Prof. Wole Soyinka’s Speech ‘Speaking
Truth To Powerful Gang Of Corrupt Nigerian Governors’, during the South-South
Economic Summit, held at Asaba, Delta State.
I must begin by thanking you for the
honour of this invitation to address you. I am glad that I did not have to
decline, pleading the truthful excuse that I am, unfortunately, still saddled
with a heavy load of unfinished business elsewhere. In any case, I have come to
accept that it is a condition of human existence to be saddled with this
particular affliction - unfinished business – that sense of an incomplete
mission.
The difference between one
individual and the next is perhaps that some know this, while others do not.
With individuals, this distinction does not matter a great deal. We go into
retirement with a sigh of mission accompli, convinced that one’s self-imposed,
fortuitous, or mysteriously transmitted mission in life has indeed been
fulfilled. Or perhaps we simply shrug our shoulders in resignation, saying,
‘Enough is enough, let others take over from here.’ No matter the variant, we
are still buried with our own self-assessment, accurate or misconceived.
A sense of mission, and the
identification of such a mission varies from individual to individual, from
institution to institution, from community to community, with or without
relationship to one’s social status or formal responsibilities. For instance,
you might read that the United Nations is sending a fact-finding mission to the
Sudan to check on al-Bashir’s compliance with its latest directives.
Or that Amnesty International has
sent a fact-finding mission to Burma, to see whether the Burmese military
dictators were truly easing up on their stranglehold on Burmese democracy,
ensure that the mere concession of an electoral exercise, or the release of the
opposition leader Aung Suu Kyi, is not mere cosmetic, an excuse to clamp others
into detention or retain despotic powers by other means. Peace missions, or
peace initiatives – sometimes known, in the latest Nigerian parlance as Peace
Advocacy - are also just as commonplace.
A former head of state in this
nation went on what he considered a peace advocacy mission to a group of
rampaging psychopaths who had laid siege to the nation. We may argue from here
to eternity about the appropriateness of that motion, especially its timing,
but at least he had some credentials for his undertaking, and it would appear
that the proposal came from some of those who thought – rationally or with
pathetic naiivette – that he might play a useful role in stemming the tide of
blood.
The former Secretary General of the
United Nations, Kofi Annan, was sent on a mission to Syria, in an attempt to
stop the Butcher of Damascus using his people for target practice, and
endeavour to bring both sides to the negotiating table. Peace missions - or
advocacy - come in various shapes and guises. Quite a number of them are
self-ascribed. Many successful ones, such as that undertaken by a little known
Irish group, worked quietly, unpublicized but effectively to bring an end to
the decades long civil war in Mozambique.
By contrast there are others which
only end up afflicting their target areas with all the bristling paraphernalia
of war, appropriate to themselves a disproportionate amount of the security
resources of a nation to inflict peace on a perfectly peaceful environment, and
with maximum gaudiness and ostentation. Variously also deflected as a thank-you
mission, they move from state to state with all the extravagant baggage and
panoply of feudal potentates visiting vassal states.
They seize up traffic in throbbing
commercial capitals, bring all motion to a halt, insisting on a gift of peace
on a state which never evinced any indications of warfare nor asked for peace
evangelism. The places where the nation may be said to have be at war are known
all over the world, not just within Nigeria, but they do not venture there. No,
it is to states which are in the throes of peace, which evince no need of peace
healing, that the ministrations of such peace physicians lead what end up
memorably as carnivalesque caravans of disruption.
Traffic is tied up. Security is tied
up. Productive motion is tied up. Commerce is tied up. Governance is tied up.
Individual, corporate, even leisure schedules are tied up - all to pander to
bristling head-ties tied up in a floating parade of gorgeous fabric, sterile,
provocative and contemptuous of the rights of others to their own desperate
mission, the mission of generating the life-sustaining morsel for family and
self.
A vanity parade born perhaps of
boredom or a feeling of neglect, this banal extravaganza, which attained
obscene heights with the military, has transferred to our supposedly democratic
environment under various pretexts, guzzling funds and guzzling the productive
time of others. Productive motion is held to a standstill and citizen rights
are trampled upon.
This disrespectful misappropriation
of public space that exists primarily for the movement of goods and humanity,
especially by the unelected, by mere appendages to constitutional power, has
become a culture of spousal aggression and can only beget a response of
disrespect and ridicule from those it most affects.
There are numerous, far more
creatively effective ways of bringing the train of peace evangelism to places
in need, or not in need, and these do not involve the usurpation of the daily
mission of millions by the mission of any one individual.
Where were we? Oh yes, we were
embarking on the theme of missions. Every individual does have, or is entitled
to have his or her own self-assessment of the level of achievement of a life
mission – it does not matter in the least what that mission might be. The sense
of satisfaction in the fulfillment of that mission, or regrets about its
non-fulfillment remains primarily an individual assessment, and one that
accompanies each individual to his or her grave.
With nations however, there is
little room for such indifference, and the reason is simple: individuals vanish
but nations endure – at least in one form or another - and nations impact on
the quality of existence of each transient occupant. Each occupant therefore
has a stake in the fortunes of the nation, a stake that, proportionately
speaking, equates the eternity that we have optimistically conceded to the
life-span of the nation.
The unfinished business of nation
being is thus not one to which we, as individuals, can afford to remain
indifferent. In many more ways than we like to admit, the nation defines its
citizen. This means that the citizen remains unfinished, a creature in the
limbo of identity, leading an improvised, unsecured and uncertain existence,
until the nation itself can boast of a recognizable and functional identity.
I do not refer merely to unfinished
business as in governance business - policy making, planning, execution, and so
on. No, I refer to that far more fundamental, unobtrusive, but nonetheless
comprehensive seizure of nation being. Some nations are wise enough to
acknowledge their state of incompletion, and take steps - even while the
business of governance remains uninterrupted - to tackle this essential
business head on, addressing the very history that brought them into being and
examining the factors - both positive and negative - that have shaped their
existence since they began to recognise, and conduct themselves as nations.
Others muddle on, immured in an
impenetrable carapace of complacency. They list their achievements, both
internal and external - economic buoyancy, a prestigious foreign policy, low
level of unemployment, a highly literate society, eradication of diseases,
uninterrupted electric power, potable water and other indices of enhanced civic
life, even IMF and World Bank approbation etc. etc - as proof of the claim that
they have “arrived”, and can confidently assess themselves as nations, beyond
the mere naming. They refuse to recognise that some at least - not necessarily
all but some part - of a suppressed social malaise or political fractiousness
can be traced to the basic issue of the unfinished aspect of their
self-constitutive process.
This includes those who cannot boast
of even these medals of achievement, those who, long after any self-respecting
nation should have been weaned, continue to insist that their endemic negative
symptoms are merely “teething problems.” Such nations are clearly on a
self-destruct trajectory.
Permit me to cite as analogy the
ordeal of one my children who, one day, during a routine basket ball game,
collapsed and passed out. Until then, he had experienced intermittent breathing
problems – they were put down as mild attacks of asthma and allergy – you know,
increase in pollen counts with seasonal changes and so on. Until then however,
nothing as drastic as an actual faint had ever occurred.
Fortunately, one of the paramedics
who were called to the scene felt that this was more than a mere asthmatic
attack, or equally benign incident – and so began a series of tests which
merely increased the bafflement of the diagnostic clinics and their
specialists. A period of round-the-clock monitoring was prescribed. He was
banned from any further sporting activities and was strapped to a gadget that
communicated directly to an emergency centre for any sign of recurrence.
No matter where he was, a fully
equipped ambulance was on call, ready to rush him to a clinic in case of a
life-threatening recurrence – all this, while various images of his heart,
lungs, full body and brain scans were subjected to analysis. The trouble was
that some of these scans gave off contradictory images, which simply drove the
doctors to distraction.
In the end, the mystery was solved.
His condition was a heart tumour, but not just any tumour. It was that uncommon
type which has a habit of sinking back into the wall tissues of the heart, and
then pulsing outwards, so that sometimes the instruments showed only one, but
at other times, two or three growths.
Evidently these extrusions would
sometimes impede the regular flow of blood, which had led to his passing out in
the first instance. In one of these sophisticated machines, one could actually
watch the tumour change shape and contours, flattening back invisibly into the
wall. The option had already been decided upon - open-heart surgery – but it
was necessary to do a thorough study of the behaviour of this pulsating growth
before embarking on the drastic process.
That decision was only the
beginning. The surgical team had to go back to school – that is, they were
compelled to look up prior cases, consult surgeons who had carried out similar
operations. Video recordings were exchanged.
Finally, D-day. It was, I must
confess, an unnerving experience to see your son’s heart taken out of his body
while he was attached to an artificial heart that kept the blood pumping to his
system. As if that was not enough, we learnt that, after the heart was
re-attached and resuscitated, it suddenly stopped beating. Injections,
administration of electric shocks – the surgeons did what they were trained to
do and he survived.
Now, why have I bothered to go into
details? Simply to ensure that you do not overlook the mission that has – I
presume – brought us here today. The realities that compelled you – again,
presumably – to demand of yourselves what is missing from the delivery of
responsible governance and thus, seek strategies for their fulfillment. You
know that if that youth had been in our part of the world, he would be long
dead. And that applies to many deficiencies that your citizens face – not
merely in terms of the quality of life they lead, but even the very threats to
survival in numerous fields of routine activities.
That is Lesson One. Many here have
at least one such story of deliverance, of an extract from real life that
barely escaped tragedy. Others were not so lucky. The stories they have to tell
did not have such a happy ending. We must not however lose sight of the
analogy, which goes deeper than the incidental vagary of the health of one
individual, but concerns the corporate body. Even the greatest pundits can be
wrong about the health of any organism - human, institutional, or national.
I am speaking here of the
deceptiveness of appearances – those of you who are soccer addicts would have
read recently of the collapse and death of an Italian player – my eye caught
the news because the story reached backwards to refer to similar tragedies,
sudden deaths of other athletes who had evinced no sign whatsoever of a
weakness in their anatomy. It happens all the time. This nation must surely
recall the shocking case of Kanu. Institutions are no different – just see how
the banking system in the most advanced countries suddenly collapsed, creating
a domino effect that saw seemingly robust economies collapse one after the
other.
But here again, we are still
speaking simply of parts of a functioning totality, not the entirety. A deep
malaise may defy the most astute diagnostic minds, leading to a complacent
reading of its state of health. If however, there is a sound, fundamental
structure that holds the totality together, that totality will override flawed
mechanisms of the parts – this is what is pulling many European nations out of the
rut.
Lucky, therefore, is that entity
that is urged from time to time to examine and re-examine the very walls,
tissues and muscles of the heart that pump blood into its system. That it is
beating sturdily does not mean that there are no tumours embedded within its
very interstices, waiting its moment to strike while bounding confidently from
one field of undertaking to the next, overriding one hidden trauma after
another, but progressively weakened by each trauma inducing experience.
Most mortals do need to be left
alone to find their feet after any traumatic experience. The nation is no
different, the most enfeebling traumatic experiences in the Nigerian instance
being both the civil war and years of military rule. There is also the
affliction of illegitimacy –the dubious legitimacy of a large percentage of
representatives of the people’s supposed political will at the centre, at the
federal and national assemblies and even in the lodges of executive governors.
The percentage of occupational illegitimacy
did admittedly decrease over the last elections but, we still do know, and they
know that we know, that even in a seventy-five percent perfect election,
properly conducted, a vast number of the present ‘honourables’, senators and
governors, could never have caught the sheerest whiff of the wood varnish on
the seats they now occupy.
Some of these are the most
vociferous, most assiduous in their denunciation, indeeed demonisation of the
very notion of a genuine convocation of peoples, that is, a convocation outside
the sanctuary, privilege and self-interest of the homes of illegitimacy, the
convocation of a people who wish to examine their present and decide their
future.
Let me declare here that I have
taken a decision never again to add my voice to that call, having joined with
others - two of whom are now dead – to let the judiciary pronounce, at the very
least, a symbolic judgment on whether what now passes for a ‘people’s
constitution’ is indeed any such product of a people’s will, or yet another
product of illegitimacy hung around the nation’s neck like a noose.
That I shall no longer add my voice
to that call however does not mean that I abandon the right to examine, even if
only as a contextual exercise, the antecedents of that call, its provocation,
the distortions it has endured, and continues to endure, the potential
consequences of its rejection, and perhaps the true motivations of its opposing
or evasive voices.
Northwards from this very spot where
we are gathered, a daily decimation of our humanity pronounces its diabolical
judgment on the structure that still struggles to deserve the name nation,
calling in question, through its fiery monologues, the very legitimacy of our
nation being. Let me take this opportunity however to stress to us all within
the nation that this ongoing catastrophe is not the burden of any one part of
the nation by itself, but a fight of survival for the totality of its humanity.
The antecedents of the present
national crisis may seem particularized, the carnage concentrated on a
geographical sector – at least for now - the solution nonetheless remains the
responsibility of the entirety of the constituent parts. There is an
immeasurable gulf between taking up arms against the state and declaring war
against humanity.
I recall a cry from a stricken heart
– metaphorically speaking this time – when the United States of America invaded
Iraq under the pretext of looking for weapons of mass destruction. The Arab
League happened to be holding its session at the time, and its
Secretary-General was reported to have exclaimed: “the inhabitants of hell have
been let loose”. Several members of that League thought he was merely being
alarmist.
The US president, George Bush
certainly thought so too, especially once he had overrun the defences of the
deluded tyrant Saddam Hussein. Several years after, not merely the Middle East,
but the entire world is still attempting to cope with the rampages of the
successors of those fiends from hell, unleashed through past global defaults
admittedly, but also ministering to their own innate demonism, determined to
drag the rest of the world down into their own private and collective hells.
What applied to Iraq is both
pertinent to, and apparent in Nigeria – evade it how we will. The rejects even
of hell have indeed been let loose, but many prefer to shy away from the
question: who let them loose. How long was the present scenario in preparation?
For how long was the mind-set of its direct perpetrators nurtured, for how long
were impressionable minds doctored, warped and then homicidally re-focused? Was
it through secular ideological indoctrination – let us say, a Marxist
revolutionary orientation? Or was it through the theocratic, serving however
the power obsession of a minority?
This is a basic enquiry that should
precede all else. However, the nation has elected, in the main, to climb aboard
the conveyance of evasion, bound for the bunker of denial. Those who unleashed
the denizens of hell are among us, they did not come from outer space, they are
known, and they know where their myrmidons retreat while they prepare their
next outrage on the populace. I invite you to take a hard look, for instance,
at the photos of those killers of the Italian and British hostages, finally trapped
in Kaduna.
Do you seriously think that they –
and hundreds like them - are independent actors in the ongoing rampages? Does
anyone still believe that they sponsored themselves to training grounds, on
this continent or outside, in some infernal regions, for their deadly mastery
of weapons of human evisceration? Their sponsors are not phantoms. They are
real. They exist among us. But, phantoms or not, today, they are afraid. Their
own agents of destruction have turned upon them, demanding evidence of preparations
of the theocratic utopia that was dangled before them, a utopia founded on
theocratic myopia that nerved them to acts of total disregard for fellow
humanity and a passion for self-immolation.
How do we disable such forces? Let
me insist on the negative – not by appeasement. Not by utterances or gestures
of appeasement. Those who seek to dominate others do not understand the
language of appeasement. To them it translates as endorsement, multiplies their
self-righteousness and urges them to even greater acts of contempt for
humanity. Dialogue is a cultured, always commendable device – in principle.
However, I must call attention to a fervent contradiction – within this general
field of dialogue - that appears to have escaped certain among our pundits of
dialogue at all costs. Here it goes:
On the one hand, those very voices
are on their knees urging dialogue on the assailants. On the other, those whose
call for dialogue – but on a wider, national scale - holds out the possibility,
at the very least, of a holistic apprehension of the far-reaching causes and
prescriptions for remedial action for the guarantee of a future, are told to go
and have their heads examined. Therein lies the contradiction. A force for
blind violence comes to the fore, a force that manifests utter contempt for
that very civilized facilitator of co-existence called Dialogue, yet, hardly
has the first prickle of blood been drawn before the chorus goes up - let’s
invite them to sit down and talk. Tell us what you want and we’ll see what can
be done. And even before that, there were already calls for Amnesty.
The sequence is important – let us
keep this in mind. Now, what is this supposed to indicate? That only through
the language of terror can one make oneself heard?
One side says, let us sit down
peacefully, as free peoples, and work out a new order of internal relationships
and overarching governance. The other says, I already have my own unilaterally
concluded order of internal relationships, divinely ordered, beyond questioning
by mere mortals, subject to no tests of rationally, equity or experimentation.
To the first, the response that hits their ears is – nothing doing. To the
other however – at least from those responsible for the health and survival of
the nation, the response is, ‘please, come and talk to us.’ And for their
pains, what has been the constant reward?
A few hundred souls in their daily
routine of scraping a living from the sales of basic, life sustaining products
of farm and manufacture, and yet a hundred more, gathered on their okada
motor-cycles, waiting to transport those market men and women to their
farmstead and homes, workers to their factories and homes, are unconscionably
blasted to eternity. Thus comes into being the ordination of two competing
sovereign states, one pleading for dialogue, the other contemptuous of the very
word.
Yes indeed, ‘sovereignty’. The
sovereignty of the nation, we are lectured, is non-negotiable, and that mystic
possession – sovereignty - would be imperiled if the constituent parts of the
nation do indeed embark on a dialogue of free peoples. It’s a very portly word
– sovereignty – mouth-filling, and chest expanding. It is designed to stop all
arguments. Merely pronounce that a form of action is a threat to the
illusionary banquet called sovereignty and the world is supposed to go into
seizure from sheer surfeit.
One can only marvel at what happened
to this patrimony of ‘sovereignty’ when a Buhari, a Babangida or a Sanni Abacha
terminated preceding sovereign claims with a mere radio announcement
accompanied by a martial tune. Some of the more hysterical among our current
voices, opposed to a people’s dialogue, did not wait for the military spittle
to dry out on the air-waves before they vanished into the obscurity of their
villages. In this case however, today, Dialogue as a voluntary undertaking, an
operative stage in nation-being, as an expression of collective will,
increasingly voiced even in hitherto unexpected sectors, is being derided.
Sadly, one can sometimes understand
causes for the vilification of this recourse. Only a few days ago, the clamour
for Dialogue – the genuine kind that is – was joined by one of the most
nauseous and obsequious, self-ingratiating servitors of the repellent
dictatorship of Sanni Abacha. Such incidental bed-fellows make one despair but,
as we say, this is a democracy, and even those who seek to sanitize their past
by a cynical revision of a history through which we all lived and survived –
thank goodness - must be given a hearing. The message, not the messenger – that
must be our meager consolation.
I merely play the devil’s advocate.
I have lost all interest in the call for a National Conference and, at the very
end, my prescriptions shall be made plain. For now let us also offer a material
solace to those who are morbidly afraid of a national dialogue. In the highly
unlikely event that such a mythical National Conference concludes its work with
a rational agenda that garners the approbation of an overwhelming majority,
leading to a clamour for instant implementation, such demurrers would only be
bowing to the clearly articulated will of the people, as opposed to a bunch of
adventurist individuals in uniform. This, of course, is only an extreme
speculation, designed to douse the dismissive, unreflective, more
sovereign-than-thou, what-we-have-we-hold, what-exists-is-holy mentality that
has corrupted the reasoning of some of these opposing voices.
It is actually a liberating
position, abandoning the chimera of a National Dialogue. It leaves one free to
confront one prospect, the most challenging prospect of all – the future. Where
else does one look at this stage? The future naturally, leapfrogging the chancy
route of what a dialogue might bring, seizing the future by the throat and
demanding of ourselves – what can we make of that future, with or without
dialogue? But first, what do we see when we do turn to that future? Yes, let us
first direct our gaze at that future, which means – let this present speak to
the future. So, what does it say?
I urge that we address ourselves dispassionately,
not fantasize, not simply project the future of our escapist desperation. We
shall let our present interrogate that future, and what does it spell? Peril.
An imperiled future, and that means – an imperiled generation of a nation’s
humanity.
We obtain a preview of a future that
is finally divested of the surviving scraps of the opportunities that many of
my generation enjoyed when we were indeed pronounced as that future that is now
our present. In practical details, what the present projects objectinely as its
offspring, is a vista of brain wastage, thanks to unstable tumours that peek
and vanish, undetected, and when detected, are left uncorrected. A future that
is very much in doubt, a future tarnished and devalued by a succession of incontinent,
irresponsible leadership, decked in both civilian and military outfits, but
mostly of the military.
A future where the intangible yet
reinforced pillar of civilized society – such as justice - has become available
on the open market. I am making no new assertions and, do not take my word for
it. Revert to internal motions for reforms such as the Justice Eso commission
of enquiry into the judiciary and also call to mind various pronouncements of
the National Bar Association. Ask yourselves how it comes about that one of
your former members of this very governorship consortium is currently basking
in immunity, having succeeded in obtaining a judicial injunction against
prosecution for his crimes against the future, perpetrated while in office. Do
we need to point out that as a nation we are covered with shame that it took an
external court of justice, of the former colonial masters, to finally put an
end to the costly shenanigans of another of your former brother governors, one
who held the forces of anti-corruption at bay, led them a merry dance all the
way to Dubai until he was plucked out of his imagined sanctuary?
And what of that judge, the judge
who freed him of over a hundred and fifty criminal charges here, in this very
nation, pronounced him innocent of blasting the very future of the generations
under his watch by a career of systematic, unconscionable robbery? Why are we
surprised therefore to find ourselves faced with a future where all sense of
community has all but evaporated and only predators roam the streets, making
their own laws of survival as they proceed. Yes, they make their own laws, for
even these know that without law, written or unwritten, there is no community,
and without community, all talk of nation is vain.
Nations are built on the palpable
operations of community, otherwise they are empty, artificial and hollow. They
collapse with the tiniest pinpricks of unrest, they drift into oblivion with
the slightest winds of external pressure. So, that learned judge held the
strings of community in his hands, the judge who pronounced our elusive
governor free of all blemish, that custodian and administrator of justice, our
question today is - is he still passing judgment in this nation, or has he
proceeded on retirement leave to Dubai?
We must resume our path of enquiry
into the two faces of dialogue that confront us in the present. Let it be inserted
in the memory of our countrymen and women - some did anticipate this very
present. Simply as a general framework of deductive intelligence, projection
and concern, the democratic alliance that fought Sanni Abacha did call upon the
stop-gap regime of General Abdusallami Abubakar to set up an Interim
government, side by side with a Sovereign National Conference.
That conference would debate the
future of this nation. Civil life had been deliberately panel-beaten - to
resort to familiar parlance - thoroughly panel-beaten during the reign of
Ibrahim Babangida, then the hobbling, rickety vehicle was conclusively crashed
under the tyranny of Sanni Abacha. The nation, we insisted, required a recovery
space, a period for stock-taking, during which the ruptured interstices of
civil life would be stitched together. Then, and only then, should we commence
a systematic democratic resumption. We could not advocate a so-called
democratisation process that was built on a privatised constitution.
That succinctly argued recourse was
not followed. It is still being brushed aside as preposterous. Is it any wonder
that a group of people are writing their own constitution in the streets, in
the markets, in motor garages, in churches and mosques, a constitution that is
being scrawled in the blood of innocents? The writing on the wall is no longer
a mere biblical metaphor, it refers graphically today to the spattered grafitti
of blood on the walls of our homesteads, schools, offices, sanctuaries of
worship and children’s nurseries. That writing is the universal language of
nations, on the road to perdition.
Permit me to recall an exercise in a
minor key in one’s seeming obsession with the future which, of course, I
continue to see as the immutable responsibility of the present, otherwise, what
is the present all about? In the early years of the return of the nation to
civilian rule, I was invited to take part in a rather imaginative form of
mentoring, initiated by a Japanese Television station, loaded with the
grandiose name – Super Teachers. It involved having a selected group of
teachers – not necessarily teachers by profession – take a group of school
pupils under their wing for a number of weeks.
Those teachers were selected on the basis of
having attained some prominence in their disciplines. They were free to decide
on a school, and from that school extract a class, or a group of pupils across
classes, then expose them to aspects of their own calling. Science, technology,
architecture, the performing arts etc – virtually all disciplines were
represented, and the entire mentoring interaction was filmed. What I privately
relished in that project – this is just by the way - was that it enables me till
today to boast that, for a few weeks at least, I was on the same payroll and
salary as Bill Gates.
I know that he would not have
touched his honorarium – if at all they dared offer him such pittance. However,
as a man whose field is virtual reality, he would be the first to concede to me
when I claim that, virtually speaking, we were earning the same salary from a
shared project! So much for vicarious living. The programme, I was about to
elaborate, allowed for the pupils to be taken anywhere that related to, or
could enhance the imparting of knowledge – within the station’s budget of
course.
Thus, in the process of selecting a
school, that school understood that it was obliged to release the pupils to
accompany the mentor wherever – I recall that the American pupils were flown to
some part of North Africa where the archeologist in the Super Teachers team was
working on an excavation site. In my own case, the producers agreed that I
would travel with my students to other parts of the country – it was an
opportunity to expose the pupils to the nation’s diversity - religion, culture,
history, the arts – whatever came under the rubric of Humanities.
Now, as It happened at the time, I
had also received invitations from two or three legislative houses to address
them, and so I seized the opportunity to induct my pupils into the work of law
makers. We began with Lagos where I off-loaded them on the public gallery of
the House of Assembly. Afterwards, they were free to ask questions, make
observations, and we would exchange views on their experience. I want you to
listen carefully to the following extract from my address to the Lagos House of
assembly:
“I invite you, honourable members,
to look up at that gallery. You will observe that you have some rather unusual
visitors. I have brought them here to observe how law is enacted, but more
importantly, to see how their future is being shaped.”
I proceeded to provide the house a
brief summary of the Super Teachers project, recommended it to the them as a
possible model for emulation on some level or the other, but then I went on to
say, and again I quote my very words on that occasion, words that placed my
mission in the context of the nation’s realities, the context of some
portentous events that came to dominate the news at that very time. I said:
“Now imagine if we had gone, let us
say, to Kaduna state just about a month ago, during those days that are for
ever branded on the memory of this nation, days of horror when some of the
desperate politicians of this nation fomented an artificial upheaval in the
name of religion, a conspiracy that led to the loss of over a thousand souls
all over the nation, some in the most gruesome circumstances, both from the
initial execution of meticulously planned massacres, and in retaliatory acts
that took place in scattered places across the nation.
Among the victims were innumerable
schoolchildren who were led out of their schools and slaughtered like rams for
the very guilt of innocence. Imagine if I had led these innocents into such an
inferno - tell me, just what kind of explanation would I have made to their
parents. What treasure of the learning experience would I claim was worth such
a horrifying ending to promising lives?
“It was a period that brought out the
worst, the worse than bestial from our human landscape, but also the best - let
us note this carefully - it also brought out the best, thanks to a handful of
that same humanity, who risked their lives to protect their fellow beings from
the initial mayhem, and from the retaliatory rage that was being exercised by
their own kin and neighbours.
Yes indeed, this did happen - as is
the case wherever the outbreak of the virus of insanity is recorded - but how
pitifully meagre is this consolation beside the depravity that overwhelmed the
entirety of the nation.”
It is twelve years since I uttered
those words, and it reads like a lament that anyone could have uttered
yesterday or today – only the choice words would have to come out far with
greater rage, born of the recurrent extrusion of that hidden tumour in the very
walls of the heart, a tumour that merely alters shape, contours and size but a
tumour nonetheless. And it is not merely religion that I have in mind. My
busload of schoolchildren clanged forcefully on the walls of my mind only some
weeks ago when I read of a similar busload, in my own state, filled with the
designated future of the nation, this time from a girls’ school. That bus was
waylaid, its occupants robbed, assaulted and raped – that is the level of
depravity to which the nation has been brought. On that road of the pupils’
matyrdom was re-enacted the continnum of the history of this nation: Violation.
Rape.
And who are have been the
gang-bangers of the nation’s future? We can bypass the military – we know them
already. Those are defined, not only by their uniform, but by their uniform
arrogance, their unbridled rapacity and their uninformed propensity for sterile
interventions. Are there no others? Of course there are, and because they tend
to lack open identification, they are especially dangerous. But we do know
them, and so do you. They are the ones who, even while claiming to defend the
rights and entitlements of their own constituencies, do little more than defend
the rights and entitlements of their privileged existence.
They are the generator contractors
in whose interest it is that the national electric system never works. They are
the minority who conspire to run down the health system of the nation, since
they can divert its allocation to their own, and their families’ excursion to
Wiesbaden for annual checks and fly to New York to cure a toothache. They are
the ones who systematically destroyed the educational system which we took for
granted throughout our own past that has engendered this present. They are the
petroleum moguls and long-haulage monopolists who have ensured that this nation
has never enjoyed the cheapest form of transport ever invented by humanity -
the railways.
These agents are the ones who see
government solely as livelihood, and who engage in every dirty trick in the
books to ensure that government remains in their hands since they know of no
other way to survive, have never understood that a nation’s economy must be
generated, not printed at the Central Bank or simply diverted from the oil
wells and central handouts, These enemies were the inventors of the Rice
Importation Scheme, the Cement Importation Scheme, the Import Licence Scheme,
the Counter Trade and numerous other scam schemes that were designed not to
generate productivity and ensure employment for generations, but to amass, in
the hands of a few, the entire wealth of the nation, from which they dole out
pittances to a zombie followership. But sooner or later, zombies turn,
recognize that they are also creatures of flesh and blood – then they demand
their pound of flesh.
They call themselves leaders and
claim to fight for their people but, today, they are indeed afraid. They have
sat long upon the masses but today, they go about in fear. And such is the
nature of this fear – it is no longer those who were routinely denounced as
outsiders to, and hate filled critics of their way of life that they fear, but
their own restless masses who have seen through their deception, their
hypocrisy, their incontinence and their will to dominate. For this minority,
serving a constituency means, not the elevation of the social condition of
their people, but the enclosure of such a constituency within the walls of
dependency.
The sense of existence of such
leaders is fulfilled only if, on sauntering out of their homes, they are
surrounded by a constituency of beggars. Their self-fulfillment lies only in
the non-fulfillment of their immediate, impoverished community. But their lies
have been exposed and they have become frightened. And this exposure has taken
place despite the pogroms that they periodically launched against scapegoats
and innocents – in preliminary softening-up surges on their environment, based
on manufactured or distorted incidents - utilising their armies of zombies
whose horizons are firmly, deliberately limited from birth to a meagerly space,
horizons whose circumference was, quite simply, the rims of their bowls of
beggary.
The demand – and here come my last
words on the subject, a necessary summary of the past – the demands from
multiple and varied directions for a National Conference is as old as political
consciousness. Nor is it a demand that has been solely born out of a crisis. It
is a demand that is born out of the recognition of an unfinished business, and
that business is the business of nation-becoming. Many people have
acknowledged, in various forms, that Nigeria is not yet a nation.
It is therefore only intelligent to see the
demand for an encounter among peoples as a response to this awareness, one that
is shared by millions but is often conveniently camouflaged. A crisis is merely
the immediate triggering cause for the resurrection of the idea, but a crisis
is not the underlying motivation for such a recourse. We do acknowledge however
that after a civil war, after military interventionism that has interrupted,
and virtually subverted the creative tempo of true national building, after the
inordinate consumption of a hegemonic but vastly tentacular minority – and I
repeat – a minority that has destroyed trust among the peoples of this nation,
it is time to resume our quest towards nationhood.
To all legislators, and indeed
executive heads who are so jealously protective of their so-called sovereignty,
may I end this reprise by reminding them that the call has always been: carry
on the task for which you were elected. Nothing in what was ever proposed
contradicted such functions. Simultaneously with such functions however, the
people demanded a forum for a mutual encounter among those who do not have an
eye to the next election, who are not fearful of losing a luxury existence that
bleeds the treasury of its life-blood, those who are not constrained by
horse-trading and back-room ‘settlement’ for the passage of some bill upon
which the functioning of the nation depends. Let us bear in mind however that
it has always been within the rights and prerogatives of any group of people to
engage in strategies for facilitating such an assemblage of minds.
All that has been said, all that has
been argued and, in my view, there need be no further call for such a
conference, only a clear understanding of the multiple causes for its constant
resurgence. It is however time to stop barking up a wrong tree, and envisage
instead what motions would have characterised such a conference were it to have
taken place. In other words, it is time to act the national conference, not
summon it. And I believe that this is what we are participating in today, a
continuation of former initiatives, in the ongoing encounters of regional
groupings. There was the earlier one in Lagos a few months ago and, hopefully,
these will be followed by others, all the way eastward and northward all the
way towards Maiduguri and Kano when those beleaguered sectors have ridden
themselves of the horrors of the mindless insurgency. My reading is then is as
follows:
Central to these gatherings will be
the very antithesis of that word ‘central’ – decentralization. Engaging in
policies and strategies of development that progressively renders the centre
reduced in its ability to impede – for this is what has been the norm – impede
the pace and quality of development of the constituent parts of the nation. The
constitutional envelope that currently holds the parts together should be
pushed as far proves possible without it actually bursting, leading to a
vibrant competition – and collaboration - among its constituent parts.
It is then left to the courts of
arbitration to interpret those areas where it might appear that the envelope
has been pushed too far. And let no one imagine that this is still the aberrant
season of that Third Term Desperado and Denier who defied the courts in their
decision over the illegal seizure of the statutory revenues of Lagos and some
other states. The people now know what to do, and have proved it. Lagos stood
firm. Leadership is half the battle but followership must also prove its
mettle. Each regional grouping should, by its policies, declare an
uncompromising developmental autonomy – I repeat, Autonomy - leaving the centre
only with its competence provenance – foreign policy, national security and
inter-state affairs - including peace subversive Peace Advocacy – but minus its
propensity for inflicting heart seizure on productive human concourse.
There need be no further calls for a
national conference. Let each regional grouping with compatible ideas of the
ultimate mission – the future of the humanity for which they are responsible –
begin to call the shots, and relegate the centre to its rightful dimensions in
any functioning federated democracy. Let each state call its own conference of
peoples to articulate in just what direction they wish to direct their leaders
and relate to the centre and other states. Let each regional grouping and its
member states single-mindedly project and pursue their strategies for the
enhancement of the quality of life and the dignity of their peoples, quarry
into their resources to extract the material required for their very existence,
material that they can exchange among one another based on their spatial
developmental advantages - in short share among themselves areas of
specialization, substituting strength for the weakness of their partners,
expertise for deficiencies in one member or the other.
Such collaborating states need not
even be contiguous, what matters is a community of interests, no matter how
physically distanced from one another. Nigeria has proved too large and
inefficient for the centralized identification and management of such human
skills and material resources, the centre having become self-aggrandizing,
bloated, parasitic and alienated. Now is the time to put into practice that
ancient saying: Small is beautiful. We must return to the earlier days of
creative rivalry that pronounces that vanishing past an interrupted project of
promise, creativity and productivity. Then, it may be possible for your
generation to say contentedly, even while the harvest is still distant but the
soil is cleanly prepared, the seeds implanted and germinating: Mission?
Accomplished!
Wole Soyinka
