UNTIL the coalition of northern youth groups addressed the press and announced they were giving the Igbo living in the North a three-month ultimatum to quit the region, most Nigerians had become quite inured to the separatist agitations of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). The federal government of course never showed any proficiency in handling the Southeast-led agitations in the many years the region had quaked with protests, yet the situation did not seem unamenable to rational approaches and even incompetent law enforcement tactics. But with the upping of the ante by the northern youth groups, and the seeming connivance of some northern leaders, the Southeast agitations have suddenly acquired fresh and disturbing significance.
In the past two weeks or so, Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has been conducting consultations with regional stakeholders both to douse the tension created by the rash of ultimatums emanating from different parts of the country and to serve notice that the government would not countenance any challenge to Nigerian unity. In the process, he has poll parroted the refrain every Nigerian president is conversant with, that Nigerian unity is non-negotiable. In one of his consultations, the acting president gave a succinct summary of his view on the agitations, during which two key points emerged.
Said Prof Osinbajo: “All of us have however agreed that our nation must remain one. When we spoke (yesterday) with traditional rulers from the Southeast, despite the issues that were raised here and there, I think that there is clarity as to that one thing, that our country ought to remain, must remain a united country. Just as I said to them yesterday, a lot of blood has been shed on account of the unity of our country and our faithfulness even to the lives of those who have made the supreme sacrifice to this country demands that we do everything on our part to keep this country together. And in any event, the greatest nations in the world are those nations who have the size as well as the human resources in particular to make the best of that size, and I think our nation has that and the mere fact that we have such a large nation and so well-endowed, in terms of human resources. I think that we are in the best position not only to be truly great but to ensure that all of our people benefit from the greatness of our country.”
The acting president obviously anchors his impression of Nigerian unity on his belief that Nigerians had resolved to stay together, and that the size of the country, obviously referring to its population and land expanse, confers on it a potential for greatness it needed to exploit. In Nigeria, unity has for long undoubtedly been taken as a fait accompli. But there was no time Nigerians freely chose, despite the presumptuous position of their constitution on unity, to stay together, nor did they at any time suggest that that unity would be best served by the country’s present structure. No one of course expects the acting president to give vent to his private conviction on the structure of the country, if he has one, or the unity of Nigeria, which he probably sees is his duty to embrace wholeheartedly. He is acting president, and as this column said last week when it wondered aloud when he would experience his epiphany, the structure of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency, not to say the manner the ailing president structured Aso Villa and the security apparatuses, constrains him to submit to unbearable placations.
In any case, even if it is assumed that the 1914 arrangement bequeathed by the British colonialists to Nigerians was freely entered into, there is nothing to suggest that the arrangement is irrevocable or designed to last for all time, or that it could not be considerably restructured. Since Nigeria’s independence in 1960, some other countries cobbled together by geopolitics, military might, and ideological exigencies have either restructured or balkanised, some violently, some peacefully. There is absolutely nothing inevitable about Nigeria’s borders. Even Britain, Nigeria’s former colonial master, lives gingerly on the brink of breakup. The Warsaw Pact of eight countries, since its formation in 1955, has broken up, despite their awesome military machine. Yugoslavia, Sudan, Czechoslovakia have also irretrievably fractured. The European Union (EU) will continue to alternate between expansion and contraction, based on the mood of the times and other economic, political and social dynamics and considerations. Nigeria is constituted by great empires and kingdoms of the past. If its leaders are unable to find the right balance for these developed political systems to coexist, it will collapse under the weight of inefficiency, inequity and poor leadership. There is nothing inevitable or sacrosanct about its borders. It came into being only in 1914; it will disintegrate at some time in the future if its leaders fail to anticipate that future.
It does not matter what President Buhari or the acting president thinks. And it matters little whether anyone finds the agitations in the Southeast reprehensible or not, or whether the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, is dismissed as a lout or hailed as a saviour. It is abundantly clear that there was no closure to the civil war. It is also indisputable that the war ended in military victory for Nigeria and defeat for Biafra. Since then, nothing has been done to restructure the country and manage the fissures that tore the country apart in the first instance. Despite defeat, the idea of Biafra still exerts great nostalgic pull on many south-easterners. The acting president is therefore inaccurate to suggest, as the president himself did last year, that the civil war was akin to a consensus on unity. It was not. And until the government begins to realise that the idea of Biafra can only be tackled in the minds of its adherents, not through law enforcement, the mistakes of the past will be repeated. If Serbia could not keep Yugoslavia together, and Russia could not keep the Warsaw Pact countries between the hammer and the sickle, and Sudan could not restrain South Sudan, and Israel cannot pacify Palestinians, and Russia and the United States could not, at different times, manage Afghanistan and Iraq, why does anyone think that if the Igbo decide to go, they can be restrained by force as was done in 1967-70? Or that if they choose to go, it would not sound the death knell to the country?
The fact is that the superficial Mr Kanu is simply not the leader the Igbo want, hence their ambivalence to the struggle, notwithstanding the near consensus about the disadvantaged place of the Igbo in the scheme of things. More importantly, for economic and geographical reasons, the Igbo are unsure whether the romanticised and tantalising idea of Biafra is as engaging as IPOB and MASSOB paint it. However, the danger is that the continuing mismanagement of the IPOB/MASSOB agitations by the government may very well tip the scales in a direction no one perhaps wants. A sensible approach, therefore, is to abandon the presumptuous talk of Nigerian unity not being open to negotiation. Nigerian unity must and needs to be negotiated. The Buhari presidency, by its almost total ostracism of the Igbo, makes the case for negotiation very urgent. Surely, it must have occurred to the acting president that when he and his team met with stakeholders on the controversial ultimatums, no Igbo officer was present among his security chiefs. So, how does the government take far-reaching security decisions in the absence of the Igbo? The government must resist the temptation to focus on the histrionics of Mr Kanu, his hate speech, or future agitations, including sit-at-home campaigns. These are simply reactions, sometimes foolish, to much deeper and underlying fractures. The government should keep its eyes on the ball, rather than set or look out for offside traps that can go horribly wrong.
Last April, and again this June, Prof Osinbajo spoke of the big size of Nigeria as an asset for development and greatness. This is a historical fallacy. Some of the greatest empire builders have come from small nations. The size of a country is just one factor in empire building and greatness of a nation. The first prerequisite is for a leader to possess the vision for greatness, as in fact Genghis Khan, the 44-year-old Mongoloid leader, 35-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican, and Alexander the Great, the Greek, all showed. What is the use of a big nation when its leaders do not possess the vision for greatness? Nigeria fought two ECOMOG wars, but fought them with incredibly vacuous mind. They sacrificed blood and toil in Liberia and Sierra Leone, but allowed the British to calmly walk in take nearly all the glory. No country has been so bereft of the idea of greatness as Nigeria has been in its sacrifice to lead ECOWAS, defeat apartheid, free Zimbabwe, stanch the flow of blood in Sergeant Samuel Doe’s and Charles Taylor’s murderous wars. With no elevated and invigorating idea of the rule of law, and unable to devise a noble, efficient and practicable political and economic arrangement, Nigeria is unable to offer leadership to itself, not to talk of any other country.
Every great nation that produced a great leader has had a definite idea of what it wanted to do with itself and others. Size matters little. After all, Adolf Hitler recognised this in propounding his racist idea of Lebensraum. And though small Israel has not shown appetite for empires, it possesses one of the most powerful armies in the world, thrice defeating combined Arab forces — to a lesser extent in 1948, and to a greater extent in 1967 and 1973. It continues to display incredible chutzpah that belies its size, bombing nuclear reactors in Syria (Operation Orchard, 2008) and Iraq (Operation Opera, 1981), and would have attempted that of Iran had the US not restrained it. Israel has had a difficult history, and they always intend to give that history, a part of which continues to inflict searing pain on their minds, all it takes. On a distant tomorrow, an empire builder with a vision will not be dissuaded by his country’s size from taking on the world. Hitler was not dissuaded by Napoleon’s failure in the 1812 Moscow campaign, and Augustus Caesar yearned for conquests after reflecting on Alexander the Great’s conquests. The truth is that Nigeria has not done anything with its size, and indeed cannot, as this column will argue next week, given the lack of discipline and intellectual poverty of its leaders. There is nothing to suggest that a balkanised Nigeria can in fact not do much better in the world with its constituent parts.
If Prof Osinbajo misdirected himself with his statements about Nigerian unity being non-negotiable and his suggestion that bigness is smart and potentially leads to greatness, Tunde Bakare, presiding pastor of the Latter Rain Assembly church, was even more mistaken when he suggested, as part of the unity discourse, that the election of Emmanuel Macron in France was perhaps indicative of a global paradigm shift in leadership. He is absolutely wrong. Nothing has shifted anywhere, not paradigm, not societal, not political. Nothing is shifting. Vision, intelligence, character, charisma — all ingredients of great leadership — are not the preserve of any age group. Though he was reluctant to admit it, the pastor knows that President Buhari’s anachronisms have nothing to do with his age or his illness-induced lethargy. The unvarnished fact is that President Buhari lacks depth and expansive vision. His election was predicated on the supposition that he would surround himself with very bright and charismatic Nigerians from all walks. Sadly, even doing that apparently requires not only depth, but also a substantial element of vision. Indeed, the president simply ignored everything else and surrounded himself with parochial kith and kin who have no inspiring concept of Nigeria.
Had Pastor Bakare read world history fairly well, he would have recognise that there was no historical epoch that did not have young and old leaders contemporaneously. When he assumed leadership, Alexander the Great was only 20 years old, and at the age of 30 had conquered the known world, dying some three years later at 33. Many of the leaders of his time were in their 40s. The highly revered Ottoman emperor, Suleiman the Magnificent, was a little older when he assumed leadership at 26. By contrast, Winston Churchill was 66 when he became Prime Minister of Britain, growing to become one of the world’s most renowned leaders. Charles de Gaulle, who saw himself in the mould of Saint Joan of Arc and Napoleon, perhaps even as their reincarnation, did not become elected president of France until the age of 68. Like Mr Churchill, his influence in world history cannot be diminished.
The age of a leader and size of a country play little or nothing in building a great nation or empire. What matters are the ideas of the leaders, their visions, and a combination of other factors, some of them quite mystical and even elemental. Acting President Osinbajo may be forgiven for mouthing the same jaded and impractical ideas of past rulers and presidents, including the man he is acting for. Were it to be his presidency, Nigerians would know how to tackle him. However, even though he is ruling in acting capacity, he must sensibly and boldly attempt to tackle the nonsense going on in the country. The northern youths who gave the Igbo an ultimatum ought to have been picked up immediately. They are not ghosts.
The security agencies under President Buhari have behaved irresponsibly parochial. Even if he cannot change the structure of anything fundamentally, Prof Osinbajo should put his foot down and do what is right within the framework of President Buhari’s difficult and antiquated structure. And contrary to what the acting president thinks, the agitations in the Southeast cannot be placated with justice alone, justice that nevertheless addresses the ostracism of the Igbo, particularly in the security architecture of the country. Biafra is a nostalgic concept consisting of cultural and political elements, and if care is not taken, may soon include religious elements. It should be tackled in the realm of politics and the mind, sensibly and structurally, without the hideous abuse and bitterness that many in the North and surprisingly elsewhere have been tempted to exude. There was no closure to Biafra. Let the government find one. Perhaps if there had been an honest appraisal of the war and the factors that engendered it — for after all, the same issues and problems also affect the North-central and Southwest — no one would be agitating for separation. Nigeria should be tired of this whirligig.
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