Nigeria: Understanding Restructuring Aright

By Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo

Given the renewed momentum and calls for the restructuring of Nigeria, I am not surprised that it has dominated media headlines both in the one print and electronic media. Recently, I was watching and listening to a programme where the discussants dwelt extensively on the economy and what should be done. One thing that actually interested me was the various suggestions made by the panelists on how to move Nigeria out from the woods.

While the panellists were unanimous in their agreement that the economy has collapsed almost irretrievably, some of them recommended, as a way forward, that Nigerians should go back to the farms; others agreed that there is urgent need to restructure the country. Most of the discussants also dwelt extensively on the importance of restructuring. Even Vice President Yemi Osibanjo called in to make his position on restructuring known, though I find his explanation vague. 

But whether the Vice President agrees with restructuring or not, my happiness is that many highly placed Nigerians, both at home and in the Diaspora, who before now would hear nothing about restructuring the country, have become fiery apostles of restructuring. I have always known that we can never escape the route of restructuring because history is coterminous with the reality that restructuring is the only escape route for countries like Nigeria. In the past 35 years I have maintained this position.

However, it does appear that even when restructuring has become very trending today, many of the new apostles do not understand the full import of restructuring. I want to say for the umpteenth time, that what Nigeria needs now is not a back-to-land initiative (that is good in itself) but an urgent restructuring of the country. My worry actually, is the lackadaisical understanding of this process of restructuring, even by those we may regard as informed. 

Castro And The Politics Of Deification

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Since the contemporary world is streaked with political leaders who ruthlessly betray their people’s trust, humanity is not infrequently afflicted with amnesia that compels it to hanker after its torturous past. That was a past when the rule of the strong man was the norm.

*Castro 

Yes, such strong men recorded lofty achievements. Some not only enlarged the territories of their countries through the conquest of other lands, they exceptionally improved the standard of living of their citizens. But in most cases when their caprices became the rules, the regime of brutality that was often manifested in the torture, tears and death of citizens besmeared their glorious interludes of achievements. Through Genghis Khan, Charlemagne, Alexander, Chairman Mao to Adolf Hitler, humanity has witnessed strong men whose single-handed pursuit of their visions led to the development of their nations. But such people saw themselves as the sole repositories of the patriotism and wisdom that could place their nations on a stellar pedestal of development.

But we often dismiss the accompanying brutality as an inevitable upshot of their quest for development of their nations. Thus, for instance, we often refer to how through rarefied leadership, Lee Kuan Yew transformed Singapore from a third world country to a first world nation. It was the same notion of strong men as better leaders that herded the Nigerian citizens into electing Muhammadu Buhari who is now floundering. As far as we are concerned, the suppression of dissent that accompanies the regime of a strong man pales into insignificance in the face of the miracles of development wrought by astute leadership. Yet, we must insist that something is wrong with the progress that would abridge the rights and claim the lives of a significant proportion of the members of the society.

What is clear as most people look back at the life and times of Fidel Castro is that they swoon over the development he brought to Cuba. There is the linear narrative of his transformation of Cuba, a tiny North American country of about 11 million people, to a formidable force that could call the bluff of arrogant powers like the United States that embargoed it. After successfully routing Fulgencio Batista who had trapped Cuba under his military jackboots, Castro opened a new vista of development in his country. His era was that of unprecedented improvement in literacy and medicine. But all this tends to blur Castro’s ruthlessness that bordered on misanthropy that mocked the terror of medieval potentates.