Reclaiming Nigeria: A Task that Must Be Done

by Wilson Idahosa Aiwuyor

Nigeria has been held hostage by selfish leaders who seem to have taken the country as a personal property. It is left to the people to confront these politicians, reclaim our nation and make it a united and prosperous country that is responsive to our dreams and aspirations. Writing in 2008, the Nigerian scholar, Dr. Adekeye Adebajo stated that, “Nigeria, the most populous country and one of the most powerful states in Africa, is a Gulliver; and the Lilliputians have been Nigeria’s leaders, whose petty ambitions and often inhumane greed have prevented this country of enormous potential from fulfilling its leadership aspiration and development potential.” Dr. Adebajo’s observation vividly portrays the present situation in the country. Indeed Nigeria is a giant, but one that has been tied down by the petty ambitions of leaders who now threaten to reduce it to a midget. However, we can seize the opportunity that the current situation offers to mobilize the people and non-violently reclaim our country from anti-democratic Lilliputian leadership. There is no better time to tap into the energy and determination with which we fought against military dictatorship to save our country from the brink of collapse.

Instead of serving the people, most of our leaders have shown little or no regard for Nigerians, while exploiting our sweat and wealth to consolidate their grip on power. Even after we fought hard to enthrone democracy, following decades of military dictatorship, our civilian leaders still deny us the dividends of democracy. The recent actions of President Musa Yar’Adua and the response of the National Assembly demonstrate that country is just a “neo-colony” of the ruling class who are more interested in securing their political careers and other personal interests than in listening to the voice of the people; they are blind to the tears and agonies of suffering Nigerians at home and abroad.

For President Yar’Adua to have disregarded constitutional procedures and went to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment for more than ninety days is an abuse of power. Equally abusive was the refusal of the National Assembly and Yar’Adua’s loyalists to place national interest above their political careers by invoking the relevant sections of the constitution to fill the leadership vacuum. Since President Yar’Adua was flown into the country in secrecy, Nigerians have been kept in the dark about his capability to continue as president, and the members of the National Assembly still shy away from their role in demanding accountability from the executive branch. This is the same government that had spent our resources on public relations effort to ‘rebrand’ the nation before the eyes of the world.

Failure of the Rebranding, Myth of Balkanization

In light of the current crises, no gainsaying that the rebranding effort has failed woefully. The vacuum created by Yar’Adua’s unconstitutional medical leave left us with no president figure to speak for the country, thus contributing to the successful branding or “mutallabization” of Nigerians when the US placed the nation on its terrorist watch list, following the attempted Christmas day bombing of a US-bound plane by one “bad head” called Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab. The series of massacre in Jos is not only stigmatizing our image further, but also contributes to the heating up of the polity. It is now clear that any effort to rebrand Nigeria without confronting the country’s fundamental problems constitutes a scam, a waste of resources, and a play on the intelligence of Nigerians.

The brewing crises and failure of leadership have prompted some people to believe that the panacea is to divide up the country. Muammar Gaddafi, the lunatic Libyan dictator who masquerades as a Pan Africanist, is one those calling for the balkanization of Nigeria along the fault lines of religion. Gaddafi, who was so bent on using Africa’s unity for self aggrandizement, dreads the power and influence of a strong and united Nigeria under the control of people-oriented leadership. Make-believe pan-Africanists like Gaddafi lack the foresight to understand that a strong, stable, and united Nigeria is invaluable to Africa’s unity and stability. Elements opposed to Nigeria’s unity and prosperity tap into religious, ethnic, and regional difference to incite violence. We have to be vigilant and resistant to the evil machinations of such elements, whether domestic and foreign.

Nigerians are intelligent enough to understand that splitting up our country will likely amount to dividing the fundamental problem of anti-people leadership and lack of accountability into different entities without necessarily making a break with the recursion of these problems in the supposedly utopian entities to be derived. Even the division of Nigeria into 36 countries could amount to creating 36 “neo-colonies” for the ruling elites who would replicate the pattern of political leadership and problems that we are currently experiencing. India and Pakistan are respectively locked in internal group/class struggles, and are still in conflict with each other decades after separating into two countries. If balkanization were the answer, then the most peaceful nations in Africa would be the little independent states in the great lakes region of Africa, including Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda. Ironically, the most gruesome genocides in Africa’s recent history have occurred in that region. Balkanization is not the answer. We must organize to reclaim our nation.

Organize, Don’t Agonize

The critical moment we are in demands that we should not be passive or continue to agonize. Nigerians, especially the youth, must organize and non-violently mobilize to reclaim the ownership of our country from its current hostage situation. We have to mobilize from the grassroots to confront our politicians the same way we did the military dictators. The reclaiming of Nigeria is not an event. It is a process. A point of departure for this process is an end to the current constitutional crisis and the full implementation of the Uwais report on electoral reform. We must make sure that our politicians carry out subsequent constitutional and institutional reforms that would make our government work for us.

We can do this by means of grassroots mass mobilization organized through credible organizations such as the Save Nigeria Group (SNG). The SNG is a coalition of civil society and religious organizations led by pro-democracy personalities, including Prof. Wole Soyinka; human rights lawyer Femi Falana; and Pastor Tunde Bakare. The SNG rallied for an acting president when our leaders had refused to fill the vacuum left by Yar’Adua’s absence, and it was granted. They demanded that Acting President Goodluck Jonathan dissolve the feuding Federal Executive Council, and we have gotten it. Nigerians home and abroad should support and build on the momentum and the mobilization networks of the SNG. The SNG should take greater advantage of social networking tools like Facebook, and build strong links with young Nigerians at home and abroad who want to reclaim their country. The mobilization network of the SNG should be cascaded in a self-similar pattern across the nation, and well coordinated to ensure that it does not turn violent, as violence begets violence. Student groups, labor and professional organizations, women groups, Nollywood, and young Nigerian artists should also be actively engaged by the SNG. And we must figure out mechanisms to sustain the Group’s broad coalition and activities.

Regardless of our religion, ethnicity, and region, all Nigerians want to be treated as human beings. We want to have the kind of democratic leadership that would make us secure, give us a sense of dignity and restore our integrity before the eyes of the world. We want leaders who would respect us and respect the letters and spirit of our constitution. The success of our reclaiming the country is predicated on such leadership. The present situation in the country offers a unique opportunity to set this process in motion. And we must not fail to take good advantage of it.

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Wilson Idahosa Aiwuyor is a student of International Relations. He is also a Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University.