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Nigeria, a country in search of central heroes and villains -By Azuka Onwuka

The only solution is to recognise that Nigerians from different ethnic groups are different and have different dreams and values and then fashion out a system that celebrates that difference and exploits its positive aspects.

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Azuka Onwuka

Is there any Nigerian, especially a political leader, who is accepted as a hero across all zones of Nigeria? It is doubtful. Similarly, it is difficult to find anybody who is also generally accepted as a villain across Nigeria. Let us look at some key figures.

 Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe played the most prominent role in Nigeria’s fight against colonialism and quest for independence. His contemporaries in other parts of the world like Dr Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana); Mwalimu Julius Nyerere (Tanzania); Leopold Senghor (Senegal); Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), to mention but a few, were elected as their respective countries’ post-colonial leaders. Azikiwe did not get that same treatment. The key people who voted for him were his people from the Eastern Nigeria. In fact, the Northern People’s Congress, which actually was not much involved with the quest for independence, produced the first prime minister in the 1959 elections in the person of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. Even though Azikiwe was humoured with the honorific “Zik of Africa” and nationally celebrated as a great man when he died in 1996, he is essentially a hero among the Igbo people. Even among the Igbo people, there are many who are not happy with him for being more concerned about issues affecting Nigeria than his region like his contemporaries were.

 His contemporaries were Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Sir Ahmadu Bello. Awolowo is like a demi-god in the South-West. To most people from that zone, he is the best thing to happen to Nigeria. Politicians from the South-West try as much as possible to dress like him, wear eyeglasses that look like his, quote him or link themselves to him so as to gain more acceptability. Anybody who says any negative thing about him receives a barrage of attacks from his Yoruba people. Ironically, in spite of all the veneration accorded Awolowo, he was not voted for outside old Western Nigeria. And when he died in 1987, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, gave him the description that is best used for him: “The best president Nigeria never had.” If Awolowo was that good, why was he not good to govern Nigeria?

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 Curiously, even though the South-West rates Awolowo so highly, other parts of Nigeria do not rate him the same way. In the East and North, he is not viewed in a positive light.

 The same fate befalls Bello, who is known more by his title: Sardauna of Sokoto. He is seen as the eternal father of Northern Nigeria. No politician is seen as capable of untying his shoe laces. Anytime a Northerner talks about governance, the person refers to the era of Bello in comparison. Every other politician from the North is seen as selfish. Ironically, outside the North, Bello is seen as part of the problems of Nigeria.

 In the East, Odumegwu-Ojukwu is seen as the Moses. To the average Igbo person, even though the quest to establish the Republic of Biafra did not succeed, Ojukwu represents the resilient and creative spirit of the Igbo. Anybody who says any negative thing against him is attacked vociferously. Interestingly, the passion with which Ojukwu is loved among the Igbo is the same passion with which he is hated outside Igboland.

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 When Gen. Murtala Mohammed was assassinated six months after he ousted the military regime of Gen. Yakubu Gowon, he was mourned as a hero. In his stint as head of state of Nigeria, he took populist actions that endeared him to the masses. However, among the Igbo, he is seen as a candidate to be tried at The Hague for genocide because of the massacre of civilians he was alleged to have supervised in some cities, especially Asaba, during the Nigerian Civil War. Many have even called for all things named after him like the international airport in Lagos and the twenty naira note to be reversed because of that massacre.

 Chief MKO Abiola faced a situation that would have made him a national hero in other countries. He won a transparent election across the ethnic and religious divides of Nigeria in 1993 but it was annulled midway by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida. The struggle to reclaim his mandate claimed his life, his wife, and the lives of many people as well as the loss of many businesses and dealt a blow on the image of Nigeria. But all through that struggle, many Nigerians from outside the South-West opposed him, including many who had voted for him. Recently, President Muhammadu Buhari gave him the highest national honour in Nigeria and also declared June 12, the date his election was conducted in 1993, Nigeria’s Democracy Day. However, that has not made Abiola to be accepted across the length and breadth of Nigeria as a national hero.

Other politicians do not have commensurate status that can make them considered as national heroes. Chief Gani Fawehinmi is considered more of a human rights lawyer than a politician. Nobody compares to Fawehinmi in his passion for Nigeria and the common people. However, when he contested to be president in 2003, the number of votes he received across Nigeria was abysmally and embarrassingly low.

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 Even in the literary circles where Nigeria produced global icons (Prof Chinua Achebe and Prof Wole Soyinka), there is no agreement. Achebe is considered the most read literary writer from Africa, while Soyinka is the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Although Nigerians praise them as literary icons, there is always an attempt by people of Igbo and Yoruba extractions to belittle the writer from the other ethnic group and praise the one from their ethnic group.

When it comes to negative image, Gen. Sani Abacha has it. He took Nigeria through an era of oppression, suppression, and global exclusion. During his regime, many people fled Nigeria. Since his death in 1998, countries have been repatriating funds Abacha stole from Nigeria and stashed away in such countries. However, Abacha is seen in Kano and many parts of the North as a hero.

Similarly, the coup plotters of January 1966 are seen in the North as callous and evil, but among the Igbo, they are seen as revolutionaries who wanted to transform the country. In like manner, the coup plotters of July 1966 are seen as traitors and murderers by many people in the South-East, but are seen as liberators by mainly people from the North.

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In most countries of the world, there are names that stand out and are acknowledged as heroes by all, irrespective of ethnicity, religion, region, gender and political affiliation. If any does not see such a person as a hero, it is not usually because of difference in ethnicity or religion but a difference in ideology. This obtains in India (Mahatma Gandhi), South Africa (Nelson Mandela), Ghana (Kwame Nkrumah), the USA (George Washington, Martin Luther King Jnr), and many other countries. Why is such absent in Nigeria?

The reason is that Nigeria does not have shared dreams and values across ethnic and religious divides. In fact, the values and dreams of the ethnic groups and religions are opposed to one another. Therefore, what appeals to one part of the country repulses the other part of the country, making a hero in one part to be seen as a villain in another part and vice versa. Many people have not realised that Nigeria does not have the features of “a regular country.” It is those contending and contrasting forces that are pulling at cross purposes, creating friction, bloodshed, and regress.

During colonialism, this scenario existed but was moderated by the British. Shortly after independence, it reached a crescendo and exploded in a coup d’état, which was followed by another coup d’état, ethnic massacre and an ugly war. That national problem was whitewashed and left unresolved, leading to the unrelenting degeneration of Nigeria. The only solution is to recognise that Nigerians from different ethnic groups are different and have different dreams and values and then fashion out a system that celebrates that difference and exploits its positive aspects. If this is not done, the future may not stop being bleak.

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