The animal tendency in all of us is now given free reign. The mighty now
wreck havoc on the emasculated. The clever now take flight at the least noise.
These were the currencies of survival in an environment of a jungle.
Civilization has finally closed its eyes in exasperation in our milieu. Nothing
seems to be working. We are now abandoned like a rudderless ship in the
tempestuous waters of self destruction. From whence shall our help now come?
From heaven? No way, not only will heaven not come to the aid of those who will
never act, but manna can never fall into anybody's mouth. It may fall on our
ground, but the job of gathering it for our food, remains exclusively ours. Will
our help come from OBJ, No. Not minding the fact that he is trying his best
against the Aegean stable that has harboured every kind and species of the
Nigerian beast for the last 44 years, the events of recent times has proved that
he underestimated the depth of the accretion of rot that the system has
accumulated in the course of its inglorious history. I used to be a very harsh
critic of the OBJ since after its wholesale butchery of the electoral process in
2003, but I nurse more sympathy for him than hatred. This guy is though a
political misfit is equally surrounded by a host of unvarnished sycophants who
perpetrate a regime of geometric retrogression on the Nigerian people. I have
watched the drama of Nigeria descent into crude barbarity for some time and my
educated conclusion is that OBJ is presiding over a country headed for the
rocks. The gang of Pathologically Depraved Perverts (PDP) that prides itself
with being the ruling party is one of the most unfortunate pieces of feaces ever
to be allowed space in the Nigeria political equation. NPN pales into
insignificance as misguided antics of spoilt kids in comparison with this horde
of buccaneers ruling Nigeria today. Ekwueme saw this early enough when he
characterized 2003 presidential primaries a charade. Nigerians never believed
him. They dismissed his observation as the normal refugee of losers. The events
of today have proved him right beyond imagination. PDP has nothing to offer
Nigeria except bad leadership at all levels. None of the PDP governors is
performing creditably. One friend of mine told me that No PDP governor or local
government chairman could rise up in their constituencies and swear that he has
not stolen a kobo off the people's treasury without being stoned to death. I
doubted him initially until I conducted a random correspondence poll across
Nigeria. I realised to my chagrin that all these self acclaimed leaders of the
people lost the confidence of the people long before 2003. Today, they make no
pretences anymore about that.
Without meaning to sound sadistic, I am really happy about the recent upsurge in
the attack on men of privilege in Nigeria. My happiness does not stem from my
hatred or disdain for privileged people. It does not stem from a negative
feeling for some of the victims, who may have been beautiful individuals. My joy
stems from the fact that at least it has recast the light and refocused
government's attention on what has been the lot and plight of the
underprivileged for so long in the Nigeria society of today. These attacks have
essayed to remove the veil from the eye of the government on what has been the
progressive degeneration of the security situation in Nigeria today. The
ordinary Nigerians have for long been cheap fodder for armed bandits all over
Nigeria. Thousands of ordinary Nigerians have been felled by armed robbers'
bullets on the highways and in their bedrooms, without the government
considering it a security situation worthy of its attention. The major highways
in Nigeria have been translated into paradise for armed robbers, with many
families losing their bread winners unsung, courtesy of these instruments of the
evil. The Nigerian government never reacted to it. Today, they have come for the
privileged, and the privileged afraid of losing the greatest privilege of all,
are now woken to a realisation that Nigeria has been a security backwater all
these while.
At a time, the citizens resorted to caging themselves in their homes with iron
bars and burglary proofs, without the government seeing that as a sign of its
failure. In this time too, the police always asked citizens who called their
emergency numbers for help, to either write down the names of the armed robbers
holding them hostage, or to send vehicles to pick up the police, to come and
rescue them from robbers that have ordered them to lie faced down in their
bedrooms. The government posed a nelson's eye to all these, gradually
emboldening and consolidating the audacity of armed bandits. I will resist the
temptation to say that PDP armed these robbers that are today preying on
Nigerians. Other conclusions to the obverse fall flatly on their faces when one
contemplates the amount of arms and ammunition that were wielded by PDP thugs in
intimidating opponents during the last elections. In some states controlled by
PDP, the incumbents with the aid of the police, or under their watchful nostrils
armed rival university cults to butcher the opposition who dared threaten their
second term bids. OBJ's success in some of these states was consequent on the
power flowing from the barrel of these guns, wielded by cultists. These guns
distributed during the elections were never recalled. Being in power now, there
was no need anymore for these thugs; thus rendering them unemployed and into the
job markets looking for jobs that the government has failed to create. They are
now on the loose as guns for hire. They double both as hired assassins and armed
robbers, harassing innocent Nigerians, plundering their property, raping,
pillaging and decimating the lives of innocent Nigerians.
The seeds of the robberies and assassinations we are witnessing today were sown
by the politicians, who embezzled the funds that should have been invested in
education and job creation, and used them in buying arms and equipping private
army of thugs to do their bidding and shore up their unpopular power base. It
was sown the day the politicians short-changed the police force, under-funding
the force and perpetuating mediocrity in its leadership. It was sown the day the
fabric of our social morality was ripped asunder and debauched by successive
Nigerian governments.
The present government of Olusegun Obasanjo, in the traditions of other
Machiavellians before him, commissioned a Human Rights Violations Investigations
Commission, (HRVIC) headed by one of the most eminent Nigerian jurists, Justice
Chukwudifu Oputa. This commission invited all those accused of violating the
rights of Nigerians since 1966, till 1999. Most of the big fishes like Ibrahim
Babangida, Mohammadu Buhari, who are accused of serious capital crimes, never
entered an appearance nor caused same to be entered on their behalf. Nothing
happened to them. No bench warrant was issued for their arrest due to the fact,
that some politics was considered. Only the small fries appeared to entertain
Nigerians who sit by their television sets, every evening to watch the soap
opera that was the commission's proceedings. At the end of the day, the
government that promised to implement the recommendations of the commission
abandoned that pledge to the disappointment of Nigerians. The government could
not release the commission's report nor issue a white paper on it. This is a
government that cannot keep its word. The report is presently gathering dust in
some outback office in Abuja some years after its submission.
The government's reaction was a Machiavellian somersault to keep the people busy
and lead them away from the strangulating socio-economic failures of its
visionless policies. That was not all. The same government established an
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFFC), headed by a lawyer-turned
police-man, Mr Nuhu Ribadu, to help tackle the issue of corruption, which has
eaten away the Nigerian socio-economic and political fabric. In spite of few
stellar performances, the commission is doing an excellent job of hounding the
small fries and other political opponents of President Obasanjo; reminiscent of
the Napoleon dogs of the Orwellian Animal Farm. This commission has brought the
alleged Advanced fee Fraudsters of the Alajemba conglomerate to book, as they
are presently facing the law. But Nigerians are yet to see Ibrahim Babangida and
the Abacha Matriarch and dynasty, who are the greatest public thieves ever to
rule Nigeria, behind bars. These execrable pieces of social calamity are still
cuddling their ill-gotten wealth in peace and quiet. The commission looks so
toothless in this regard, as daily occurrences has continued to show. Nigerians
are still waiting for the commission to drag Chris Ubah, Emeka Offor, and a host
of other well know rogues to court to go explain the sources of their
unbelievable wealth to Nigerians. Nigerians are still waiting for the Commission
to drag not only Fabian Osuji and Wabara to court for their alleged role in the
50 million naira lobbying of the senate saga, but also, all other ministers like
El Rufai, who was accused of inflating the position as well as the salary scale
of a Youth Corps intern in his office to the tune of 10 million naira. We are
still waiting for the commission to investigate the handling and the sale of
Public enterprises under the BPE headed by the Vice President, and El Rufai
respectively. We are still waiting for a governor who claimed to have 76 jeeps,
to come tell Nigerians how he got the money for such a scandalous display of
idiocy. Nigerians are still waiting for Tafa Balogun, one of the most corrupt
Police bosses we ever had in Nigeria, who was disgraced out of office for
corruptly enriching himself, to make his appearance in court. All these examples
are to show the kind of selective justice consulted by the Obasanjo
administration. One, a minister who was accused of lobbying senators, to
increase the allocation of his ministry with 50 million naira, was arrested and
detained, while a police inspector general who was accused of stealing over 4
billion naira, only got retired, and is eating pounded yam in his house.
4. A Perfect Example of a Failed State
Nigeria is principally a coalition of the unwilling. She is simply a coercion of
the unwilling; a conscription of federated grievances; a boiling cauldron of
mutually-assured platonic hatred, mutual suspicion, and collective bottled
loathing. To this end, nothing positive could ever be achieved on this platform
of potentially explosive unease. No tribe believes in the goodwill of the other.
Every tribe is of the worst opinion of the other. There is no good Igbo man as
far as a Yoruba man is concerned and vice versa, even when that stereotypical
generalization falls short of the laws of logic and thought, which should hold
eminence and primacy in any rational postulation.
On this volatile base was erected a nation, which is most unfortunately expected
to succeed. National success cannot be predicated upon a base of ontological
instability. Hence the Nigerian dream was from conception, compromised and
sabotaged to fail. All the attempts at salvaging an iota of sense from this
boiling cauldron of dissensions, have failed woefully to avert the certain
catastrophic disintegration, and disastrous implosion of this hegemonic
geopolitical ogre, upon her inglorious weight.
The colonialists yoked these ideologically parallel nationalities together, to
achieve their imperial designs, predicated only on an avariciously exploitative
blueprint. They never intended this vassal ship to come to an end. When the wind
of change rendered the political heat unbearable for their unwelcome presence,
they sought the naturally un-progressive elements, versed in the fine art of
imbecilic serfdom; that would hold cosmetic fort for their vested interests,
while they suck the honey pot clean in a vampyrean plunder of rapacious
proportions. In Nigeria, the Hausa/Fulani North fitted the bill. They schemed
out the progressive nationalities that could not bow subserviently at the altars
of oppression, from the matrix of power. The progressives were arm twisted and
decimated into the emasculated role of figure heads. From this enfeebled
position, they were congenitally excluded from the epicentres of reckoning, and
hence rendered politically impotent in offering any atom of resistance to
British re-engineered plunder of Nigeria.
They could not actually challenge the improprieties of a tele-guided nincompoop.
The suppressed exasperation of an enfeebled opposition went in, to devastate
their oppressed psyches. The West of Nigeria exploded in a furious wave of
self-digestive violence. Awolowo and Akintola battled for supremacy. Lives and
dreams had to go up in flames for Akintola or Awolowo to impress their insular
and parochial concepts of authority and supremacy on the Western region. Nigeria
tethered on the brink. Pregnant expectations of federal action oscillated
between puerile consideration and partisan implementation. The West continued to
conflagrate. All these mixed with a census fouled up by political farts, laid
the nation prostrate and ripe for explosion.
Meanwhile, a group of young ideologically fired revolutionaries waited in the
wings. Actually no one treasured the vacillation of Nigeria between a rudderless
leadership and engineered directionless ness. Disintegration hovered in the air.
Politicians advertised their selfishness and executive incompetence. Tribalism
became the operative principle. National unity took a hike to the mountains of
irrelevance. Ethnic demagoguery hawked impious nonsense. The people were
agitated into taking ethnic stands on national questions. At the height of this,
the army struck.
The army that struck was no army of occupation. It was a group of graduated
teenagers, appalled by the inglorious manipulation of primordial forces by
politicians on the national turf. They had a vision of re-negotiating the path
to national felicity. Circumstances conspired to scuttle that vision. And
nationalistic young men, armed with a blueprint of goodwill, ended dressed up as
scoundrels, to fund the desperate underwriting of a British-engineered politic
of dissension. The trajectory of the Nzeogwu-led, January 1966 intervention was
simply a revolutionary projectile. The signs of seismic changes were written
across the whole ideological landscape of their vision. From the four cardinal
points, were men who were collaborators in the torpedoing of the Nigerian dream.
They sought and removed the principal actors. Britain, denied of her puppets,
feared for her neo-imperial access to Nigerian resource. She could not abandon
her lecherous parasitism without a fight. The British Intelligence, that saw to
the manipulation of the 1959 elections, to favour British vassals of Nigerian
extraction, went to work again.
Fate played ping-pong. Nzeogwu lost his grandiose vision. His coup failed.
Ironsi was catapulted by fate, into profiting from a revolution he never
conceived nor dreamt. He bought into the peddled rumour of an Igbo conspiracy to
hijack Nigeria, as he convoked a government geared towards placating and
propitiating, those he perceived as being on receiving ends of Nzeogwu's guns.
But when vendetta rapes greed, it sires a corrosively incinerative phobia that
either destroys its object of hate or self-destructs in the process. The North
was sold the British redacted version of the coup story. All the ingredients for
its successful purchase was in place; a dangerously uneducated critical mass;
Igbo notorious entrepreneurialism and business adventurism; a widening wealth
and holding gap between the Northern natives, and a majority southerners that
stepped in to fill the posts of the departing colonial officers; and now a
military coup, led by mostly Igbo officers, that saw many Northern leaders dead.
All these broiled to brew a social sauce, which was managed by the British
intelligence to whip up a frenzy of genocidal pogrom unparalleled in Africa
since King Leopold, the Butcher of Congo. Ironsi was murdered with his host.
Gowon came to power.
Social evolution is always a history of accidents, and un-intended consequences.
Had Nzeogwu ever visualized that some nincompoops would skewer his dream or
disembowel his vision for Nigeria; he would have elected to let the country
implode on its inglorious weight. Today, people glorify the politicians that
rendered the Nigerian dream of those days, a fractured fairy tale. Many
passively consult a historical amnesia that betrays buffoonery, while others
actively seek to doctor or revise history, in order to rehabilitate the
self-battered images of the tribal gods of their political pantheon. For
instance, there was a movement a few years ago seeking to canonize Festus
Okotie-Eboh, as an innocent victim of blood thirsty Igbo Commissioned officers.
But the facts of history painfully recorded Okotie-Eboh as a finance minister,
who was a by-word for corruption and veniality. Today equally, those seeking to
resurrect Obafemi Awolowo as the best thing not to happen to Nigeria, seem to
forget his role in the Western Nigeria Wettie saga, and the fact that history
punctually recorded him as the man who led the introduction of tribalism and
mediocrity into Nigerian politics. Need we talk of Ahmadu Bello, who never
wanted Nigeria´s independence in the first place, and who saw the whole of
Nigeria as a conquered territory, that must bow to his jihadic farts; or Nnamdi
Azikiwe who preferred convenient compromises to hard choices born of principles,
which have been the furniture of immortal and revolutionary changes. These
unfortunately, were the principal players, upon whose shoulders was laid the
birth and emergence of a nation, from an amorphously, conscripted conglomeration
of tribes. Ontologically compromised by circumstances surrounding her birth, it
could only take men of great genius, charisma and invincible character, to forge
a nation out of a motley band of strange bedfellows. But these men were great
and original. The parts of them that were great were not original, and the parts
of them that were original were not great. The flaws in their individual
characters, was meant to sabotage whatever dreams they claimed to have because
the colour of your dreams must issue from the colour of your eyes.
Few years after independence disillusion arrived. The political class killed our
dream. The lacked any vision for the people. Their politics became a radical
politicization of pettiness. Awolowo stole the Western Nigerian premiership from
Zik, as a result of his pettiness. Instead of transcending that, Zik himself
became floored by his pettiness. He scampered back to the East to kick out Eyo
Ita, from a seat he was ably managing. The spiral continued. The politicians
having lost every direction sought to remain relevant. To achieve this,
ethnicity was shameless consulted. Mediocrity and grotesque incompetence was
crowned. Corruption exploded. Patronization and politics by settlement conferred
a sorry legitimacy on nepotism. Nigeria hovered between the Hamletian Question.
The chain reaction led to coup and to a counter coup, and to a civil war. Over
One million Igbos were massacred; majority starved to death by a war policy that
violated every canon of warfare. Biafran children were starved into extinction.
Civilians, women and children were bombed and strafed with psychopathic relish
and for fun. And the Igbo man had this etched in his collective memory for
eternal remembrance. The war saw Igbo brilliance enjoy some meteoric rise and
dissipation. The RAP, which should have served as a platform for a scientific
revival in Nigeria, was through the consolations of ethnic envy allowed to
desiccate and shrivel out of existence.
Gowon sat upon wealth. He swam atop Nigeria's oil revenue like a drunken sailor
would; frittering them away in an orgy of a national moronic consumption. The
future was never considered. Nigeria embarked on a spending spree characterized
by the purchase of the most un-needed rejects of foreign industrial powers. We
bought the inconsequential and every shade of non-essentials; even toothpicks
and toilet papers from abroad. That was the era of oil money. It flowed in
abundance. Money submerged the boiling dissensions of marginalized Nigerians.
But Gowon achieved nothing save boasting to the whole world that Nigeria's
problems were not making money, but how to spend it. As oil money flowed, the
bovine stupidity of Gowon's governance glowed.
This is simply a summary of infamy. Subsequent governments wrecked Nigeria
beyond measure. Ethnicity was enthroned. Bad leadership mutated and peaked.
Military brigands and civilian thieves held Nigeria to a ransom; creating a
cabal of elitist leeches, masquerading as patriots. Nigeria became a playground
of coup plotters.
Gowon was sacked for his dalliance with puerility. That was in 1975. Murtala
Mohammed toppled him and sat on the wheels. The coup cycle continued once more.
He perished a year later; falling to the speaking ends of Dimka's guns. Obasanjo
was accidentally thrown up to replace him. He embarked on progammes that were
grandiose in their conception and in their uselessness. Operation Feed the
Nation (O.F.N) succeeded only on television screens and radio jingles. The funds
mapped thereto, was squandered. Some claimed Obasanjo stole it, as the programme
may have been a front for redirecting the funds to another O.F.N=Obasanjo Farms
Nigeria. Then came the Telecommunications saga handled by ITT; an American
company that fits every profile of what John Perkins referred to, as the
corporatocracy, which hires hitmen to destroy Third World economies, and ensnare
them into inescapable debt. Fela, Anikulapo Kuti, a popular Afro-beat musician
angered into exasperation, by the rip off of Nigerians in the ITT contract scam
accused General Obasanjo and Moshood Abiola, as International
Thieves-(International Thief Thief), mirroring the acronym of the American
company. Festac 77 came. Nigeria under Obasanjo continued Gowon's idiocy.
Nigeria took that singular opportunity to advertise her wealth to the whole
world, though her people lacked the basics of a sound, secure future bereft of
want. After oscillating like a scalar quantity with a lot of magnitude but no
direction, Obasanjo finally handed over to the civilian headed by a Mallam from
Sokoto, Alhaji Shehu Shagari.
Under Shagari, the politicians returned as national leeches that they were.
Politics became an essential arena for disservice to the country. Funds were
embezzled. State policy was predicated not on sound reasoning, but on ethnic
considerations or the mood of party stalwarts. Politics became a festival of
impunity where men elect to exist on borrowed intelligence. Nigeria was slowly
but steadily going to hell. Umaru Dikko became the power broker holding Shagari
to a ransom; heading the Presidential Task force on rice, after both the Green
Revolution and Operation Feed the Nation have failed respectively. He presided
over the importation and distribution of rice to the Nigeria people. Instead,
NPN, his party was buying and selling influence with bags of rice and import
licenses. Sonny Okonsus lamented the decay in his 1983 music "Which way
Nigeria". Prior to that had Achebe articulated his masterpiece "The Trouble with
Nigeria"-, where he gave a radical vivisection of how leadership constitutes the
trouble with Nigeria; and how the political class are very busy embezzling
Nigeria's posterity. They were treated as alarmists. Their warnings fell on deaf
ears. It was a repeat of pre-1966 happenings. Nigeria waited for implosion. None
came until the military struck again on the 31st of December, 1983.
We must not fail to reiterate that Shagari's government achieved nothing of
radical significance or value to the Nigerian project. That government was
visionless in everything save puerility. She slept while Nigeria was marooned,
aground in the sandbanks of omni dimensional decadence.
Buhari-Idiagbon came claiming a messianic vision, to lead the waters through the
Nigerian socio-economic and political Aegean stable. This government tired no
doubt. But paucity of days, cannot conduce to a historical assessment of the
impact of this government. Even though this era witnessed the reappearance of
draconian decrees, and brutality of exuberant soldiers; some Nigerians today,
still relish and remember those meteoric days with nostalgia, rendered
imperative by the congenital indiscipline, rascality, and thievery of succeeding
scoundrels.
Ibrahim Babangida was the first scoundrel to succeed them. He sacked
Buhari-Idiagbon in coup, which many have come to see as the triumph of greed and
superlative kleptomania. He stole Nigeria blind, debauched her social structures
and wrecked her moral climes. Babangida presided over the liberalization of
official corruption in Nigeria. He ran Nigeria like only a robber baron would.
He bribed those who opposed his Machiavellian manipulative vision, with offices,
money or threats. Opposition to his inordinate craze for power was ruthlessly
and decisively eviscerated. IBB and two of his intelligence chiefs were fingered
in the letter-bomb murder of the Nigerian investigative journalist, Mr. Dele
Giwa, who was on the trail of a drug-smuggling story that revolved around
Babangida's wife. Babangida manufactured programs and crises to extend his stay
in power. His populist policies were briberies designed to buy off opposing
voices, or bones cast the way of the people so that they keep their eyes off the
excesses of his caprice. When this guy finished dealing with Nigeria, the
country was destroyed for good measure. He annulled an election, in which
majority of Nigerians, chose to express their exasperation with the military.
That election, which was purportedly won by Moshood Abiola, was more of a vote
against the military more than it was a vote for Abiola. He wasted over
40Billion naira in an orchestrated transition to civil rule program, which was
designed to self destruct. As Nigeria was again tethered on the precipe, he
chose to step aside with his loot, but moved to secure his ass, by leaving a
co-thief, Sanni Abacha around the corridors of power.
One step shy of the target, Abacha was a dog that no amount of training could
ever rewrite his genetic blueprint. He could not keep his eyes off the bone,
which was the presidency. Before the hurriedly established Interim National
Government headed by Ernest Shonenkan could settle down to business, Abacha, who
was in control of the Army, kicked the government out, and installed himself as
the new president of Nigeria.
Abacha was a thief on a mission. His kleptomania was hidden behind dark goggles
that belied his calculated meanness. He outclassed Mobutu both in the ambitious
nature of his stealing project and in the ruthlessness employed thereto.
Nigerians sought for hope. None was in sight. He knew that for him to keep the
loot he ripped off the Nigerian people, he must be in power forever. To this
end, he embarked on a life-presidency scheme, borrowing a lot from the perverse
dissimulations of Babangida his friend and predecessor. This guy was a
kleptocrat, unparalleled in meanness and scurrility. He only achieved the
bastardization of every sane social structure in Nigeria. The state continued to
derail. Agents and agencies of state were used as hammers of tyrannical
wickedness. Abacha's henchmen murdered Kudirat Abiola for daring challenge her
husband's incarceration. Pa Rewane was shot dead in his house for daring oppose
Abacha's lewd excesses.
In Abacha, corrupt power connived with eviscerated and disembowelled public
opposition, to create a tyrant, who terrorized the citizenry, and destroyed
their stakes to posterity, through his dipsomania and crapulent kleptomania.
Nigerians scampered in silence. Abacha grew in impunity. Many Nigerians under
these circumstances fed from garbage dumps. Abacha basked in opulence. Nigerians
slept with hunger. Abacha slept with prostitutes. The knell sounded, as he
perspired in debauchery atop imported harlots. And he expired. The professional
coup plotter was floored in a coup from Heaven.
Nigeria accumulated a lot of other socio-political, and economic dirt due to
these persistent bludgeoning. Abacha's dirt kicked Abdulsalami Abubakar up to a
position he never bargained for in his entire life. He was no less a thief. The
speed, with which his administration skimmed off billions of naira off the
Nigerian coffers, cannot even challenge comparison with that of Abacha. His only
achievement was the handing over of power amidst international pressure to a
civilian elected government headed by Olusegun Obasanjo, on May 29th, 1999.
Obasanjo came on a second missionary journey. We thought that passing through
the shadow of death would sharpen his vision and goodwill. Well, we are yet to
see any of the two. His vision becomes more parochial as the days go by. His
goodwill became non-existence, while honour was never a watchword of his. He
promised Nigerians that there was never to be sacred cows in his fight against
corruption. Today, sacred cows have been cloned everywhere. IBB, Abdulsalami
Abubakar, and those fingered by the Vincent Azie's audit report, became sacred
cows over night. Tony Anenih is yet to account for the roads he purported built
with 300billion naira, in the planet Mars. Under his rule, his party the PDP
metamorphosed into what Wole Soyinka the Nobel laureate described as a nest of
killers. Under his tenure insecurity reigned supreme. A governor of a federating
state was kidnapped by the Police in consort with a private citizen, and yet
no-one was prosecuted. The number one law officer in his administration, Mr.Bola
Ige, was murdered in a mafia-like style, while his orderlies have allegedly gone
to eat. No one was apprehended or arraigned for the murder of this guy. Under
him, political assassination became elevated to odious levels. Marshall Harry,
Aminoasari Dikkibo, Engr. Agom, Jerry Aiyegbeye, Victor Nwankwo all fell victim
to assassin bullets. Nobody was ever caught nor prosecuted for those crimes. The
criminals all came from planet Venus. The Nigerian police kept protecting public
enemies like Chris Ubah and Emeka Offor, while the taxpayers are left to fend
for themselves, against the sophisticated fire-power of the armed robbers that
prowl unchallenged.
The economy kept up its anaemia. SEEDS and NEEDS or NAPEP and UBE have all
failed woefully to better the lot of the citizenry. All the government does it
to adopt the discredited prescriptions and mantras of the IMF and World Bank
that only essays to pay Nigeria's odious debts, while the citizenry starve for
want of necessaries.
That Nigeria is a failed state is evidenced in the fact that no economic or
social policy has essayed to impact positively on the lives of the people. The
government keeps finding ways of laundering its image, or blowing the trumpet of
its achievements, while hunger and inexcusable poverty harass the people daily.
Nigeria the 6th largest exporter of crude lacks evidence based on solid
achievements to show for the billions of dollars it has earned from crude oil
sales since its discovery in Nigeria. Over 67% of Nigerians are still
illiterate, without a sound educational policy to attend to that. Unemployment
rate is so high as to be immeasurable. Over 70% of Nigerians are now living
below the poverty line. World Bank recently reported that only 1% of the
population hold 80% of the oil wealth. The country has consistently vacillated
between the gold, silver or bronze medals, on the rankings of the most corrupt
nation on earth. Her citizens are leaving the country in droves; seeking greener
pastures, which is simply a new form of comfortable slavery abroad. Power
generation has reach an all time low, as the country now enjoys more electric
power outages, than a city in medieval times, ever experienced. Many Nigerians
lack access to basic potable water, which is the signature and staff of life.
Primary health care delivery is so poor as to be epileptic. Hospitals have
metamorphosed into mere consulting clinics, where people go to die. Drugs are
unavailable, as government spends more money in debt services, and funding
corrupt and questionable policies, than in funding education or other social
schemes.
5. The Features of a failed State
In "Development as Freedom", Amartya Sen, essayed to situate the absence of
democracy as a major feature of every potentially failed state. To this end, It
is a painful observation to make that democracy exists nowhere in Africa today,
despite the hypocritical posturing in Nigeria, Uganda, Democratic Republic of
Congo, etc. It is still the recycling of the same unprogressive forces that have
scuttled Africa. A most recent example saw Eyadema Gnassingbe ruling his country
for decades, without leading them anywhere, save converting every apparatus of
state into his personal estate. He died, only for sycophantic forces to raise
his son, to succeed him, as if democracy is a monarchical relay, where a Prince
Charles, despite his lewd canonization of adultery, is billed to succeed her
mother in ruling over the British expired nostalgia. Faure Gnassigbe took office
to success his incompetent father. Save for international outcry, the Togolese
cabal of lecherous courtiers, would not have backed down.
A state fails, when the government is raped by military kleptocrat or hijacked
by democratic pretenders. Every state en route to failure possesses a castrated
followership, congenitally programmed to pose postural unconcern, to their
plight. The followership is emasculated into acquiescence, either through
decades of military brutalization or through decades of civilian treachery. All
in all, whatever lulls a people to the sleep of unconcern in relation to their
own affairs, poses a danger for democratic survival in that clime. And any state
where vigilance goes to sleep, power creeps to corrupt is holders absolutely.
And once that happens, dictatorship and tyranny reigns, to gorge itself fat on
the people, instead of catering for the people.
Another feature of a failed state in the most proximate potency is the presence
of internal conflict, based on the consultation of the primordial forces. These
primordial forces include the non-separation of religion and secular affairs and
the elevation of nepotistic affinities over and above merit. This destroys merit
and excellence; positioning the state to be hijacked by mediocrity and
opportunism.
A failed state basks in full, unutilized potential wealth, she wallows in actual
poverty. Corruption attends the lack, as the state feeds a growing army of
unemployed elite, who seek political crumbs instead of meaningful
preoccupations.
In every failed state, the government is dysfunctional unto meaningless to the
citizenry, as a result of its inexcusable failure in its statutory functions. In
this arena, the citizens provide themselves with the social services, and public
utilities, that are by law, the province of the government. The citizens provide
themselves with electric power, by buying and operating power generators in
their private homes, with all the attendant health and fire hazards. The
citizens drill private bore holes to provide themselves with potable water,
which the government has woefully failed to provide. They even erect private
postal arrangements to carry their letters because public utilities are at best
epileptic and at worst dysfunctional. In fact, the government simply governs on
television.
In a failed state equally, the security services are always in league with the
forces of social retrogression. Robbers, swindlers and the police seem to be in
an unholy alliance, designed to prey on the society. The human rights of the
citizens are treated with utmost disdain in this environment, that life becomes
cheaper than the price of peanuts.
All these are over abundant in the example we have situated above.
6. Are Failed States Forever?
Ian Fleming scripted one of his lines from James Bond 007 series, which was
titled "diamonds are forever". But this at face value stands in
contradistinction to the Heraclitan claims. Heraclitus; the ancient philosopher
of change, erected his philosophy on "Omnia flux", which subscribes and
vehemently proposes the idea, that change is the only permanence in nature and
existence. Everything is subject to change and no condition whatsoever is
permanent. This is really an absolutizing philosophy. But reason and experience
favour his opinions. Going by Heraclitan philosophy, nothing, not even diamonds
are forever. Everything is under the thraldom of change. This answers the
question that this sub-heading essays to explore: Are failed states forever?
Failed states were the culmination of a process, which manipulated social,
cultural and political variables. Under this scenario, the state is a festival
of dysfunctions, which can never as it is, connect towards navigating an exit
out of the social questions, engendered by the failure. Since this was a
process, it could be untangled. First of all as in the case of Nigeria, we
should undertake a study into the circumstances that gave birth to this
conscription of federations, called Nigeria; which has degenerated into a a
geopolity of federated grievances. This study must then be laced with a
political will to ventilate our anger and aspirations, as a people in a broadly
representative national dialogue. This will create an essential arena, for
forging alliances and agreements on whether we want to paddle along this
national canoe, as a unit, or not. This agreement is the fundamental key towards
unravelling our failed State in other to rescue it from its aimless spin towards
social implosion. Every other issue, like the repressed anger and bottled
dissensions of the ethnic nationalities, would be redirected into propelling
energies of social renewal. Agreement has been the fundamental bond that creates
coalitions of willing agents that can shoulder their collective destiny
together, through thick and thin. Once an agreement or semblance of it is
absent, the whole social structure is patronized with a lackadaiscal dereliction
from all participants in its concourse.
Today, the Nigerian government convoked a political reforms conference. It was a
clever and last minute re-engineering of the agitations of the people for a
sovereign national conference. The Obasanjo government which has been a
past-master in volte face, has many times reneged on its obligations to its
citizens, that the conference is touted as a Machiavellian blueprint designed to
distract the people from the reality of their pain.
At the inauguration of the conference, Obasanjo selected what ranked as the
problems with Nigeria, and banned the conference from discussing or venturing
into it. He gagged and bridled the conference from deliberating on those issues
that have been the albatross of Nigeria's progress and development.
It is our educated opinion that the conference, which was not allowed the free
ambient to discuss the fundamental ingredient of every failed state, would not
address the congenital inflexibilities that have been the waterloo of the
Nigerian state. This conference would end up as one other waste of public funds
7. Touch Down
The forlorn and dysfunctional circumstance of most African geopolities, together
with the strangulating poverty situation are real challenges, which could be on
the way to resolution, if Africans themselves as well as the international
community are sincere about the issues at stake there. The major work lies on
Africans themselves, with the goodwill of the international community. NEPAD and
the Millenium Development Goals signed in 2000, by the United Nations, are
movements in the right direction. But they must transcend the narrow polarity of
rhetorics, into translatable action.
Africans should seek better ways of crafting local solutions to their problems.
We should wean ourselves of this false expectation that our help would happen
upon us. The best help remains self-help. Africa's history, politics and economy
needs some radical exorcism, to cast out the forces of retard, summarized in our
politicians, leaders and decision makers.
In addition to that, the world community should equally realise that Africa's
situation is a moral obscenity on the ethical radars of humanity. Africa,
despite the callousness of many of her past leaders, still has historical
accounts to settle with the Western world. No amount of apologetic detergents
will ever wipe from the history's face, the impunity of the despoilation of the
African continent, by colonial and neo-colonial experiments. It is not a
purchase of historical empathy, to state the facts as they are. Africa's meeting
with other civilization gave her nothing save a heritage of brokenness, poverty,
and inferiority complex. So this historical baggage which compromised our
present trajectory can never be redressed without reference to the past.
Africans are the one's wearing the shoes. Where it pinches remains primarily our
epistemological privilege. We can decide to start addressing it from there,
before we can validly expect others to help our disadvantage. Besides, every
bonds, as Shakespeare mooted in Julius Caesar, "in his hands, lies the key to
cancel his captivity".
Franklyne Ogbunwezeh
was born in Nigeria and currently lives in Germany. He also attended seminary in
Italy for 4 years. Mr. Ogbunwezeh is currently working on a Ph.D. in Social
Ethics and Economics. His book "The Tragedy of a Tribe: The Grand Conspiracy
Against Ndigbo and the Igbo Quest for Integration in Nigeria" was published
in 2004. "Shots at Immortality: Immortalizing Igbo Excellence" and
"The Scandal of Poverty in Africa: Reinventing a Role for Social Ethics in
Confronting the Socio-economic and Political Challenges of Africa of the Third
Millennium" will be published in 2005. Additionally, Mr. Ogbunwezeh
published dozens of articles in newspapers, magazines, internet sites and trade
journals.
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