Okey
Ndibe’s article “ Sanusi’s ethnic
fictions” (Guardian 6/7/2000) is
arguably one of the most dazzling and captivating pieces of prose I have read.
Yet if the “seductive power” of my arguments in “Fulani factor in Nigerian History” lies in my “ability to
marshal all the hocus pocus of
sophistry”, Ndibe’s own arguments have relied almost completely on his
mastery of casuistry, sophistry’s close cousin. The grandiloquent deployment
of mesmerizing words serves as a convenient camouflage for fundamental
distortions. Most of the “ethnic fictions” referred to in the paper are but
figments of a fertile imagination and attempts at the trivialization of factual
substance. Thus, a simple statement of fact that no evidence has been given
showing that Buhari, Shagari and Umaru Dikko stole public funds is blown out of
all proportion and misrepresented as the immodest “trumpeting (of) the
achievements of Buhari, Shagari and even Umaru Dikko”.
Having
started with this half-truth, Ndibe moves on to state that “Sanusi-----
challenges us to field our motley team of IBBs, Abachas, Obasanjos, Gwarzos and
Danjumas against his immortal line-up of the Fulanis and see how terribly our
team stinks”. Although I made no such explicit “challenge”, the inference
is a valid one and consistent with the intent of my listing of the “teams”.
But to thus unveil a challenge and move on without picking it is a most curious
step for one seeking to unravel a “sophistic” argument. Why, may one ask,
did Ndibe not proceed with the precipitous, but logical, step of putting up a
counter-proposition: to boot, that IBB, Abacha, Gwarzo, Obasanjo, Danjuma and
other members of his “motley team” led better governments than my team of
“superstars” like Ahmadu Bello, Murtala Mohammed, Buhari, Shagari etc. ? Is
the silence an implicit admission of the veracity of my proposition, a
confirmation that viewed side-by-side with the “motley team” offered Nigeria
by their critics, the Fulani team indeed turns up like one of superstars? Ndibe
knows that for him to argue in print that Babangida, Abacha and Obasanjo, for
instance, handled the affairs of this nation better than Murtala, Buhari and
even Shagari would be a calamity of no mean proportions. Unable to rise, as it behoves
him,
to the unenviable task of defending the honour and integrity of his own
"team", he moves on with a flourish, like the hunter who stalks
dangerous game only to run away when faced by it, and then carry on with all the
boastfulness of a hero who demolished his prey. The embarrassing spectacle of a
receding backside is cunningly screened by a fusillade of articulate speech.
I
must thank Okey Ndibe for paying me the ultimate compliment of comparing me to
my all-time favourite philosopher David Hume. Maligned as an irreligious
heretic, not least because of two of his works, Natural History of Religion published in his lifetime, and the
posthumously published Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion which attacked the teleological argument for
God’s existence and hardly endeared him to the religious establishment, the
street on which Hume built himself a house in the New Town off St. Andrew’s
Square in Edinburgh is, to this day, called(believe it or not) Saint David’s Street in his honour. Perhaps Nigerians will one day
find it easier to say Saint Umaru Dikko
than Ndibe did, when posterity begins to unveil him in kinder light. I also had
initial difficulty in saying aloud “Saint Umaru Dikko” while conjuring
Dikko’s image in my mind. Yet, as soon as I conjured beside him the randomly
selected image of one of the non-Fulani transport ministers who succeeded him,
there seemed to be a major transformation. Viewed side-by-side with Jeremiah
Useni, it became so easy to see Dikko as not just saintly, but angelic (if not divine).
On
a deeper note, the comparison with Hume was aimed at repeating an old and
ridiculous claim: That the assertion that the Fulani have a culture of political
leadership and are culturally better prepared for it is racist. No one has
argued that leadership is genetic to the Fulani. To associate a cultural
attribute with racial bigotry is a cruel attempt at demonizing protagonists. We
accept easily that the Igbo people of Nigeria, for instance, are culturally
programmed to be successful traders. Generation after generation, Igbos are
trained on enterprise in business and no one doubts the evidence that in almost
every market in Nigeria, the Igbo are the most successful spare parts, building
materials, road transport and even grains dealers. Indeed, because their
ingenuity is unfortunately left unchecked due to moral ambivalence as to means
to achieving ends, their enterprise has given them a bad name due to 419,
counterfeit products, fake drugs etc. But to proclaim the ingenuity of Igbos and
acknowledge their undisputed precedence in their field is not to take a racist
position. No one says every Igbo man must be a good, successful trader, or that
a non-Igbo can not succeed. But it is true, all the same, that a typical igbo is
likely to be more successful in trading enterprise than a non-Igbo in Nigeria,
given the acculturation which has moulded him.
The
same argument goes for the Fulani and leadership. Anyone even slightly
acquainted with the writings of Antonio Gramsci knows that leadership is a
necessary attribute for establishing and sustaining a hegemony. To claim that
the Fulani of the North are a hegemony,
as most Southern “intellectuals” do, and deny them the attribute of leadership
is theoretically nonsensical. This claim is one more illustration of the vacuous
insipidity masquerading itself as academic discourse on the pages of newspapers.
As an intellectual paradox, the novel concept of a Hegemony
without a leadership culture is on the same level as that of a Feudal
North
without barons and serfs.
The
charge of racism and racial arrogance is itself explicable, at least
theoretically, as an affirmation of the very thesis whose repudiation it seeks.
It was Niccolo Machiavelli who, I believe in the Dedication to The
Prince, drew an analogy between cartography and the varying perspectives of
the high and the low on the political landscape. To draw the outline of a
mountain, Machiavelli argues, the cartographer lies low on the plain. To have a
clear view of the plain, on the other hand, he climbs the mountain. A Fulani
purveyor of the political scene in Nigeria is like a man on the mountain
analysing the plains. A simple truth spoken from his position cascades down the
slope with disconcerting torrentiality and is viewed, with consternation, as
arrogant and racist
by the men of the plains. On the other hand, in spite of years of castigation
and vicious stereotyping including genocidal labelling as “Tutsis of
Nigeria” the Fulani never claimed that other Nigerians were racist. The
rantings of the “men of the plains” were seen at worst as the
supercilious pretentiousness of exuberant minors coming of age. The difference
in perspective is reflective, by this count, not of the content and import of
speech (the harshest of which has been the lot of Fulbe to receive), but of the
different co-ordinates defining our respective loci in the hierachy of cultures.
A
third point made by Ndibe is that I saw no irony in speaking of the British
respect for the Fulani. Quite apart from the fact that I was responding to an
earlier article which had taken off from Lord Lugard’s words, the attitude
that everything said by the "white man" is objectionable is a hangover
of the slave mentality. Lord Lugard also lived in Lagos. He described the Yoruba
people, in the main, as treacherous, hypocritical, mean and ungrateful. Many
there are who would view, to take a contemporary example, Obasanjo’s treatment
of his own party and the voters who put him in Aso Rock, his recent increase in
fuel price after repeated assurances to the contrary, his hypocritical display
of exaggerated piety while sitting on a mass of continuing corruption and the
selective vindictiveness of state machinery in the settling of personal scores
etc. as evidence of Lugard’s perceptiveness. On the other hand every Yoruba
man understandably recoils at the contemplation of the implications of this
description. What better way to avoid scrutiny than to dismiss Lugard as a
“colonialist” and take his critical words as evidence of the
“revolutionary character of Yoruba people" as many Yoruba have done?
Similarly, what better way to avoid the truth that, inspite of the general
disregard in which the white man held the black, the colonialist was forced to
give grudging respect to the Fulani leadership, than to dismiss it as a
“British pat on the back” which the Fulbe lap up as “ the epitome of
legitimation?” The commentary is not on the “state of (my)” mind but of
Ndibe’s: a mind unwilling to accept a testimony but which, unable to confute
it, resorts instead to the malicious ventilation of libel on the witness.
The
final point Ndibe makes is most interesting. The Fulani, he acknowledges with
flair, have been unfairly treated “in the frenzy to charge (them) with all
that has gone wrong in Nigeria”. He then calls for a truce and invites
Nigerians away from further “singling out the Fulani, and towards a larger
recognition of the terrible bunch who, in or out of uniform, presume to (mis)direct
our affairs”. He had earlier on professed, in what was obviously his Coup
de Grace, to a sense of disturbance, even repulsion at “the ascent of
ethnic baiting” which took the form of “mass opprobrium and excoriation”
and “vicious ethnic stereotyping” of the Fulbe. In this he has not been
alone. C. Don Adinuba opened his own brilliant and illuminating rejoinder "
Igbo Villages are true democracies"
(Guardian & ThisDay on Sunday, 9/7/2000) with the words:
"demonisation of the Fulani has of late been noticed in the
media", a development he described as "inelegant".
Even Kayode Samuel in his"
Sanusi and the Fulani saints"(Vanguard 30/6/2000), recognizes that
" the whole
world (has been) laying the blame for the country's collapse at (the Fulani's)
door step." Really? Then where were these intellectuals when the likes of
Okonta, Abati and Ige had a field day with “ethnic baiting”? Were they not
“disturbed” and “repulsed” enough to raise their voices and write one
line in defence of the Fulani? This sanctimonious confession is an exercise in
intellectual hypocrisy forced by the provocative nature of what is
seen as a
“ dangerous” essay; the evidence that these cattle-rearers, these namas,
these beneficiaries of quota system after-all can defend themselves and play
their critics at their own game.
This one confession is a major tribute to the service done the Fulbe by my article. It is true that the essay has been met by a sense of outrage and scandal. But the discerning reader knows that the reaction was anticipated. This response to Ndibe suffices as a reply to most of the issues raised in the various rejoinders. If I do not appear remorseful, it is because a mirror can hardly be blamed for the soiled image reflected on it. The solution lies not in attacking (or breaking) the mirror. It lies, rather, in washing the face.
You can read more about my article from my web page at http://www.gamji.com/sanusi.htm
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