As I started to write this, I happened on an interview of Nigerian-born Jelani Aliyu a top automobile designer with ailing General Motors. He opines in that interview, that ‘Many people underestimate the power of imagination and determination’. Jelani was born and raised in Sokoto, Nigeria, even though he is now fully Americanised. But the import of his statement should not be lost on us, as we shall see in the body of this article. This country will be liberated, if ever, not by anything else but by the power of the intellect. Sheer mental power. Nothing is stronger than that. It is like water, harmless on the surface, but powerful, especially when it is consistent and when it comes in full force, from every angle.
But what have we seen instead... Intellectuals, people who are trained in the ways of modern knowledge, who stand at the forefront of innovation and ideology, people who shape opinions because they have the power of expression, who are articulate and can convince by the intricate arrangement of their ideas, people on whom the methodical intellectual articulation of the ways out of the African quagmire rests so heavily, have abdicated their huge responsibility to ‘leaders’, politicians and the military.Everyone in Nigeria talk about the ‘leadership’ problem in the country. Great minds like Professor Chinua Achebe, are embittered by a situation whereby those who are thrown up into leadership capacity in Nigeria always fail to deliver.
But in the conclusion of the proponents of the ‘leadership problem’, lie several omissions and fallacies. Firstly, who is a ‘leader’? And why are we so fixated on political leadership while we ignore the cascading nature of leadership itself. Is it possible for leaders down the rank and file to do things right and lead aright, only for the man, or woman, at the very top to then be deviant? That will be an aberration. And this tells us that today’s leaders, and tomorrow’s too, will necessarily be chosen from yesterday’s followers and small-time leaders. That is why they say that a people get the leaders they deserve. Our leadership reflects our society.
Also looking around today, we see a good number of young men and women in leadership positions in Nigeria. And by every means, they will be judged by how well they perform, irrespective of the influence of godfathers and benefactors. The argument of generational problems is therefore null and void. It has become obvious that as new generations emerge, the same problems exist, and some even get worse. As documented by Lords Lugard and Milverton among others, the problem of personal vanity, obsession with power, myopia, and so on, seem to be acquiring more sophisticated twists with incoming younger generations.And it would seem that we have a followership problem already too.
They say you cannot be a good leader if you aren’t a good follower. The Nigerian follower today, is totally disconnected from his environment. He easily passes the buck, and is unable to see the impact of his actions on the collective. Most young people I speak with confess that if given the chance to manage Nigeria’s resources, they will ‘damage’ the treasury and move on too. No follower is thinking of how to take on the task of making the Nigerian project better. Middle-aged people are also so self-centred. Everyone just wants to make the money and push the responsibility of creating a better society (which is however necessary for the enjoyment of the money they are making), to someone else. How so stupid. These middle-aged people are becoming leaders today, and it is apparent what their way of thinking is foisting on this country.
To make matters worse, those followers who are up to voting age do not bother to exercise their rights. At a recent forum, I was scandalised that less than 20% of the tie-wearing corporate guys and ladies bothered to leave the comfort of their fantastic living rooms on voting day. Yet they pontificate on end about how badly the country is run. A modern saying goes, that ‘bad officials are elected by good people, who refuse to vote’. It is not an excuse that the votes will not count. Voting, confers a certain right to protest the aftermath of that process. And if we ‘intellectuals’ disenfranchise ourselves by our own sheer snobbery, who is to blame for how things turn out. It is even worse when the same set of ‘enlightened people’ run away from taking on any political posts except it becomes absolutely unavoidable. I am also a culprit here, but I know that by my action and that of others like me, the coast is clear for charlatans tocontinue to ride roughshod on the country.
But I am more incensed by the dereliction of intellectual duty by our so-called intellectuals because they have refused to engage their best asset – their brains – in sorting out the convoluted problems that face the nation. Pedestrian solutions are offered to serious problems. Escape routes are actively sought, and responsibilities abandoned. The intellectual in Nigeria is worse than those they criticise, for he does not practice what he preaches, and he tries to maintain a false pedestal. He teaches critical thinking in universities but refuses to engage in it himself. He talks about why government should be tolerant, democratic, but brooks no criticisms or opposition in his own forte. The Nigerian intellectual ignores history, or at best abridges it. He is satisfied to read only the aspects of history that supports his prejudices.
If not, the Nigerian intellectual would have seen the ties that bind us as black people, but he chooses to lock his blame game around Awolowo, Azikiwe and Sardauna, Nigeria’s valiant progenitors, who had no access whatsoever to the kind of information and examples that we have today; pioneers who flew blind, without radar or compass, but tries to make the best of things. The Nigerian intellectual is happy to live in a comfortable but parochial past. If he could broaden his mind, he would have since seized the advantage of national and racial unification. Instead he is a closet war-monger, an expert of knee-jerk reactions, even when he should know better. He calls for war when he should know that the whole of Africa has been used too many times to sell arms and ammunition produced by wiser countries. He is beholden to the West, ruminating endlessly about the order in those parts of the world, even as he ignores the potentials and embedded advantages of his homestead. He is so uncritical of those countries, he has bought the propaganda hook, line, sinker, and even when those perpetrate havoc to keep him down and servile, he knows not and cares less.
To illustrate the abysmal failure of the Nigerian intellectual, let us look at his approaches to the major problems facing Nigeria. Corruption. Many intellectuals have capitulated to the love of lucre, but before they do, their approach to corruption is that of buck-passing. They attend fora abroad where the issue of corruption is being discussed and sit nodding in self-pity while the entire garb of corruption is being dumped, like toxic waste, on Nigeria. They deliberately fail to ask questions about who introduced that virus in Africa. Questions about the forms of political corruption being practiced by more powerful countries, especially in the West – like why they remove governments at will and implant stooges. Our intellectuals even fail to conduct a holistic analysis of the problem and how it relates to African countries. Like the fact that most of the corruption is a manifestation of a culture clash. But if we were really interested insolving a problem, would we shut our minds to any solution?
The Nigerian intellectual have sat by in obeisance, while the burden of corruption has been worn like a lodestone around the neck of this country. Corruption has become a psychological hangover; a curse which we feel afflicted with and without the breaking of which we believe we cannot move on. The problem is we do not have a clue where to start from, and we seem to descend further into helplessness. This is a classic case of failure of intellect, and the buck can no longer be passed. Another instance is our problems with ethnicity and religion. As I write Jos has just returned to calm. But the rage seethes like never before. And then I receive a text from some educated ‘christian’ friends; “Please don’t buy fast food/drinks (poisoned) from muslim hawkers especially near church premises/convention grounds. That is their new attack plan in Abuja. Please spread this to your loved ones. It’s an extension of the Jos crises...”.
This dangerous rubbish was crafted by someone who went to school. The text alone can send us all to hell in this country. What if the country broke into smithereens, would suspicion, prejudice and distrust end at our dreamland regional levels? No way. If we solidified this dangerous jaundiced thinking, say where will Muslim Yorubas belong after the breakup?You see, intellectuals do not perpetrate mayhem themselves, but they are the ones who utilise their fantastic power of articulation to explain to street urchins what the other side said and did, and why they should be attacked. But all the Nigerian intellectual has to do, is to invert that power of articulation and do positive things with it, but he won’t. He is enjoying his day passing the buck and complaining about ‘leadership’.
The Nigerian intellectual knows all too well just how this is a country of brothers. Etymology, the study of the origin of words, which I picked up from my early days of playing Scrabble and studying the Chambers dictionary, shows that many societies in Nigeria have been interacting for too long. Yoruba language goes as far as Ogoja, Hausa goes as far as Yorubaland. Igbo language is replete in Tiv and so on.
But no, our intellectuals are keenly focused on what divides us as a people. They suffer from half-education, even if they acquired professorships. They are imbued with a high dose of myopia. And on many occasions, they have sold their souls to those who want to see Nigeria and the black race in a permanently vanquished state, therefore they work actively towards the disintegration of the country, plus the ensuing chaos that will lead to the loss of many human lives. Yet it is the intellectuals that will save this country.
It is intellectuals, not cannon-wielding generals that have advanced the cause of every other country that is great. It is intellectuals, some Nigerians among them, and not political ‘leaders’, who made the USA the great country it is today. They are the ones, who articulate strategy for the US domination of the world. Intelligence rules the world, but our intellectuals here have refused to seize the high pedestal ofstrategy. Even the wars that many of our intellectuals daily drum up, will have to be ended around coffee tables – in dialogue.This is not an advocacy to the ‘blowing of more grammar’, but like Jelani said the power of imagination has been grossly underestimated, especially in Nigeria.
I challenge our columnists, journalists, leaders of opinion, academicians, to invert their thinking towards the positive, despite all the challenges around us, for just one month, let us see the positive differences it will make in the life of this country. Open any newspaper today, and 90% of the articles and reportage will have a tribal, personal, political or religious agenda. No country can be great this way. Editors can also help by ‘autocratically’ deselecting write-ups that promote division and engender hate. We have problems in Africa, especially Nigeria, but we should not promote destructive hate among our people. I have realised that one can spend a whole lifetime just seeing only the bright side of things.
Our intellectuals have failed us to date in three ways – by shirking their own political franchise and responsibilities and buck-passing, by promoting division and hate quite actively, and by not getting their heads around the surfeit of problems that we face, which will eventually have to be solved by them, through the sheer power of positive and creative thinking and strategy. But they can change. Immediately. The blame for our current state of morass rests entirely on their shoulders.
Nigerians learn more than any other black people on Earth. I’ve been to London Business School and Hravard for short courses and all I meet are Nigerians. They get all the best knowledge and dismally fail to translate it to a better country for all. They tragically fail to realise the power of knowledge, imagination, and determination like Jelani said. They should prove my hypothesis wrong.
TOPE FASUA, Economist, ABUJA topsyfash@yahoo. com08070850159
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