By Obi Nwakanma
Culturally, the East of Nigeria has two things going for it: one is a contiguous and compact geography that is very culturally connected, and the second is a very enterprising and driven population, with no sense, until very recently, of a domineering monarchical spirit.
By Obi Nwakanma
By every index, Nigeria as a nation, has very nearly, finally collapsed. It is held together now only by a very weak thread called fate.
Basically, Nigeria has slipped to the symbolic phase of nationhood. It can only perform symbolic actions of nationness: convoke a parliament which only sits symbolically because it is actually not a parliament; issue laws, which carry only symbolic authority because they have no life, and are unenforceable; issue executive papers that have no administrative force, because it is not connected to institutions that serve citizens. There are no citizens.
By Obi Nwakanma
Twenty years ago, the alumni of the Government College Umuahia first met in the United States, and decided to take on the challenge of restoring their famous alma mater, the Government College Umuahia, and while at it, have some fun.
In that first convention that drew many of the “old boys” of the Government College Umuahia – “Umuahians,” as they are best known – for the first time to a national gathering in New Jersey, their distinguished “old boy,” the world famous novelist, the late Chinua Achebe, in wheelchair, tended lovingly all the way from Bard College, in the Catskills by his wife, Christie, reminded his fellow Umuahians, of what every generation of schoolmasters used to say to students at Umuahia: “to whom much is given, much is expected.” It was the basis of the “noblese oblige.”
By Obi Nwakanma
A few weeks ago, newspapers in Nigeria reported that the National Council of State met, and the current president, Mr. Bola Tinubu, chaired it. For starters, I’m still unable to reconcile with the fact that a man of the quality of Tinubu would sit on a seat on which the giant Azikiwe sat. It is a travesty. Think about it dear country men, and you will see the incongruity; the tragic slide in our station as a people and as a nation. That picture alone tells us about the real tragedy of Nigeria.
The quality of national leadership; the quality of aspiration; the quality of insight; the quality of presence and carriage; the depth of preparation – one a thoroughbred all-rounder that embodied the highest human ideals which nature stupendously endowed in one body, and the other with a very uncertain past. I’m ahead of myself. But it gets much worse. Take a look at those who came to the Council of State meeting. You would see the picture of Nigeria and why it has failed as a nation.
By Obi Nwakanma
The fact that I have to write this, makes me retch. It turns my stomach because this is the 21st century, and there are still many among us who still think in this brutally savage way about other people, who they have to dehumanize in order to feel alive themselves. That I have to defend the Igbo, and being Igbo, makes me doubly conscious, and it is a feeling that compels one to reexamine once more, the contradictions of being Nigerian.
The new nations in Africa are creations of one of modernity’s most complex situations: colonialism. It brought many disparate cultural and political entities into filiations that in many cases have remained uncertain and fragile. That has always been one of the core criticisms of those who believe, and argue that Nigeria must end; divided, and each part pulling away towards its own sovereign goals. Nigeria was created formally in 1914, from the unification of three colonial administrations: the Southern and Northern protectorates and the colony of Lagos. But the history of the settling of Nigeria goes further back to the turn of the century when the Caliph of Sokoto was killed by the British in 1902, effectively bringing to the end, the Sokoto Caliphate.
By Obi Nwakanma
Chinua Achebe, the leading African writer of the 20th century, did write in his The Trouble with Nigeria, that Nigeria was a fractious nation. However, a shared fear and antipathy of the Igbo was the single thing that unites Nigeria. This situation persists. And this certainly, is the impulse that drives Bayo Onanuga, senior Special Assistant to Mr. Tinubu on Information and Strategy, to keep invoking the name of the Igbo in his enterprise as a hack, and a regime propagandist. The Igbo, it is now clear, are Onanuga’s nightmares.
At every turn of event, he invokes the Igbo. When his world is about to fall apart, he invokes them. His masters love him for sticking it to the Igbo. But he does not seem to know or understand the Igbo. So, let me tell him a little bit about these people. They are democrats. It takes them a long time to arrive at a decision, because they talk, and debate and disagree, to the point sometimes, of distraction. They are slow to anger. They watch. They sniff the ground carefully. They are patient. They make sure that they are on the right they act.
By Obi Nwakanma
Nigeria is in dire straits. That is no longer news. It is not even news anymore that Nigerians are going through the worst economic crisis of their lives. The very lean Structural Adjustment Programme years – the SAP years – may not even compare. I have been told that the kind of desperation seen now in Nigeria is apocalyptic. It is strange and foreboding. An eerie and very fatalistic despondence gnaws at the very core of the Nigerian psyche.
For many of us growing up in Nigeria from the late 80s and the 1990s, Nigeria had turned into something of an economic dustbowl. Many middle class folks suddenly found themselves thrown down the scale. Many families were destroyed because of the stress on family life and income. I came home one holiday in 1986 from University of Jos, and asked for jam, and nearly got kicked off the dining table by my enraged father who thought my request both insensitive and unintelligent.
By Obi Nwakanma
Two weeks ago, armed attackers stormed Aba, and at the Obikabia military checkpoint on the outskirts of the city, shot and killed two soldiers. It was a very unfortunate and dastardly act by these very cruel, heartless and rampaging gunmen who targeted armed soldiers, and have been making the South- East of Nigeria a terrible jungle of contemporary Necropolitics. These killer gunmen must be ferreted out and served their just dessert. But the reaction both by the military authorities, and by the president of Nigeria left bile in many mouths.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu issued orders to security agencies to lay siege and not only apprehend the killers of soldiers of the Nigerian Armed Forces, but also those calling for a “sit-at- home.” The Nigerian Armed Forces, he said, was capable of coming down heavily and crushing “non-state actors” making our communities unsafe. It is heartening to know that the Federal Government and our Armed Forces can crush these non- state actors making our communities unsafe, restless and increasingly unhabitable and insecure.
By Obi Nwakanma
There was a tradition recorded by the Roman historians, Suetonius and Tacitus, of the Naumachia, the spectacular, very large scale, gladiatorial public entertainment, which the Romans themselves also called Navalia Proelia because it was held at sea, or large lakes, or flooded arenas.
Those who were rounded up, or selected to these Naumacharii, normally prisoners of war or state captives already condemned to die, were expected to enact naval battles before the emperor and fight to the death. And on this one occasion, those prisoners already condemned to fight to death, stood before the disfigured and lame emperor, Claudius, and declared, “Ave, Imperator! Morituri te Salutamus!” (“Hail Emperor! We who are about to die salute you!” Neither Suetonius nor Tacitus remarked at any hint of, or intention for irony in making that salute by these tragically fated fighters.
By Dele Sobowale
“The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arms are always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking and writing [the truth] – John Adams,1735-1826, US President, 1797-1801.
The Nigerian media, print, electronic, main line and online, except the traitors in the industry, is under attack now as never before since the late General Sani Abacha. Now, as then, those whose principles have not been compromised by being now closer to the corridors of power must close ranks and wage this war against freedom to the end. The end, of course, means retaining our liberties to publish or broadcast the truth to the people of Nigeria – despite the ever-present wish of all governments that unfavourable reports be suppressed.
By Obi Nwakanma
A terrible time has fallen on Nigeria. There is no hiding it. Hunger is not just rampant; it is now an epidemic. There is a food crisis, and it is inevitably leading towards massive national food riots. However, a few weeks ago, a minister in the current government said that there was no scarcity of food in Nigeria.
Well, I’m not quite certain about this minister, since most of Tinubu’s cabinet is made up of second rate, mediocre, provincial types – but elementary economics theory of scarcity connects with a price theory which is determined by the dynamics of supply and demand. Equilibrium occurs when the rise in supply meets the rise in demand. But disequilibrium happens too. This, when the demand for the resource outstrips the supply, and it leads both to exclusion, and to scarcity.
By Obi Nwakanma
Last year my son made plans to buy a ticket and fly down on his own to Nigeria, and spend the summer with his uncle in Abuja and in the village, East of Nigeria. He was twenty, young, and raring to go. He wanted to explore Nigeria on his own.
It was I that stopped him from traveling to Nigeria, much to his chagrin. I had to beg him to stop. News coming out of Nigeria scared the bejesus out of me. Still does. Kidnappings. Assassinations. Disappearances. The sheer terror of being Nigerian today is so overwhelming that just thinking about it gives one a headache. My son, needless to say, was very disappointed.
By Obi Nwakanma
Today, let us celebrate worthy men. This past Thursday, November 16, was the birthday of a giant of history; a man whom the colorful Ozuomba Mbadiwe could have called “a Caterpillar,” who showed the light, so that Africans may see the way. Incidentally, that was the motto of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s newspaper, the West African Pilot: “Show the Light, and the People will find their way.”
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It was the message at the core of his anti-colonial nationalist organizing. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe – “Zik of Africa,” as he was very fondly called – was the leader of the African anti-colonial Nationalist Movement, from 1937 to 1957, culminating in decolonization, with the independence of Ghana, that year, and home rule for the regions in Nigeria also that year, and full national independence subsequently in 1960.
By Obi Nwakanma
In the last three weeks, I have suffered from a very devastating writer’s block. I could not move my mind. It felt stiff and unyielding – unwilling to grasp, or grapple with any kind of ideas, relating particularly to Nigeria. I have felt completely drained; as though there was no more gas left in my tank. I have felt like there is nothing left to be said about Nigeria.
We have imagined the impossible. We have become the impossible. I just felt cynical. In these last few months, I have also thought long and hard about fully and completely giving up my Nigerian citizenship. I mean, what is left of this country, really? What is Nigeria to me? I have asked these questions, rolled it in my mind; weighed it. And I very nearly made the move of officially renouncing any more affiliations with Nigeria, and thereafter, stay quiet, and stop worrying about this very tragic and demonic country.
By Obi Nwakanma
I still do remember growing up, my father waking, and shaving with the BBC. Against a background of the bleep-bleep-bleep signal of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s World Service, he would do his private chores, and prepare for work. The BBC Foreign Service having fortified his appetite for “real news,” he would then switch to the Local Radio for Morning News.
This was unwavering ritual. For that generation, there was some naïve sense that the BBC carried real news and was committed to pietist truth. I did too for many years. Until I began to see the underbelly of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The small chinks in its armour which became in large part, wide cracks that left me both puzzled and annoyed.
By Obi Nwakanma
I watched with extreme difficulty, and not insubstantial pain, the interview in Stellenbosch, South Africa, in which the poet, playwright and Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, very painfully, tried to subvert the truth about the Nigerian election, by claiming that the Labour Party “came third” and knew that they “did not win the election.” That the Labour Party had become a regional movement. That Peter Obi and the party leaders were trying to push young people into the streets to protest.
Here, let us reproduce Soyinka in full: “One party took over the Labour Movement and then it became a regional party…my own organization has a monitoring unit, and so I could say categorically that Peter Obi’s Party came third, not even second! And that the leadership knew it. But they wanted to do what we call in Yoruba, ‘Gba Jue!’
By Obi Nwakanma
The five governors of the South East of Nigeria met in Enugu last week to deliberate on the security situation of the region. The impact of the now infamous “Sit-at-Home” forced on the South East has taken its toll, and the chickens have come home to roost. The economic and social life of the South East has taken such a hit and has been damaged almost irretrievably.
Against the background of the South East governors meeting are videos emerging of Asari Dokubo’s claims and counter claims, in interviews granted to television stations, the recent being with Channel TV’s Seun Okinbaloye, in which he plainly accepted that he owned and ran a private Army which had been contracted by the Federal Government to engage in Black Ops for the government.
By Obi Nwakanma
The Federal Republic of Nigeria is now, to all intents and purpose, like a patient etherized on life support in hospice care. It is suffering multiple organ failure. There is just very little hope of a rebound. Anytime soon, it is bound to code. The hawks are circling. The grave diggers are ready. The obituary writers in the world’s great Metropolitan Centers are waiting in the wings. A great elephant is finally about to take its last breath. The thing is, there are no winners in this outcome. Even the separatists will soon discover that this country which we have all managed to kick in the groin was “the black man’s last hope.”
With the death of Nigeria, much of Africa will be rendered orphans. A light will leave the eyes of this continent. Nigeria, until it began to thaw, held West Africa in its firm grips. Analysts have predicted that the death of Nigeria as a sovereign state (even so, it is that only in name currently) will throw sub-Saharan Africa into 100-year turmoil, and unleash a demographic movement that might disrupt the social fabric of the continent.
By Obi Nwakanma
“If you
do not know where to put your hand, rest it on the knee” – Igbo proverb.
The inauguration of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria into office is a pretty serious constitutional event. It transfers power definitively to an individual who is then expected to embody the moral, philosophical, visionary, and constitutional ideals of the nation, and direct the executive function of state. The Constitution establishes the power of Nigeria in three institutions of state: the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, and the President. The National Assembly makes the laws.
The Supreme Court interprets those laws, including the permanent laws established by the Constitution. The President, as the Head of the executive branch of the three arms, executes the laws. These three powers together make up the Federal Government. They operate separately, and each is granted the power to oversee the other in order to create a balance of power, and prevent the misuse of authority. For instance, the National Assembly, which is actually the most powerful institution of state in a democratic republic, controls the Treasury of Nigeria, by law. Not the President.
By Obi Nwakanma
“No one
tells the deaf that there is a stampede in the market” – Igbo proverb
On May 29, a handover
ceremony should take place, with a parade at the Eagles Square, to inaugurate a
new, elected President of Nigeria. That date would end the eight disastrous
years of Mr. Muhammadu Buhari as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
I do emphasize the word “disastrous.” Buhari is a very tragic figure of
Nigerian history.
