Recent political upheavals and wranglings have reinvigorated my long running curiosity about the level of our country’s nationalism which in the last five decades, or so, has suffered its worst decline since the struggle for independence from Britain began in the early 1900s.
Recently, this issue of Nationalism took centerstage when a Public Lecture organised by Ohaneze Ndigbo, a pan-Igbo socio-cultural group took place at The Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Victoria Island, Lagos. The title of this lecture delivered by the erudite professor of history, Jide Osuntokun, was; “Nationalism and Nation Building in Nigerian History”. The turnout to this lecture showcased a list of who-is-who in the affairs of our country.
The chief host of this lecture Professor George Obiozor, in his capacity as the President – General of Ohaneze set the stage for an explosive afternoon when he solicitously questioned the foundation of the Nigeria State as one indivisible united nation, probing the illogical and untenable argument of the non-negotiability of Nigeria’s unity. Forcefully, Obiozor questioned the imposed 1999 Constitution and the dubious indissolubility concept entrenched therein. This illogical nonsense as provided in this constitution, drafted and imposed on us by the military, has erroneously rendered our country stagnant as an immutable entity in an unprogressive shamble. As Professor Obiozor argued, the unity of our country is negotiable, constitutions, or not. After all, our democracy which is a model drawn from that of America, should copy from that of that country whose constitution since its adoption in 1787, has been amended 27 times. The reluctance of our leaders to agree to the amendment of our constitution, which is nothing, but a living document, is partly why we have not evolved to being a nation in the true sense of the word.
The crux of this powerful and impactful lecture was the prevalence of a general consensus that Nigeria will be eluded by peace and prosperity if the crucibles of the question of true nationalism imbedded in equity, fairness and justice are not addressed. It is evident that all the crisis that have befallen the country from time; political violence, coups, killings, kidnappings, and other baleful vices are largely as a result of the evilness characterized in our history and the realities of our refusal to evolve into nationhood from our stagnated levels of sovereign statehood.
In this Lecture, Professor Osuntokun exposed the dilemma of how the shaky foundation of our formation as an entity right from 1914 made it difficult for us to build a true nation and there from, develop nationalistic habits. The failure of the pre-independence constitution to provide for ethnic or regional unity or hegemony, made it difficult for us to expect nationalism to thrive after independence.
The lecture focused on the origin of nationalism in Nigeria assessing the key roles that the many component elements of the social and political systems played in its formation. Political stakeholders, and particularly the press presented strong perspectives in defining what nationalism meant at that time. Recognizing the difficulty in finding a definitive definition of nationalism within the African framework, Osuntokun used definitions provided by other western writers to wit; “that nationalism is the consciousness on the path of individuals or groups, or membership of a nation, or a desire to forward the strength, liberty or prosperity of a nation”. The question one must ask is; what happened to our nationalism that was evident when we clashed with European imperialism? Did it die after we gained independence?
As a student of Political Science, I discovered from this lecture, in which I served as a Moderator, that the role of our historians and our political scientists can never be ignored, because if they fail to provide us with a valid and universally defined history, others, less critical, less renowned and less informed will take over the job of defining our political evolution for us. At this lecture, I reconfirmed a notion that I have always held strongly; that when historians and political scientists abandoned the study of the nation, and when scholars stop trying or attempting to write a common history for a people, the essence of the people’s lives will vanish and disappear. This lecture, became a veritable source for the discovery of where the river began to soil and sour in our nation’s journey and history.
Nigeria became a fictional nation when the founders conceived an absurd proposition by bringing together people who did not share any common ancestry, and forced them to believe and see themselves as a nation. This became an impediment to the development of nationalism in a confederation of ethnic states and enclaves. It became rather difficult to create the peculiar hybrid that one can conveniently call a nation-state.
As I sat in that historical arena at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs listening to speakers upon speakers, I began to ponder if telling and discussing our national history will create a lot of problems. Then it occurred to me, that not doing so will create more problems that are even worse. The inevitable imperative, then is that our history, no matter how obscured, when told with the boldest intentions will provide us with inexorable growth in our developments.
In a proper study of our country’s political evolution, one must adopt the fact that we were founded within struggles against chaos, contraptions, confusion, contradictions and with the forces of particularism. These variables became Instrumental in making us forever fight over the meaning of our history. Will telling the Nigerian history be an albatross, will it offer us the nationalism as desired by the ones who fought for our independence? The more nagging question that keeps agitating my mind is if the telling of our history as was the case at this lecture, shows us the way to have a government founded upon justice, equity and fairness; with no one components of the country claiming higher authority over the others? Will it assist us to repudiate a government that puts its people and purse in the service of a particular tribe, religious creed, or family and friends? The answers to these questions, are perspicaciously, yes.
The now common saying that “those denied justice, equity, fairness and equality will have no interest in peace”, has today become a popular and realistic saying in our land. I must also not hesitate to add that those denied these basic tenets of existence, will not have any interest in Nationalism. When they feel the heavy burden and weight of injustice and other forms of persecution, they will, one way or another, negotiate their way out of the country.
Nationalism and Nation building in the history of our country present us with both constitutional and structural problems. In order for one to be a good citizen, that person must feel a sense of belonging to the nation. Most reasonable Nigerians believe that our present Federal constitutional structure negates the principles of strength in diversity; that it diminishes the system of government that promotes and recognizes the ethos of justice, equity and fairness.
Whilst writing this essay, a friend of mine whom I considered a good citizen, walked in and asked me what again I was writing about. I told him that I was writing about nationalism and its impact in the development of our country. With anger and a hint of sarcasm in my friend’s voice, he asked me why anyone that resides in this country should feel and act nationalistic towards a country that has treated us all with such disdain and opprobrium.
Hear him: “why should I feel nationalistic towards a country that offers me and its citizens nothing but pain and agony…, no drinking water, no roads, no food, no security, no standard healthcare, no peace of mind… no nothing”. My friend continued: “is this not a country that superintended over the killing of millions of its own people in a silly war? A country that didn’t care to rehabilitate and ameliorate the suffering of the survivors?” I tried to calm my friend down by reciting the JFK’s “think not what your country can do for you… ” My friend, fuming, got up and stormed off from my presence with a staccato of expletives following his departure. My mouth opened with my jaw flapping and no words came out. I continued to write.
If love of the nation is what drives our leaders and most followers to inflict this level of pain on our people, what then is nationalism? For me, and for many other well-meaning Nigerians, it must be obvious to us now that nationalism has become a contrivance, an artifice and a disappearing act in our body politic. That in essence it is easy to predict that our nation and its people have become anachronistic with both having no interest in promoting and defending the other. For those who claim love for this country because they may not have suffered the pains and indignation of others, and who call those who feel otherwise unpatriotic, I invite them to revisit and study the meaning of our history and see it in the context of how it may have instinctively made some of us who have suffered the most heinous fate to succumb to the point of absolute paralysis and faithlessness.
Nationalism has today attracted a bad reputation in our land. To attribute the benign affection for one’s homeland as a pure virtue for patriotism and translate it to mean nationalism, may be narrow-minded. This may even become immoral if you consider that to be loyal to a country that witnessed the pogrom, the massacre and the wanton and senseless killings in Biafra, and the current upheavals that have adversely affected all in the land, one’s loyalty may be referred to as blind loyalty. No wonder, some Social Scientists have referred to nationalism as “an ideological poison”.
It may, at this point be viable to visit the events of the civil war, a subject of my recent book; Biafra, The Horrors of War, and bemoan the compunction and the lugubrious fact that we have failed in a grand scale, to learn our lessons from that bitter war. Before that senseless war, the structures of our government allowed us to operate in a multinational state as regional autonomous entities. The war brought with it the irresponsible creation of unviable miniaturized entities that took powers away from the constituent entities and placed it in the hands of hungry vultures in the centre. This invariably created the monster of a “Fake Federalism” which took away the desires of citizens to feel the sense of belonging and the need to become nationalists and even patriotics. As the unbelievable violence of the horrible war that took the lives (mostly children) of 3 million Igbo and Easterners recedes into a blurry history, it becomes harder and harder to invoke the specter of nationalism in the lives of the survivors. How do we suggest to a people who suffered this aghast adversity in the hands of their fellow citizens in such pharaonic and tyrannical manner to forget these horrible memories of the oppressive past, and turnaround and suddenly become patriotic and nationalistic? The lingering comminatory nature of our existence in this country, makes a precatory incision here, utterly difficult.
To be clear, I am an advocate of nationalism regardless of its type or form as long as it shares and bears the tenets that from the onset, members of the nation understood as a group of equal citizens that a shared history and a future political destiny should rule the state, and that they should collectively do so in the interest of the nation. This very rational disposition has not manifested in our politics, thus giving us a peep into how deeply the lack thereof has shaped our country’s progression. We have failed as a country to use good governance to promote nationalism as a vehicle to help citizens identify with recognizing the nation as an extension of our family units in which all members owe one another love, loyalty and support. In so doing, the state and the rulers are expected to uphold these tenets of good governance, while the citizens reciprocate and respond by embracing a nationalist vision of the country. This sense of mutual obligation and shared political destiny and commitment is not evident any more in our country.
Many have posed the question of how we can overcome this deleterious burden of broken nationalism in our country. It appears theoretically not to be a difficult question to answer, but the all-pervasive problem of fostering an all-inclusive system of government that promotes ethos that are embedded in the constitutional and institutional fabric of the nation-state still lingers. To boost nationalism, our rulers must fashion a mechanism that embraces all the ethnic nationalities rather than pitting them against each other, by emphasizing their shared interest. There must be a renewed national contract between the elite and people in government and the common citizens through the establishment of inclusive coalitions that tie the rulers and the ruled together.
To repair our broken nationalism, our political elite and leaders will have to become committed citizens, and in the process become better nationalists that will promote the general welfare and interests of all our people. This demand is just and timely and will help to make citizens feel connected and committed to a worthy and meaningful country.
Dr. Okey Anueyiagu,
a Political Economist
writes from Ikoyi Lagos
