ISSUE SIX/2001 Collapse Thesis and The Nigerian Dilemma

BY WALE ADEBANWI

T is a peculiar rendering of a syllogism which bends or subverts difficulty of presenting a coherent picture of one rule of logic in its conclusion: first, a house divided against —about which the eminent itself cannot stand. Then: Nigeria is a house divided against itself. Nigerianist scholar, Thomas Hodgkin, had Therefore: Nigeria (ThisHouse) has fallen. alerted us on. Even though the boob Ordinarily following the rules of deductive logic, the conclusion competently captures the dynamics of an ought to be that Nigeria (or T/i/sHouse)cannot stand. But the author "unfinished state" in which the state is follows a particularly Nigerian path—which characterized by instabilities and he chronicles in this boob — to bring home uncertainties, the slightly exaggerated title his point in a poignant manner, he bends the captures Nigeria as a "finished" state waiting rules! Therefore, a house that ought to be for its obsequies at dusb. But so do many declared incapable of standing is Nigerians, that is the significant few which (prematurely?!) deemed to have collapsed. the author met. believe. The boob But what is Karl Maier's fault in giving this consequently collocates between the fears title to his midnightish narrative on the of these Nigerians (represented by Achebe enduring puzzle called Nigeria? Is this not and Bashir Kurfi in the opening epigraphs), only a restatement of a fitting description by the hope of others (represented by Bola Ige. Karl Maier. one of the country's most distinguished also in the opening epigraphs), and the cold facts of the horrid, sordid and tragic THIS HOUSE HAS personalities and wordsmith. Chinua contradictions which has made Nigeria — FALLEN: MIDNIGHT Achebe? And are Achebe's boobs' titles not some of the most popular, most fitting, in terms of her potentials — arguably the IN NIGERIA, epithets on the Nigerian dilemma? sorriest state on the globe. Public Affairs. What Maier attempts to do with elegant You can read This House as political New York, 2000, 327pp. prose in this lacerating narrative of political journalism: you can read it as elementary, and social venality, is to transcend the painful but useful history: you can read it as informed social commentary; you can even read it as a tolerable, sympathetic subversion of the Nigerian conceit. Tabe a few narrative vignettes: ' "No one is prepared to thinh of the future." He laughed regretfully " Nigeria". he said, " is the land of no tomorrow. " Another: 'To most outsiders, the very name Nigeria conjures up images of chaos and confusion, military coups, repression, drug trafficking, and business fraud. It remains a mystery to all but a handful of academics and diplomats... Nigeria does not present a cut-and-dried moralistic tale of the South African type.' Yet another. '(W)e, the outside world, ignore Nigeria at our peril, from almost any point of view, Nigeria truly matters. However deep it has sunb into a mire of corruption, repression and economic dilapidation, Nigeria remains one of the world's strategic nations. It is the pivot on which the continent turns.' And yet another. The Niger Delta, resemble(s) a giant cracb in managing (a) windshield that (is) recently fanning outward because nobody had made the effort to repair the initial modest damage'. This chaos, which a semi-literate Karl Maier politician who has passed-on

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<< onomatopoeically pronounced as "Shauus'. old order, don't change completely to a new integral to Nigeria and also the residual oasis one! of hope in the polity are captured in the While "Voting Day" (chapter two) preface of this boob. All these feed into the emphasizes the crucial issue of dissatisfaction instructive encounter the author had at the with the long years of military rule and the airport when he arrived Nigeria to begin aversion for its ruinous traditions, it more worb as a foreign correspondent. In one fell importantly reflects on the almost complete swoop he encounters the simultaneous erosion of civic virtues in Nigeria. The immodesty and warmth of Nigerians, the question that this chapter raises are as many collapse of public utilities, extortion and as they are crucial: what hope is there for a corruption. democracy that is based on every other thing The boob is divided into ten chapters with but democratic ethos? Ayetoro village, as an epilogue that wraps up the narratives. captured by this chapter on election day. Chapter one provides a perspectival history provides a prism through which this question to the emergence of the now deceased could be answered. Can those who have dwarfy military general. . whose symbolized the most entrenched interests infernal desire was to reduce Nigeria to his against democracy become the agents of its 9 physical and mental limitations. Abacha's consolidation A respondent (a student) in expiration, which led to the emergence of Ayetoro tells Maier on election day: "All the Gen. Abdulsalam Abubabar. is described by students in Nigeria are against Obasanjo. an unnamed Nigerian businessman as "a When he was in power, he repressed us and coup from heaven", the title of the chapter. dismissed some university officials." While Maier also describes the inauguration of a this might only be a tip of what is yet to be civilian president on May 29, 1999. pointing seen, it provides a glimpse into the malaise out that against the bacbdrop of the history of the past which are inherent in the present. of Nigeria and her recent experience in the Another respondent says: "May be. now that hands of martial brigands, two statements Obasanjo is a civilian, he can do something. made at the occasion would seem to hold But franbly. I am not optimistic. Those much significance. First, when the military generals who brought him to power don't jet did a spectacular steep climb at the venue want him to rule on behalf of the common of the handover, to signify the end of military man. They want him there to protect their rule, the master of ceremonies bellowed out interests". Hope is suppressed by despair, to Abubabar, "God be with you until we meet which raises the next set of questions: Is a 9 again!" The second was the new President. bloodless clean breab with the past possible Olusegun Obasanjo's prayer in his speech at Can democracy be leveraged by its old the same occasion. "May the Almighty help enemies? Where this happens, can the old us." enemies, now converted democrats, carry In the womb of these two statements, as the banner across the bridge? Maier points out. but fails to elaborate, is the "In many ways Abiola was the human expression of the fears of what the future embodiment of the profound contradictions holds in store for the base-born (Nigeria) that that continue to haunt Nigeria," Maier seems has refused to thinb comprehensively, so as to answer the questions. "His was a to fundamentally re-mafee itself. This chapter, quintessential rags-to-riches story... When the against this bacbdrop, can be discursively explosion of the oil wealth was transforming linbed with the epilogue which attempts to Nigeria's military rulers into very rich men. confront what is to be done. By wondering, Abiola was perfectly placed to join them... even at his inauguration, whether Obasanjo (F)or many. Abiola symbolized the civilian would play the role of an African Mibhail elite's ruinous complicity with Western Gorbachev, "who. while trying to reform a capitalism and military rule." It was for Abiola rotten system, oversaw its dismemberment". (and Obasanjo, as Maier fails to add) that Fela Maier stribes a chord which has become a Anibulapo-Kuti composed the popular hit defining note of the Nigerian 'symphony' in "ITT-International Thief Thief". Slightly more the Obasanjo era. And it should be conceded than a decade after, the symbolism changed that this is quite insightful. Many doubting and ITT became Hope '93. though some of people had in the early months of the the most rapacious elements of the old order Obasanjo experiment abandoned their still hung on his necb. What then were the sbepticism. and even cynicism, in the new possibilities of national survival and hope of national renewal, if not redemption. redemption9 Was Abiola a wrong symbol? No The year 2000 was to bring home to them doubt, he carried his historical burden with that the Soviet-path is not totally remote, much dignity and unexpected resolve. For given the Gorbachev logic that is emblematic Maier. "his (Abiola's) presidency might have of Obasanjo's rule: don't continue with the been a mess that many predicted it would

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be. but surely it would have been interesting." for an answer"(p.63). Haruna Mohammed, What is in fact more interesting is that silently, the editor of Citizen, a defunct news the chapter again raises the question of the magazine, who facilitated Maier's interview impossibility of neat boundaries and neat with Babangida. turns out, in his eagerness solutions: the election that ended many years to help Babangida's cause, as his (IBB's) of military rule and was supposed to end nemesis. When IBB mentions that there was several years of incompetent domination, was a report on the murder of Giwa, he an emphatic travesty of all the hallowed rules (Muhammed) quickly jumps in to ask about of democratic election. the report "which he, rather implausibly The boob considers why the election given his knowledge of the government, had could not have been otherwise in chapter never heard of" (p.64). "Babangida seemed three ("Army Arrangement"). This is a chapter lost", reports the author. Then he (IBB) says: that uses Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida's (IBB) "Yes... It was all blown out in this frenzy by rule as an interesting example of the damage you guys (in) the media... A lot of vital links that martial rule in general has done to and vital information were lost. So the report Nigeria. The metaphors he employs here are was not conclusive. They were almost getting as rich as they are reflective of the different {here. But they wouldn't allow the police metaphors and analytic perspectives which because they said the police...the scholars have employed in understanding government. Akilu killed him". Rather than state-civil society relations in Africa. wonder about the kind of "frenzy" that could You can better understand, for instance, have "blown out" the report compiled by the this sentence, "Babangida's residence sat maximum security apparatus headed by prominently on the crest of a shoulder of hills Halilu Akilu, it is better to add an exclamation above downtown Minna."(p. 45) when set mark, as loud as thunderclap, to Babangida's against Celestine Monga's argument about the answer and move on to other things. But we "paramountcy of the State" in post colonial must acknowledge the author's skill in Africa, where the State protrudes upwards like forcing out this answer and the other answer a veritable Kilimanjaro with the civil society concerning the loathsome, apartheid- constituting the open plains at the feet of the supporting former British Prime Minister, mountaneous state. Also, the short narratives Margaret Thatcher, whom Babangida in this chapter which seek to capture the claimed, asked him to change into civilian various dimensions of the corrosive regime clothes and run for president. What is there of . give vent to the to say to Thatcher when Abiola rears his head dynamics that have been captured by scholars again here, as Babangida charges, as the first who describe the State in much of Africa person to ask for this transformation? In the either as a rentier or rogue State. Even though end, Babangida describes himself as a victim he argues that after Abacha's five harsh years of "a grand media and intellectual in power, "Babangida's method's seemed conspiracy", as if any group could be more rather benign". Maier is schooled by an M.D. tragically conspiratorial than the clique Yusufu, who argues that "1 think Babangida which he has helped impose on his was even worse than Abacha. Babangida went fatherland. As the author attests, "he bears a all out to corrupt society. Abacha was major - many Nigerian say the largest - intimidating people with fear. With him gone responsibility for the crisis Nigeria finds itself now. you can recover. But this corruption in", (P73). remains, and it is very corrosive to society". "The Ogoni Wars" (chapter four) presents The interview with Babangida around the plight of a minority group (the Ogoni of which this chapter is constructed is its major the Niger Delta) as symbolic of the plight of strength. Maier asks questions from Babangida minority groups in Nigeria, particularly those in ways in which the man's famed nimble from the oil-bearing areas. The author, as one mind could not but betray the wide distance of those who reported the crises in the area, between the truth and his answers. Nigerian delves into "forbidden" areas of discourse journalists in their interviews with IBB are which opposing elements and the crusading either too patronizing or too antagonistic, too media had screened out of view. Given the interested, to pose the kind of penetrating passionate opposition of these elements to questions that the author asked which military rule and the symbolic dimension of trapped Babangida in his own pretensions and the Ogoni struggles in the larger fight against prevarications. The author says: "If military-regional domination, many of the comfortable with his subject, Babangida could contradictions inherent in the struggle were be self-assured, eloquent, and witty, but when either not properly interrogated or were off- he was not, he seemed fragile and had trouble handedly dismissed as manifestations of completing a sentence. When I asked what official manipulation. For instance, Saro- happened to , Babangida stumbled Wiwa's virulent opposition to Kobani and

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Letons membership of the Social Democratic President Shehu Shagari, and who was in Party (SDP) on the basis of the fact that turn upstaged by Babangida collectively engaging in party politics would undermine defend the hegemony that produced them the Ogoni struggle, the author points out. (even till date)? A "myth", or if you like, a contradicts Saro-Wiwa's earlier statement "falsehood" which has united a people for that, "we must support the progression to so long around an organizing idea, must democratic rule, as it is only through constitute their own "truth". Identity can democratic action that we can re-establish define truth. If Abacha were alive today, one our rights. The duty of party politicians could make a safe guess that he will be in among us is to represent Ogoni. their the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF). Yet. constituencies; to push the Ogoni agenda Babangida and Abacha stopped Shehu Musa within their parties" (p.98). Yar'Adua on his journey to the presidency This leads to a short narrative on the (the latter even killed him), and Abacha dilemma of the Ijaws which, in turn, gives an deposed the symbol of Northern hegemony, insight into the centrality of oil — this time Sultan Ibrahim Dasubi. etc. The author fails palm oil — in the lead-up to the scramble to explore these contradictions as they for and partition of Africa by Europeans in express themselves in domination and Berlin. Thus began "The Journey of a hegemony. Thousand Miles..." (The fourth chapter), However, the excellent journalist in Maier which leads from George Goldie Taubman's comes to light again in his treatment of the Akassa, "the beach head of British colonial antecedence of the Sharia exponent, occupation" (p. 120). toOlusegun Obasanjo's Zamfara State Governor, Ahmed Yerima Sani. Odi — where soldiers "razed... with mortars The author shows how, if Sani's means of and heavy-caliber machine guns" (p. 142). financial comfort were brought before an This chapter ends beautifully by linking the alkali court, he might not be found fit to sit crises in the Niger Delta with the identity crisis atop his Islamic enclave (pp. 184-187). Sani. that had gripped the Nigerian Union in the for the author, "indicated how lucrative it can 1980s and 1990s, while pointing out that be in Nigeria to be simultaneously a public perhaps the United Africa Company (UAC) servant and a businessman"(p. 186). that preceded formal colonialism did a better The chapters on the Yoruba West and Igbo job in the geographies leading Up to Nigeria East examine the struggle of these parts than what the independence Nigerian against northern domination and the rivalries government has done so far (p. 130). of the two "enlightened" nationalities to gain The next four chapters (interrupted only advantage over each other. While an off-duty by chapter 9). "The Faithful", "Children of carpenter, Gani Adams, has become, Ham". "The Spirit of Oduduwa ", and "A Glass regrettably, one of the spokespersons for the Cage", focus on the Hausa-Fulani north, the most educationally advanced area of the Middle Belt, the Yoruba West and the Igbo East country, the "glass cage" in which the Igbos respectively. From the Islamic Jihad through are caught up forces Emeka Ojukwu. not the dominance of the Northern Region's only to carry on the tradition of Igbo-Yoruba earlier premier, Sardauna Ahmadu Bello, to rivalry, but to somewhat exclaim that "the recent religious fanaticism and riots, Maier very circumstances of Nigeria only permits reconsiders the myth of the "all powerful an idiot to be 'detribalized'". northern monolith". But while he does not "So Nigeria stands at a crossroads with overlook its contradictions, he unwittingly three probable scenarios in front of it". The underwrites the functional nature of the author concludes his narrative by looking at "myth". these scenarios, two of which he claims Relating to this, he points out that would produce severe consequences. The Sardauna Bello's mother was a slave (p. 157). first scenario would demand addressing the and that until Obasanjo took office, Islam was the religion of power in Nigeria (p. 154). While systemic rot in Nigeria and initiating a talk- the first may serve an important route to shop to engineer a systemic change. If this understanding Bello's persona and why he fails, then the status quo can be perpetuated was prevented from becoming a Sultan, it is with its attendant crises and contradictions. worth wondering whether the other does not The third will be the failure of the Obasanjo attest to the functionality of a "myth"? The regime to arrest the drift. leading to a return pertinent question is: if something is real in to military rule and consequently, the shout its consequences, does it still remain a myth? of "To thy tents Olsreal"! If some grand interests did (and does) not One major flaw of this work is that even coalesce around the monolith (the North), though the author has a somewhat clear and what then explains why the threesome of deep insight into the Nigerian crisis, the General . who upstaged insight does not seem deep and penetrating enough, in the end. to produce the panacea

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that would match the depth of the crises loob at the organic unity — if not. in fact, narrated in the boob. Libe the present power solidity — of the systemic rot (of which holders, particularly Obasanjo and his corruption is only one manifestation), foreign props, Maier over-emphasizes the domination and hegemony, clashing effect of corruption on the Nigerian crises, identities and the agency of international as if it were the chief evil. He fails to see that interests that demand minimal changes in the the difference between domination and structure of the Nigerian state, we may not hegemony, and state decay in Nigeria is often understand why the crumbling house has one of inflection. And that pervasive refused to fall finally. corruption is only a manifestation of state However, Maier succeeds, in this readable decay which is the result of the capture of prose, in traversing several social and the state since independence by a political registers to capture the sensibilities consumptive and incompetent elite — from the solemn to the banal — that define coalescing around a particular ethnic group. contemporary life in Nigeria. The central Because he overemphasizes corruption and argument that overhangs his narrative is this: over-Ioobs this linhage. he fails therefore to Nigeria is a potentially, in fact, inherently linb the above with the dynamics of the beautiful country that has been made so ugly disparate ethnic and religious identities and is virtually impossible to beautify a.qa'm. contesting for the power matrix. It is this But one can challenge this as a counter- theory of the social composition of interests, factual argument. How long is 40 years in the which the French writer Michel Foucault life of a nation-state? The fact that Nigeria speabs to in The History of Sexuality, where has not matched her manifest destiny in the he describes the bind of power that is "mobile past does not mean she will not do so in the and transitory...producing cleavages in a future. society that shifts about, fracturing unities Perhaps, finally, a simple thing can be said and affecting regroupings, furrowing across about the paradoxes and contradictions that individuals themselves, cutting them up and Maier narrates in this boob: The house has remolding them, marking off irreducible not fallen because Nigeria is largely an regions ... in their ... minds". aspiration. There are few realities that can It is this "mobile and transitory" power obliterate an aspiration. Aspirations cling that produced Obasanjo through the stubbornly to possibilities — even against construction of a zone of simultaneous reason. That is why, even with Maier's clear engagement and negation that concedes so observations about the "Midnight in Nigeria", as to enthrone or revise an ethos. Unless we the possibilities of dawn are not extinct. GBS Reconciling The Many Selves BYANGEIANWOSU LICE Walber's new boob. The Way Forward Is With A Broken Heart, is not much different from some of her earlier worbs particularly blacb-American. sociology and in terms of subject and expressive mode; she equally does history. not hide the fact that she has merged fiction and fact. The In itself, the title insinuates an narrative is largely epistolary: it opens and ends as a letter to exaggerated feeling of pain through which her former (first), husband who is Jewish, reminiscing on how the stories narrated become a way of gaining they lived through a ten-year marriage in the maturity and clarity, eventually leading to a Alice Walker. "volatile and violent" American deep South state of feeling, rather than of that of 'Tightness' or 'wrongness'. THE WAY FORWARD state of Mississippi. As the author states, the narrative Although central to all the stories is love, IS WITH A BROKEN continues "with some of the stories that grew Walber tabes in tandem with this, more HEART, Random out of an era marbed by deep-sea changes 'political' themes including environmental House, New York,2000, and transitions, stories that are mostly issues such as the depletion of the ozone 200pp. fiction...but comes out of a singular life." layer; the race and craze for nuclear Consequently, the stories, which are of seven weapons; the ever swelling tide of violence Asha Bandele broad titles, start with that of her earlier in America as well as the continued THE PRISONER'S marriage. The other stories act as parallels to displacement of peoples, re-presented in the WIFE, Pocket Books. this and involve relationships of various experience of Indians. It would seem she New York, 1999, forms, especially mixed and broben thinbs these ethical issues more urgent than "moral" issues such as lesbianism, though 219pp. marriages. What we subsequently find is a fairly complex panorama of American. throughout the narrative, one overtly gets

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