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Freeing
the Nigerian Mind From Its Dilemma By Kòmbò
Mason Braide, Ph.D. Port
Harcourt, Nigeria. Saturday,
6 December 2003 @ 11:45 am. Preamble:
The Links To Reality. In normal
human beings, the origins of conformist
behaviour, like the origins of rebellion,
are firmly rooted in infancy. However, the conflict between conformance
and rebellion continues
throughout life. It prevents complete surrender,
but it also impedes the fight for sustainable liberty. We all
started to fight for our freedom
with our minders (parents,
nannies, or guardians) who fed and took general care of us as
babies. Right from those early days, they restrained
us, and restricted our free movements. Of course, we fought
back, protested, and were
frequently frustrated. Many
times, we attempted, and effectively curbed their coercion, at least, a
bit. As with parents and their children, so it is with rulers, and their
citizens. The
subconscious memories of vulnerability,
surrender and submission from those early days, and later on in life, are like
portable policemen in our
heads. They influence our whole being as they curb, and severely degrade
the effectiveness and joy of constructive rebellion. The restrictions that such
memories cause are commonly called “inhibitions”,
“uneasiness”, “neurosis”,
and similar other nasty names, but they are really just metaphorical policemen
occupying our thought processes. Luckily,
the policemen in our heads are
not so deeply embedded, and are not so successfully camouflaged. Their
activity is usually characterised by discernable unpleasant feelings and
sensations. Using them, one can get rid of part of them, or at least
diminish their effect. Indeed, whenever we pay close attention to those
nasty feelings, our memories are reconfigured, and many remote and/or
irrelevant memories loose their capacity to perturb our happiness
subsequently. Politically
aware Nigerians, who are very
likely not involved in overt partisan political activity, want an
organised society that they can call their country, with pride. However,
they want a Nigeria that is organised on an entirely different paradigm
from what prevails now. They passionately dislike the present predatory
order, in which most Nigerians are politically and psychologically
taken for granted, ambushed, taken to ransom, alienated, class-divided,
and made to be either ethnically antagonistic, or/and mutually
suspicious by their overtly autocratic
leaders, who consume their nation’s resources rabidly, and mindlessly,
leaving them to suffer unnecessarily.
Clearly, the present order, in which a tiny clique exploits over 127
million Nigerians worldwide, is not something normal
Nigerians can tolerate in silence, indefinitely.
Maybe, our
rulers do not know it yet, but, in all sincerity, Nigerians urgently
yearn, (not necessarily for
Abacha, or for Obasanjo, but) to be citizens of a progressive 21st
century society, free of
oppression, no longer divided between exploiters
and the exploited, (or between
oppressors, and the oppressed). Nigerians want a modern society,
with minimum government, in which free
Nigerians, organised right from the level of local communities,
would produce what they really
need by themselves, for themselves, and would have more free time to enjoy their
lives, here on earth, in Nigeria, specifically. The power
to make decisions in Nigeria should be in the control of the electorate.
Decisions should be reached through the meaningful participation of as
wide, and representative a spectrum of all
those affected by such decisions as practically possible.
Constitutionally, nobody, or groups of persons, should have the right to
make political decisions for,
or on behalf of other Nigerians, except
their constituencies. For goodness’ sake, it is just not proper! So, let us
start paying more serious attention to those horrible feelings, and
quickly get rid of the MOPOL in our heads, for the sake of a better
Nigeria! Surely, Nigeria does not deserve chaos.
And so, to save Nigeria from even
its leaders is a task that must be done! What follows is one of such
efforts in that direction, in the interest of progress: Transiting
To An Alternative Reality: The concept
of a “united” and “indivisible”
Nigeria, including the clichéd regurgitation of thoroughly bastardised,
vague or/and abstract slogans like
“unity”, “faith”, “peace” and “progress”,
are all essentially smokescreens, tactfully deployed by some
hardened scoundrels, to mould the Nigerian mind to serve their
predetermined whims. Paradoxically, the few so-called “progressive
elements”, who tried to transform Nigeria for the better, but
in ways that did not necessarily
threaten the establishment, or, indeed, “did
not rock the boat”,
unwittingly succeeded in providing credibility, thus inadvertently
promoting fascism: i.e. the brazen
misapplication of naked power, by entrenched super-ordinate predatory
autocratic interests, so as to protect the status quo, whenever the
system is in danger. Understandably,
those few Nigerians, who openly resist the usurpation
of economic and political power by members of a shamelessly visionless,
narcissistic, and parasitic Nigerian status quo, are often ridiculed, or
simply wished away as eccentrics. Less “troublesome”
Nigerians, who relish their labelling as “pragmatic
and moderate Nigerians”, ultimately metamorphose into a
purposeless, passive, and/or disorganised opposition, failing which, they quietly reintegrate themselves into a putrid status quo, the
so-called “mainstream of
Nigerian politics”. For
example, over a cumulative period of 29 years, within 40 years of
post-independence, some seemingly nationalistic
or patriotic officers of the
Nigerian armed forces, who, incidentally, were not in any way free from
the myopic, exclusivist, elitist, and fraudulent mindset of their
civilian “fellow Nigerians”,
forcibly took over political power from the same politicians, in turns,
on a merry-go-round: i.e. “You
chop, I Chop; turn-by-turn”. They took over power, supposedly, in
the name of millions of dissatisfied and disillusioned
Nigerians worldwide. However, in
the process, they took custody of both the apparatus of state, and the
national treasury, and kept them firmly in their control thereafter,
even in retirement, and out of office. In fact, one of them, now
canonised, beatified, and sanctified by military fiat as a”
national hero”, actually looted
the Central Bank of Nigeria, and carried out a most horrendous orgy of
ethnic cleansing at Asaba, during the First Nigerian Civil War
(1967~1970). Ironically, most of the so-called “progressives”
in Nigeria (i.e. NADECO,
pro-democracy activists, “concerned professionals”, etc) have
also successfully reintegrated themselves, “pragmatically”,
into full-blown predatory autocracy, since “Democracy
Day”, Saturday, 29 May 1999. Some
Nigerians believe that only political
re-engineering that is based on direct
democracy, managed by a system of elected
but recallable
representatives, will succeed in promoting the idea of, and struggle
for, a better Nigerian Federation We believe that a transformational
change into a better Nigerian Federation, comprising consenting
communities, of free and non-alienated
Nigerians, is possible. We are also confident that this kind of paradigm
shift will not necessarily degenerate into a bureaucratic drift, if, and
only if, ordinary Nigerians consciously prevent any clique, cabal, or
group, under whatever pretext, from hijacking political and economic power for the so-called “ordinary Nigerians”. Obviously,
the collective responsibility
of implementing agreed matters
of common good in our daily lives, when impractical to be exercised by
all, should be in the hands of duly elected
persons that represent our
interests, and not in the
custody of political sharks, expressing their personal opinions.
Preferably, such representatives should not
be professional politicians,
but ordinary Nigerians, who
should continue in their regular occupations, or professions as before their election into public
office. Their only benefit
should be the trust of their
respective constituencies, and the historical privilege of representing
their constituencies. All individuals, whose decisions and regular
activities impact on the fundamental freedom
or wellbeing of other Nigerians, must do their jobs according to agreed
guidelines, and at all times, must be accountable
to their local constituencies,
and not necessarily to Abuja, or to Aso
Rock, or to Government House,
or to the “Leader”, or to “Honourable Chair”, and/or several other variants of absentee
representation typical of Nigerian pseudo-federalism.
Kòmbò
Mason Braide
(PhD) Saturday,
6 December 2003 @ 11:45 am. |