Nigeria: This Present Darkness

By Feyi Fawehinmi

Before he died in 2015, the late Professor Stephen Ellis wrote his last book titled This Present Darkness: A History of Nigerian Organised Crime. Going through this book left me with several thoughts, most of them unpleasant. 

It is a fascinating read covering, not just organised crime, but the evolution of the Nigerian state (or maybe they are the same thing?). At any rate, I want to share 8 random things I found interesting in the book and I will leave you to draw your own conclusions.

1. In 1947, late Chief Obafemi Awolowo wrote that “Corruption is the greatest defect of the Native Court system.” He complained that not only did judges take bribes, people used their connections to enrich themselves and avoid punishment for their crimes. He also wrote that in the north, a new Emir always removed all the people appointed by the previous Emir and replaced them with his own people. He wrote all these as a complaint against the Indirect Rule system favoured by the British.

2. In 1922, the Colonial Secretary in London, one Winston Churchill, wrote to Nigeria’s Governor General at the time, Sir Hugh Clifford, asking him to ban certain types of letters called ‘Charlatanic correspondences’. This was because J.K Macgregor who was Headmaster of Hope Waddell Institute for 36 years, had discovered hundreds of letters written and received by his students ordering all sorts of books, charms and even potions from England, America and India in particular. Most of the charms were nonsense and the students were invariably asked to send more money if they wanted more powerful ones. A total of 2,855 such letters were intercepted by the Posts & Telegraph Department between 1935 and 1938.

3. In 1939, a Nigerian businessman based in Ghana named Prince Eikeneh, wrote to the colonial government in Nigeria complaining about the number of Nigerian girls who were coming to Ghana to work as sex workers. He said the girls were usually taken there by a Warri-based Madam named ‘Alice’ who told the girls they were going to learn a trade or get married. He concluded that the trade was very well-organised and profitable for the ring leaders.

Nigeria: The Beginning Of The End

By Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo

Clarence Day was a renowned American poet, essayist and philosopher who lived in the 19th century. Clarence Day could have been a prophet because he captured with astonishing accuracy the trajectory of the collapse of human society. Asked how future generations will know that their society is decaying or collapsing, he counseled his students to always look back into mankind’s documented history. According to him, of all the inventions of man, none is as enduring as the documented histories of human existence. Empires rise and fall, he said; civilizations grow old and die. But in the world of books are volumes and volumes that have seen this happen again and again; still as fresh as the day they were written; still telling men’s heart of hearts of men centuries dead. 

*Dr. Arthur Nwankwo 

However, he regretted that many societies have become lax and complacent; so much so that history means nothing to them. His words, no doubt, accurately depict the Nigerian situation and our leaders’ penchant for collective amnesia. A country that could remove history as a subject from her school curricula is doomed to repeat the tragedies of the past. 

Sir John Glubb, a British author and lecturer, has equally argued that most empires, glued together by artificial tendons generally do not last the distance. Citing examples with the Greek, Roman, Ottoman and Romanov Russian Empires, he remarked that such societies do not realize their internal rot even when events indicate that they have entered the Age of Decadence, i.e. the final stage at which such society is marked by delusion, pessimism, materialism, frivolity, and the total collapse of institutions of governance.

I am constrained to remark here that a few years from now, historians would be writing about the total disintegration of Nigeria. Then Chinua Achebe’s prophetic bequeathal of literary ingenuity and foresight, There was a Country would become more meaningful to us. But even now, Nigeria’s history of dissolution is writing itself furiously; accelerated by agents of doom masquerading as religious and pious puritans. In all my life I have never seen a country consumed by the spirit of despondency and forgetfulness as Nigeria; a country on the highway to perdition without knowing it. 

By the time the day is done, there would be no more compatriots to stand in the gap for Nigeria, there will be nobody to obey the clarion call of national defense; the love, strength and faith would have dissipated in Nigerians that they call to service would fall on deaf ears and the labours of our heroes past would factually be in vain. This sounds like a doomsday prophecy but it is not. It does appear that all the prophecies about Nigeria’s demise are being fulfilled in our time today. The signs are indeed ominous and the day is far gone for redemption. 

The crumbling period of Nigeria started in 1966 when the Nigerian State conspired to annihilate the Igbo population for no just cause than Igbos capacity and ingenuity to survive where others have failed. Though, after that genocidal pogrom, the Nigerian state seemed to get along as a united country with patchy mechanisms, the final descent to perdition began on May 29th 2015 when a combination of political forces anchored on treachery, chicanery and other negative thematic ushered in Muhammadu Buhari into office as the President. Since then, a chain of events, so dire, has occurred that it would seem the Nigerian empire has snapped the fuse of self-destruction, going by the series of catastrophes we have had since 2015.