Prebendal politics and Nigeria’s vanishing vanguard (1)

By Abiodun KOMOLAFE

We must, at this critical juncture in Nigeria’s affairs, look back to examine what was a more focused and visionary leadership and ask what standard we deserted. The nation currently faces a fundamental challenge in defining true leadership and understanding how strong institutions can propel a country forward.

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The underachievement of the Nigerian nation is disconcerting. For instance, the present Federal Government has sensibly set a target of achieving a one trillion-dollar economy by 2030. In contrast, Brazil, which has a similar population and was virtually at par with Nigeria some forty years ago, has already achieved $2.3 trillion. This shows that, over four decades, Brazil has had a more determined, patriotic and strategically visionary leadership. The overarching question, therefore, is: where did we lose the plot?

Stripped of rhetoric, Nigeria’s present struggle for competitiveness finds succour in the failure to institutionalize the memory of a better leadership sequence in the past. When the anticolonial struggle started, it was driven by an ideological propellant. The goal was to build a modern developmental state capable of eliminating poverty and, in the process, “make life more abundant.” The erosion of a strategic political vision after the coup d’état of January 15, 1966, is the root cause of our present wobbling and fumbling; and it is as if the gods are angry!

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The coup, unlike, for example, ‘The Free Officers Coup’, which happened to Egypt in 1952, was clearly deficient in political philosophy or programmatic direction, as seen in Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu’s coup-day speech.

Those behind the plot could at best be described as “romanticists”, if we want to be polite. Others would describe them as “misguided”, while the harsher critics would use terms such as “opportunists” or even “deluded.” Whatever the case, their actions – and the “suspension” of the 1963 Republican Constitution – set the country back in a way that politics in Nigeria has now become a tragicomedy, leaving over one hundred million Nigerians wallowing in poverty. After all, every siege draws an audience!

At the very beginning, Nigeria possessed a political atmosphere through which a whole cadre of nationalists with a clear vision emerged. This atmosphere threw up men like Nigeria’s first lawyer, Christopher Alexander Sapara-Williams, who did not have bad handwriting when early constitutional activism and laying the groundwork for political agitation came to bear. Emerging from that period was a host of lawyers who became fierce activists in the battle against colonialism.

A prime example was Adeyemo Alakija, who co-founded the immensely successful Daily Times of Nigeria. The country continued to produce a determined cadre that proved to be a constant thorn in the side of the colonial regime. Faced with this continuous vanguard, the colonial government itself had to quietly accept that a clear strategic plan needed to be developed for an eventual transition to self-rule.

Unlike today, there was the vibrant emergence, under the esteemed lawyer Ladipo Solanke, of the West African Students Union (WASU) in 1925. This was a clear intellectual amalgamation, drawing up a roadmap for the end of colonialism when its members – who were mostly law students – eventually returned to Nigeria.

Their participation was not based on the sharing of the spoils of war, hideously referred to today as “stomach infrastructure.” Like Jawaharlal Nehru and the Indian nationalists before him, their intention was to end colonialism and outshine the colonialists by building a more socially just post-colonial society.

They were not just young activists; they were, in reality, a research group – much like a modern think-tank. Indeed, they emulated the early reform movements of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in Turkey, political initiatives across Latin America, and, latterly, the Free Officers Movement in Egypt. To digress, it shames Nigeria’s post-colonial state that no worthy institution or endeavour has been created and named after Solanke. In particular, whatever passes for leadership in the Southwest, from where he hailed, should be thoroughly ashamed.

● To be concluded.

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