IN the early 1960s, after Nigeria became independent under the British colonialist, the Nigeria political system was a tangible manifestation of the nation’s virtuous democracy. Today, the modern elements of the national state are generally non-existence or weak by design, and even the most concrete levers of tangible federal power, such as the military, hardly registered in the psych of the citizenry as institutions of majesty. For most Nigerians, the reach to the top is the reach and influence of the people in government. There are, as well, precious few symbolic representations of nationhood. Power exists among the few and identity takes root provincially, especially in the circle of the rich. In Abuja, a traveller or statesman still has to contend with distrust, cluster, and clog almost several years after the capital’s founding, and no one would have occasion to appreciate the movement to Abuja as the capital city because its reality is still far away from having a cornerstone. The unity of the country exists merely in felt ideals, a vague, but instinctive socio-cultural and politico-economic desire chief among them, in false filial devotion, in the mystical reverence that Nigerians pay to the founding fathers, who in speeches and songs and stories and political parades were constant apparitions among them.
The country’s unity exists rhetorically in a kind of democratic eloquence, in orations, at lyceum addresses, in dictionaries and schoolhouse speller, but also in parliamentary house stump speeches, the tavern, in newspapers and debating societies, or in the hagiography: a book about Nigeria’s existence that makes her better than she really is; a biography that praises her too much; the book that gives a good ideas about her virtues resorting to unworthy praise singing; historians record of life of Nigerians or sketches of geographical definition of multicultural communities and characters that make up Nigerian society. The otherwise maturing civic culture transcended the generally believed oneness in outlook through political participation, and it is possible, even to a cynic of today, to marvel at this vibrancy, at the cattiness of Nigerian intensity of political disassociation. The political apologies of this period, operating in the Nigerian political milieu, have been trying to command loyalties as devoted and committed as the passionate followings of modern sports’ franchises, and the pageantry of political experience is often as exuberant as joyful musical performance.
Needless to say that it is impossible to gasp the pivotal turmoil and the eventual destabilization of Nigerian politics during the first republic without comprehending that our political system has not always been this way nor would remain this way. The mode of politics at the onset of the Nigerian experiment is never clearly stated or realized. So too is political language. Both mode and language are the legacy of a commonwealth tradition radicalized by the early politicians in the early 1960s and shaped by Nigerian experience into a temper of zealotry for supposedly better political environments. Even into the beginning of the second republic in the year 1979, Nigerian political systems have been factored as corrupt factions, as conspiratorial combinations of ambitious interests, indeed as usurping forces. Extreme virtues and extreme vigilance are necessary to defend the common good against them.
Moreso, in the third and the fourth nascent democratic republics, Nigeria’s political system is still in the throes of transition towards a more expansive democracy, and the antique attitude about politics has become glossed in the reverent old fashioned sepia tones of the old school in no small measure because the good of new school is tantalizing tactile in the spoils of political patronage. Politicking is now understood as guardian against subversion rather than agent of it. An agelessly deemed sectional or interested faction, it is now, vitally in the vibrant multicultural formation, the organizing and facilitating multi-institution of national bonding agents. And yet if the Nigerian political system has begun a metamorphosis, its idiom does not, and that it does not is one of the critical elements of systemic disturbance. The negative language of political players remains democracy’s most accessible vocabulary and posture. Its stark contrasts and demands virtue against corruption, constant vigilance against conspiracy, precious political freedom against engrossing power that is used to persuade and wheedle a consuming, voracious public opinion, and to organize opposition against whichever politicians that have attained higher political stronghold. The ideology that gives the language of political mode voice filters and explains expansive events that otherwise might seem disjointed or unconnected. The conspiracy of the well to do in the society is an instance.
While surely conspiracy is effective as propaganda, as spin, as a talking point, more and more poor people are in fact becoming increasingly persuaded that at the bottom of political aggression in this our disturbing economic system is an insidious, caballing plot to engross their psychic by extending poverty from the North to the South, and may be even to the proposed regional arrangement over if the cabalists could but get themselves power machines. If Nigeria’s political leaders are not ready to take cognizance of those who disagree with their political theory, in the next few years, the relentless reach and bitterness of the poverty issue will place the Nigerian political system in a constant turmoil it may not survive, and its disintegration will be both the cause and effect of accelerating political dysfunction. A fundamental realignment of political system may seems to provide a new, true national unity, but not a sectional system, organized around tribal impulses and strong enough to succeed without the necessity of intersectional ties, appealing to its adherents because it is formed, as many may think, to combat a conspiracy; debilitating and threatening to political bigotry, as many erroneously believed, because it is one evil villain. It is worthy of mention at this juncture that the Nigerian state took form historically in perspectives emphasizing the fundamental incapability and inescapable coalition between myriads political entities.
The power distributions over the years had been tending towards the fact that inhabitants of the geographical expression called Nigeria are different and distinct peoples, sharing little more with each other than disputed space situated in the sub Saharan region of the African continent. (See the rest on www.tribuneonlineng.com)
- Elebute is Professor of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Hallmark University, Ijebu Itele, Ogun State.
The above-mentioned perspective is a truism; a common statement that is obviously factual. But it shows something ineluctably significant that when, suddenly, the truth dawns, even the poor and the general masses will understand it reflexively as a social problem. The sense of profound, unbridgeable differences of Nigerian peoples separated from one another by the chasm between different ways of life, grows with the social problem itself, in the communities, manifesting in the blood-welling desire to achieve retribution and punishment through a show of tribal bigotry, and, enshrined in the passionate intensity of falsehood in developing a fake confederation nationalism that is ardent as the sacrifices to achieving new separate independence. The approach to achieving lasting unity and freedom among the Nigerian peoples is still growing more devastating. Fundamentally, the multicultural unitary perspectives have inevitability imposed a falseness of both experience and awareness on the consciousness of the peoples of this country. Unity grandiosity might be expected from the people holding the reins of government, but the strife of the past years, brought on by magnetic attraction for controversy, may finally shattered decision makers’ nerves, the government may then need to go to water for relaxation at spas.
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