Nigeria

Nigeria: Between Immorality And Ethnocentricity

Mohammed Dahiru Aminu

In her book ‘The Mighty & The Almighty’, former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright corroborated the theory of a Harvard University scholar Professor Joseph Nye on a country’s moral reputation which he described as a ‘tangible asset’ that can help a government win friends, expand a nation’s influence, and secure support in times of crisis. To me, refuting Nye is to balk at morality, and to accept his theory is to settle one doubt only to encounter others like ‘How do we set limits to what is moral?’, ‘How important is this morality as opposed to ambivalent self-desired considerations?’

In attempting questions in similitude to the above, Professor Michael Walzer of Princeton University has considered some duties of a nation in group of common importance-a nation’s utmost task is to protect life and liberty of its own people, not to cause harm whether physical, mental or moral. In any circumstance, of course when possible, a country should help people avoid disasters in the form of damaging or destructive events capable of causing serious loss, hardship, unhappiness or death. Lastly, to lend a helping hand to those, perhaps neighbours who are in dire need of goodwill and aid in structuring a better and less repressive political systems.

Another concept of defining approximately the broad principle of morality are those vital verves that present a net result in what is allied with ‘good’: life, liberty, fairness, prosperity, health and happiness as opposed to fear, illness, poverty, lawlessness, repression, and even death. To this end, one is in an unapologetic state of heralding the Nigerian nation as one guilty of immorality for choosing the path of defying moral principles.

From the primeval days of independence, regional and ethnic tensions were quick to intensify despite the government’s struggle to assert control over its component regions. Censuses of 1962 and 1963 heated bitter disputes, so also trial and imprisonment of leading politicians on charges of treason.

In the midst of bewilderment, the Igbos dubiously put their foot in the mouth and decided to destroy the leftover tranquility and harmony of Nigeria by eliminating the Premiers of the North and West, allowing the Igbo Premier go scot-free, assassinated the (northern) Prime Minister and advised the Igbo President to run away. No conspicuous Igbo leader was touched; all other civilian and military leaders from other regions were butchered. Because the NPC as a political party emerged victorious in the elections of 1964, the Igbo Senate leader acting for the run-away Igbo President, should by law hand power to the most senior NPC minister as Prime Minister, instead they chose to disregard the laws of the land and swore in a rabid Igbo GOC, who lead the country through a six months of obnoxiousness, an elicit provocation of other Nigerians especially the northerners who were seen as having lost power, and were being laughed at even in their home states by Igbo traders resident in the north.

Thus the Igbo “were responsible for the first military coup in this country; they were responsible for the first attempt at ethnic cleansing; they were responsible for the first violation of constitutionally laid down succession procedures; they were responsible for the destruction of the federation and the creation of the unitary system of which they are now victims (since the initial objective was for the Igbos to dominate other groups); they were responsible for Nigeria’s first civil war”.

The oil boom was a key factor in aiding the return to normalcy that leads the restoration of peace and reintegration of the Igbo into Nigerian life. Nigeria was soon to be recognized as the fifth largest producer of oil in the world, despite this, there were rapid shortages of key commodities, crippling and congestion of ports, and uneven redistribution of oil money. Despite national development plans for the rational redistribution of wealth, greedy military and civilian dictators mismanaged the economy and plundered oil income, leaving the growing population poorer and more cynical. To this extent, wherever there are large numbers of impoverished and underemployed people, a gentle spark ignited a big fire. The efforts have been made worse by the combination of little rain and an alarmingly frightening birthrate (again the Igbos found pleasure in producing massive outpour of babies to cushion for civil war mortality) which has left more people trying to survive on smaller parcels of productive lands. The quest for the ‘basics of life’ among Nigerians, in the face of a growing population, therefore paved way for dishonesty and depravity in exchange for personal gain; soon corruption subsumed the wanton populace.

Knowing their intrinsic qualities for striving for the greatest personal pleasure from life at the lowest minimal expense, the Yoruba prefer peace to the risks of war and its consequences. “The Yoruba have in their politics displayed two consistent streaks that have consistently kept them in opposition and cost them opportunities for coming to power. The first is vanity-a dangerous state of self-delusion borne of imagined intellectual and academic superiority over opponents and rivals alike. Thus Yoruba politicians have consistently underestimated their northern opponents who thrive on wily intrigues and far-sighted manipulation of the political process. They have also assumed to their peril that other southern tribes would naturally acquiesce to their leadership and be lured into a southern alliance whose objective is to help secure supremacy and power for the South-west. Even the so called Oduduwa Republic assumes that the people of the former Mid-west who had fought for an independent region in the sixties will willingly resubmit themselves to Yoruba domination. This is all in addition to the recent utterances of Afenifere calling for excision of the Yoruba of the North from Fulani domination, a call dismissed by a prominent Northern Yoruba leader, Sunday Awoniyi for its banality and presumptuousness”.

“The second streak is self-centeredness. Of all the tribes in Nigeria who sometimes fight for parochial reasons, the Yoruba are the only group who clearly believe they are Nigeria. When they have what they want, Nigeria is good. Otherwise it is bad. When a Yoruba candidate looses an election (like Awolowo did in 1979 and 1983) it is rigging. When he wins (like Abiola in 1993) it is a landslide victory in a free-and-fair election. When Buhari overthrew a democratically elected and sworn-in government headed by Shagari, he was hailed as a reformer who came to fight corruption. When his tribunals jailed ‘progressive’ Yoruba governors for theft he became unpopular. When Babangida dissolved the election of Adamu Chiroma and Shehu Yar’Adua as flagbearers of NRC and SDP the decision was hailed as patriotic and courageous even though it led to an extension of military dictatorship. When the same man annulled Abiola’s election it was a travesty of democracy”.

For the Hausa-Fulani, being a major component of Northern Nigeria amidst the privileged large and somewhat unprivileged smaller groups; had the advantages of leadership, though to some of them the ability to lead hardly mean anything better than irredentism and nepotism. Northern aristocrats sometimes think not as Nigerians but as a group of self-righteous sons and daughters of the corporate entity called Nigeria. The North has “dissolved an election in which Nigerians freely expressed their choice of a president, an act which plunged the country into a major crisis”. Some leaders borne of the North has indeed lacked respect for life and liberty so that individuals and their families have turned the government into some sort of lucrative business.

Consequently these problems of immorality and ethnocentrism, in the midst of plenty economic and social issues, have continued to hunt Nigeria throughout its years of existence. Granted, every country has her pertinent problems. Granted, Nigeria is still a young democracy in comparison to the West-a yardstick of developmental norms. But comparing ourselves-a democracy of less than a century to America-a democracy of two centuries and older is not reasonable, as often said by many intellectually challenged minds who enjoy assuaging a country’s guilt with feigned high principles or hypocrisy, so to say. To say we shouldn’t compare Nigeria and America is to be principally confused. By way of logic, this nonsensical thought translates that a country’s greatness lies on the number of years of her birth. Thence America can’t be considered greater than Britain for the latter was born before the former. Another look at this nauseated reasoning reveals that because power and greatness is embedded in age, President Umaru Yar’Adua being the most powerful in Nigeria is actually the oldest! The same principle applies to make Al Azhar University in Egypt not only the oldest in the world (which it is) but the best of Universities because by age, it will be the best place to seek degrees of any kind and not the Ivy Leagues, for being relatively younger. In general, it only takes an imbecile, a non-compos-mentis (lawyers would say) to think that America is greater than Nigeria because it received independence on July 4, 1776; however, if this holds true, then every nation younger than America should forget about being as great, come what may, since age itself is immortal, atleast as far as the eyes can see. For this, at any point in time, we shall lag behind America with a hundred and eighty four years (plus three months!). Indeed advocates of this illogical and dismissible reason are nothing but poor students of logical atomism.

For the benefit of doubts, those conversant with philosophy know that America is the first moral society in history. The principle of man’s individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social system-as a limitation on the power of the state, as man’s protection against the brute force of the collective, as the subordination of ‘might’ to ‘right’; hence the most profoundly revolutionary achievement of America was the subordination of society to moral law. All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself. America regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary coexistence of individuals. All previous systems had held that man’s life belongs to society, that society can dispose of him in any way it pleases, and that any freedom he enjoys is his only by favour, by the permission of society, which may be revoked at anytime. This was true of all statist systems, under all variants of the altruist-collectivist ethics, mystical or social e.g. ‘The Divine Rights of Kings’; the theocracy of Egypt, with the Pharaoh as an embodied god; the unlimited majority rule or ‘democracy’ of Athens; the welfare state run by the Emperors of Rome; the Inquisition of the late Middle Ages; the absolute monarchy of France; the welfare state of Bismarck’s Prussia; the gas chambers of Nazi Germany; and the slaughterhouse of the Soviet Union. The United States is different from the preceding examples in that it held man’s right as his, by right (which means: by moral principle and by his nature), that a right is the property of an individual, that society as such has no rights, and that the only moral purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights.

For the betterment of Nigeria and Nigerians, reorganizing the country to a cardinal virtue-of justice, prudence, temperance and fortitude is the only way forward. A project I would consider worthy of participation by all Nigerians; men and women; young and old. As tribesmen, Muslims and Christians, we must strive to avoid rabid tribalism, provincialism, irredentism, despotism and nepotism. If only we will embrace the teachings of our Abrahamic faiths we would not only find core societal values, but collectively we shall overcome our distresses and weaknesses. Though the road ahead will certainly be challenging, but with a stronger conviction and an enduring alliance, we would continue to look ahead with hope and chastity. For me personally, I believe we will overcome! But like a mathematical variable, the time and date seems unknown; for now I guess the mood is “let’s wait and see”.

Aminu (dahiru06@gmail.com), Writes from Dougirei South, Yola, Nigeria.