Montage of agitations and crisscross of controversies on collision course – an indicting imperfections a new nation unlock -By Jimi Bickersteth

As the 747 commenced its landing procedures and processes, time and everything stood still. Sitting here, upright, in the ambiance of its bosom (with my heartbeats doing an Usain Bolt as it always did each time my ‘planes’ took off or landing), and staring at the kaleidoscopic of strange sights, lights and sounds littering and coming out of the Abuja skyline this night – an Abuja whose present conditions were creative inventions that were a damning indictment of modern values, arts and philosophy.

A nation that have entered upon a history of social and political development, which while almost tracing its roots back to the early patterns of stone age origin, modified by the varying influence of ecology – differed greatly in detail and customary appearance, but retained nonetheless, an essential similarity of basic attitude and belief, consistently nurturing the culture of unity within diversity.

Nothing in life is fixed and permanent, it is this transitory truism of nothing lasts for ever that may to some extent enable one to speak of a Nigeria with a civilisation, a nation where things are always changing, developing out of its people’s genius or by symbiosis with creation, of much originality and splendour. These factors have today become an indicting imperfections as the people were struggling to unlock a new nation and a new vision of reality: problems that are not readily soluble apparently.

Everywhere, sociopolitical ideas change,the economy develop and metamorphosed, and new ways of life from one that is always faint and often arbitrary, generally are different from those of few years ago, and the influence of the changes becomes greater. Our fathers saw themselves as a part of forces of nature, and a puppet, subject to its whims and caprice, but the modern man sees himself as part of the forces and able to deal with it according to his desires and abilities, to invent and improve his lot and society’s, and tackle the challenges poised by how man could develop resilience and industrousness into a compact specialised contemporary art and science, whose importance should gradually increased under the impression and influence of political and economic development.

That Nigeria nation, with its rich cultural life, a characteristic but rare pattern of large urban settlements, and complex political systems, of course, generally disunited except in religious, football games involving its national teams, and ethnic loyalty have evolved from the process of cultural synthesis, between existing indigenous people and the intrusive colonialist, but have really gained nothing and learnt nothing.

The nation have been able to survive and sufficiently prosper, and within these limits there is an almost endless development of political and social authority. Though based on a steadily growing class, but did not evolved the hierarchical rigidities of Europe. It however, has a highly complex balance of intra-group power and interest. They become embraced in a stability founded upon the success of their patterns of community life and production.

This behavioural patterns have enabled the nation raised a common demand for a stronger community leadership such as could afford better self-defence and more effective mass participation in governance, the lack of which have hitherto, halted the process of autonomous development, stronger politicians, and elected representatives.

This same process of power-concentration {Croatia, Bosnia, nazi Germany, etc} tends to push toward autocracy and the ‘Hobsonian’ scepticism for political imperialism. Thus, creating an artificial ruling class and a conservative aristocracy standard, which tended to abrogate condescension to a policy of uneasy partnership with the local population, and the big brother in Abuja, doling out subsistence to the states.

This policies do not favour integration. The system destroyed the sublime calm and the super abundance of comfort that nature bestowed on the nation, as the commonwealth finds itself in the pockets of the politicians and the nouveau-rich class created. This as a matter of fact has indeed slowed down the nation’s marching into the mainstream of world politics, but at its threshold.

The political situation have like it or not, created new areas of instability, new situation of tension have developed and the people have all be caught in the web of asking and demanding answers to the numerous unanswered questions about the National question. #ENDSARS. The government’s inability to provide a judicious mingling of homelike peace with the gaiety of strong moral social intercourse, devoid of ethnic and or religious pollution.

The ‘sad fortuitous’ emergence of APC/PMB’s (‘innate scorn for contemptible vices and moral as his selling points) and the negativity generated by its lopsided appointments to national offices, and, displayed with increasing effectiveness has introduced radically new imponderables in ‘national’ relations, unity and cohesion, and has in its normal political connotation be out of the question in the nation’s politics, and to the bewilderment of all who believed in the oneness of the federation in spite of geographical, social and or religious divide. Who are shell-shocked, of the way and manner President Buhari is determined to assert control over the face and direction of the nation’s political life.

The existence of vertical and horizontal hostilities across the nation are a combination of the effects of ethnically induced and privation and deprivation, on one hand, and principally, due to man’s inability to adapt to change, which is often strange. The following scenarios ensued: a) the gluttonous politicians prefer the business and looting as usual, b) the restive citizens are poised to move from point A to B; by whatever means possible, c) the elected representatives are busy demeaning one another with immoral, puerile and childish comments and behaviours; padding, inserting, appropriating, misappropriating and loading, thus, leaving an unstable nation with a confused  and a lone one-man riot squad president and his zero-tolerance for ‘corruption’, though, with all the fiery passions had shut the nation within with an iron curtain of moral rectitude such that the nation was not working. His, was a ‘change in chains.’

The political elites, political jobbers and the vocal minorities in our midst, who have access to radio and TV, have destroyed the super abundance of comfort that it has pleased nature to endow and bestow to the nation, and skillfully replaced by the economic enslavement of the entire Nigerian people who now buy a fifty kilogram of rice for between 25k to 30k; a sizeable tuber of yam is 1k; a derica measure of Beans is ₦650.00, Gari, the poors staple has risen to #1500 for a 4ltr.paint bucket measure, and, as if it is cursed, the nation was experiencing capital flight, companies relocating to other countries and retrenchment and its cousin downsizing is now rampant in the surviving service industries.

Nigerians are witnessing: i) an awesome vandalisation of its economic resources including bombing and bursting of NNPC oil pipelines, ii)killings in the northeast axis, iii) terrorists invasion of the nation’s and the resultant human toils, iv) while, also, learning new legicos and their evils on the families, privatisation, padding, subsidy, technical devaluation, parallel exchange rates, ethnic profiling, ethnic chauvinist, tribal jingoism, etc. What a life inside life.

The nation’s present internal dynamics, power devolution, power sharing and culture, have instigated, introduced and created new areas of instability and new situations of tension have developed: MASSOB, MEND, NDAVENGERS, BOKO HARAM, HERDSMEN and Militants spill-overs in Lagos and so on. The ‘negative’ power generated by the newest contraption of disgruntled, power-hungry and ambitious politicians have become a constant stream of distress in the nation’s consciousness.

The inherent mistrust, and a readily compromised leadership have surreptitiously introduced instability in the internal workings and arrangements of government, particularly, the quality of the 9th NASS, all of which has introduced radically new imponderables in the legislative/executive relationship, with Nigerians, who felt change has come left aghast and open mouthed. The APC as a party in its naivety was heating the polity by itself, (forget about the decampees that have easily found a depraved new home, its influx would further weakened the fragile cohesion in APC and finally balkanise it into factions and welcome its eventual implosion. An implosion just waiting for PMB’s tenure to end in 2023. Its rivals were hoping to have their last laugh as the APC kept making the polity so ungovernable for itself, and, making it almost, absolutely impossible for its administration to effectively assert the needed and necessary control over the nation’s growth.

APC in “ròfòrófò“, muddy fight with APC. A misnomer, you’ll say. This wholly unexpected development in the party, has slowed down the pace of the much anticipated and expected, systemic, sociopolitical, economic and cultural change, such as could have raised the nation’s life to higher levels and laid the groundwork for the nation’s renaissance, today the nation is still confined to its usual, traditional and self limiting patterns and way of life. The nation has been portrayed as one in need of leaders that would galvanised the self help ethos of its people.

But what do we have, a nation, where a wide gap have opened between the political parties, the masses and its leaders, who are all supposed to be partners in the national boardroom, and this gap continue to widen rapidly. The people are been confronted with invaders under various aegis, names and missions, and whose effective power have become far greater than their own, and able to defend their rights to exist in earlier times, could now no longer do so.

The people are now suffering under the grinding heels of not only political predators and gladiators, but also those of local conquerors, and a government that on one hand is too cautious and on the other too timid to act decisively, and free the nation even as it impact it the required and necessary impetus and dynamism, as it unleashed the ‘chained elephant‘. How far the nation, under APC, and a PMB whose ethics of his decisions were doubtful, could go in redefining the process and steps of rediscovery, in this period of recycling of personnel, lopsided appointment in favour of the northern axis remained a conjecture.

The weak control and exploitation in the land, which has certain common characteristics, but greatly varied in its detailed consequences and geographical and regional affinity. However, much the consequences varied in detail, democracy and its “winner -takes-all” precedent and antecedent, did little or nothing to close the political power gap with everything that this has meant for peace, progress and even development. Nigerians have lost their independence, and, with this, their capacity to develop along their own lines, and apparently giving no hope or a future with a head-start to its teeming youths, who have lost, in short, the command of their own history, due largely to the strange format of federalism the nation has to showcase.

Little wonder pocket of resistance here and there from those of them pretending that they want to regain and retain the command of their heritage and history. This has given birth to gangsterism, use of cheap and illicit drugs, local herbal gin, lotto, flagrant disobedience, night clubbing, kidnapping, and robberies. Personally, I’m all for “change”, upwardly, mobile vertical and horizontal changes, but, the new-found idea and calls for the nation’s dismemberment is a pregnancy that calls for a kind of amniocentesis test.

There is the need to test the waters before the bohemian heroes in boiler suits and enough Nigerian-abroadian #$€ backing, and, displaying extraordinary, very informal way of life which does not follow conventional rules of behaviour go off the boil. Let’s be fair in our assessments of the nation’s situation and imperfections. There is a democracy and there are, I guess, inbuilt mechanisms for conflicts resolutions, and also, ways and means and manners for setting differences, if indeed there were any so cogent.

There are the sitting representatives from all the nation’s 774 local governments, some of the best brains at that. Hence, one really finds it difficult to align with the bohemian heroes value judgement. The Yorubas would say, “Ẹni r’ójú tán, t’ónwá áìrójú ki ri! Àlọ àti àbọ̀ wọ́n jọ nṣiṣẹ́ pọ̀. We’ve got democracy and human insatiable desire is asking for a kind of icing. Although, some of the bohemian ‘heroes’ with their clenched fists having stirred the bees hornets were now running helter skelter. ( Ọmọ ojo nsáré kùlele kúlele, kíjo kíjo.

Ati home sitting under a shade of willows I saw a long list of ’eminent’ names of the Oodua progeny that were commissioned by the Ọọni Yoruba to intervene in the bohemian indiscretions of one of his subjects. What struck me first, in the A-list, was that the direction of the emerging new leaders of the Yoruba race, if you know what I mean. In any case, it was good and fine too as the paramount ruler had, so magnanimously responded to a subject in distress and have so quickly assembled his team.

But I’m dazed still, and I asked, in what capacity? I didn’t get their terms of reference. The attempt was to perhaps liaise with and convince the government that their rabble-rousing son erred in the side of caution! That the government should grant him a reprieve while the other bohemian hero east of the Niger was answering to treasonable felony charges before a court of competent jurisdiction for the same offences, ìyẹn nẹ nice! That was neither here nor there.

If you ask me, sentiments apart, the issues on ground were basically, more of moral principles or questions: bordering largely on ethical issue/dilemma/problems and the government with its knitted brows, wrinkled noses and shrugged shoulders, (actions and body language expressing emotions), and whose patent failure to act on some of the perceived ethereal and inherited angst and frustration in the land was indicative of their lack of interest and or good grasp of the germain issues of nation building, and with it, its failure to solve the problems of economic hardships, and unemployment.

It was necessary to find answers to the numerous national questions, rather than outright dismemberment. However, you don’t use a problem to solve another problem. Like the military sought to so do with its feeble attempt at devolution of power by its creation of the six geopolitical arrangement. The creation was not only deceitful, error-prone and selfish in conceptions and misleading in all intents and purposes, it was also a false premise. Need one remind us that it was an #Gen.Abacha creation to weakened the nation’s resolve in his ambitious aborted self-succession scheme.

The six geopolitical arrangement, an etiolated rose in the nation’s body politick, was a military masturbating and self-help ethos that were clearly not in tune with nation building as all have seen lately. It only threw up a whole lot of self-massaging new lords of the manor, and in their shadows new areas of conflicts. It aimed and got the nation polarised even further than it hitherto was, and in the process, deepened the ineffectiveness and efficiency and efficacy of government, deepened marginalisation, mistrust, and opened new wounds for the nation’s minority components. It did all else but resolve or proffer solutions to the nation’s ethical, moral and inequality problems.

The six geopolitical arrangement was for the nation a ‘gift’ in a covered calabash of honey and salt, which the military that handed it over to the nation knew contained nothing. The calabashes were indeed empty. The arrangement have not, will not usher in goodness nor wealth nor prosperity. Before the ‘world’ came to being, it was first in total darkness and wily freedom, hope the new nations of the bohemian heroes dreams would not push the old one into darkness to come forth. It’s a difficult world as it were. All must endeavour to quench the fire that was threatening to burn the house of leaves placed on a pack of cards in the scorching heat of the hot sun.

But, what is in this strident calls and attractions in the clamours, methought, further confusion, dichotomy. I see also the southsouth opting out of the southeast. The sustainance of the southwest without the regular monthly FAAC is a wee problem and for the protagonists there lies in waiting the problems that would call for further restructuring or distortions of the boundaries, marginalisation, resources control and power-sharing in the ‘cocooned’ new nations. there was nothing on ground yet to feed the new nations if and when they are birthed. Hope and optimism was not enough to build a new nation upon. Think about it!

What one thinks should be uppermost in everyone’s mind now, and, which I feel, were the areas the present dispensation had failed the nation, were: a) to maintained its structure, as it were, but, b) with a new fiscal regimen, c) enhanced and enabled human capital equitably to change the world, d)readjustment and or creating new local governments where they are feasible, optimally necessary and expedient and too far away from the capital, all of which demands that those constitutionally empowered to so do must brace up even as they initiate the process of commencement of the oversight functions in earnest.

What drove the nation to its present crossroads, truculence, and frenzy state was the unavailability of the answers the electorates thought would be found in PMB in no small measures. But in the search for an enduring and prosperous new nation what was lacking and that has remained missing was character in its true essence. So, let’s look out for the Yorubas mythology character, Ọ̀runmila’s wife, the Amazon, Sùúrù, Patience, in the search for a new nation, patience. Meanwhile, as the people began to build a strong moral and ethical characters in the search for a new nation, there must not be:a) war, b) ethnic cleansing, c) ethnocentric assumptions, and, d) no spilling of anyone’s blood for the new nations of our dreams.

At a time the new world continue to advance to industrialism, Nigeria’s leaders, and PMB made a cursory allusions to this in Daura about a fortnight ago, the nation’s favourable weather, a whole wide expanse of cultivatable land mass, capital and abundance of human resources, have made the peoples general state less favourable to progress. It is curious, and, in fact, belie imagination, how and why the nation could not take advantage of the large introduction of mechanical and even industrial technology all over the world, with the stupendous budgetary allocations annually doled out as handouts to the Federal Ministries of Agriculture and commerce and industry, and all relatively cultivating or mining ‘na -da’.

It is still amazingly abnormal, that at 60, the nation could not arrange for deep mines to be sunk and exploited; thrust railways inland from the seaboard, (here PMB have scored political points)excavate modern ports; build more refineries; allow motor cars and trucks increasingly displaced primitive methods of transport and allow a new commercialism begin to flourish. It is a sad visage, but, was not strong enough to ask for its dismemberment and or balkanisation. Hope springs eternal! was a James Bond wisecrack in his movies. Let all keep hope alive.

Although, whether in reference to the state of the nation today, or to modern theories of development, the central point here is that with very few exceptions this was always an unassimilated technology and in as much as the nation is still lacking in any great technological and mechanical power, the nation’s government is obliged to remain looking for a way out of the current recession and malaise. Let me strike a chord here, that, the Nigeria companies and entrepreneurs could still excel in skill and ingenuity, if the ‘government’ nouveau riches and their phony cronies in possession of the commonwealth and the oil blocs could only let off, while, the ruling elites exert some political will and needful influences.

It is an inexplicable irony that the nation is more dependent on the industrialised world than it was under colonialism, up to toothpicks and matches. A nation that was once a leading world exporter of raw materials and primary products have now become importer of such products. What a score sheet! In the face of these odds, the nation often employ the weapon of the weak, guile.The political leaders in their naivety cart our stolen money abroad and forget that the gap in prosperity and economics of developing and developed nations are due to capabilities and capacity for applying modern technology and science to production process, and backed by the stolen and unsolicited, money in the havens of the developed nations.

For democracy to continue to thrive in the land, and to be able to combat the challenges of change, politicians must understand the importance of politics and the interfaces with economics, the social sciences and engineering. This requires that a new orientation and ideology be put in place. The people should be made to participate in governance as well as in the management of the nation’s resources, which require the government at all levels to be honest, transparent and open.

The government should be close to the people, unlike the aloofness and arrogance we have parading the corridor of power. The government should not be timid to call for the peoples input or place a call for referendum on knotty issues, that affects or would impact the overall well-being of the people and by inference the nation, on the principles of the law of informed consent.

The Revenue Allocation Formula and the Petroleum Bill (as amended) should be revisited with all seriousness and caution. To assuage the feelings and calm the pulses of those agitating for resource control. The constant agitation have placed so much pressure on the government and has become a source of constant distress to the nation. These pressures, whether internal, external, acquired or inherited, certainly raised a common demand for:

a) effective community policing and a right for a leadership that could afford to provide better self defence, provide better economics through dynamic policies, while motivating communities for autonomous development and self sufficiency in this days of dwindling revenue and largese from government.

b) the government must be at the vanguard of motivating the nation’s army of restive youths rather than wait and watch as they take the wrong motivations from the wrong sources and persons.

c) the government must halt the move from integration to separation and use condescension as a policy to ease the uneasy partnership with the people, be they in the Southwest, Southsouth, Southeast, or anywhere in the northern axis.

d) the incessant call for restructuring and negotiation of the nation’s sovereignty and its high risk potential would test the government resolve in the coming days, and, the nation is watching how the PMB administration would be able to dance round the calls and how beautiful and good the dance and the floor would look like.

e) the nation also need the 9th NASS to commence a process of amendments to the constitution to accommodate in the words of the supreme court ruling (in the case of the Lagos state government and the Attorney-general of the federation) ”inchoate LCDAs” – creations dictated by political and social economic dispensations and exigencies.

There must be a proviso here, though. The NASS must be careful so as not to politicise the process, and should have a laid down prima facies qualifications, requisites and conditions precedent, (some of which must include but not limited to, landmass, population, capacity to be self financing, as take off grants must be discouraged) to be conformed with before a LG is given and registered in the nation’s constitution.

f) the LG autonomy should be granted. The LG should by now have come of age to be able to cater for its peoples needs. The amendment as it concerns the LG should be circumspect and thorough and  should not be used or seen as creating an artificial ruling class at the grassroots, where the traditional system is not centralised and republican, and should not in any way foster a conservative aristocracy standards, which would be inconsistent with our culture. Here’s the dream, the vision and the reality.

I rest my case.# Jimi Bickersteth.

Jimi Bickersteth is a blogger and writer.

He can be reached on Twitter@bickerstethjimi, @alabaemanuel

Email: jimi.bickersteth@gmail.com/ jimi.bickersteth@yahoo.co.uk