Opinion: Nigeria – We are seeing the decline but not (yet) the fall

by Amanze Obi

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The result is that you can hardly draw a live between Nigeria and its problems. Both appear to be Siamese trines. The danger in separating one from the other looms large every moment. That is why Nigeria and Nigerians seem to have reconciled themselves with those odds that have been weighing the country down.

In his classic novel, Decline and Fall, published in 1928, Evelyn Waugh, an English novelist, tells the haunting story of an innocent whose bizarre adventures plunged him into the sham, brittle world of high society.

But Waugh’s account was merely an allegory. His disappointment did not lie in the audacious exploits of the innocent. He was rather disappointed with the twisted society that corrupted the life of the innocent. Waugh’s approach was apocalyptic. He warned of the dangers of a free fall should the society which he mirrored fail to change its ways. But he was lucky. Doom did not envelope the English society of his era. Rather, it made appreciable progress as the years went by. Today, the English society is easily ranked as one of the most improved in the world.

We can domesticate this account by trying, once again, to mirror the Nigerian society, even if cursorily. In a few days from today, Nigerians will roll out the drums to celebrate yet another independence anniversary. Nigeria became a sovereign independent state on 1st October, 1960. In other words, the country will turn 53 in a few days’ time. From historical accounts, we have been made to understand that Nigeria got its independence on a platter of gold. By that they mean that the country and its people did not have to go into guerrilla warfare or suffer undue degradation and dehumanization   before the attainment of self-rule.

The struggle for Nigeria’s independence was waged with words, not bullets and mortars. But it did not take long after the departure of the British colonialists for the country to be plunged into strife. It began with its failure to hold credible elections owing to the power struggle among the three major blocs of the country, namely, the East, the West and the North. This was to lead to the abortion of civil rule that was yet to take roots. Then one crisis led to another, culminating in the Biafran debacle that permanently redefined the notion and perception of Nigeria by its component units.

It would appear that the immediate post-independence crises that engulfed the country have permanently crippled its progress. Ever since Nigeria got the baptism of fire through the first and second military coups, things have never been the same for the country. The movement towards statehood has been punctuated by fits and starts. The country has been behaving like an epileptic patient that slumbers freely and without qualms.

But the inability of Nigeria to find the tree for the woods did not come without warning. It was predicted by fore-sighted writers like the legendary Chinua Achebe. The prophetic nature of his fourth novel, A Man of the People, is telling. But therein lies the frustrations of Nigeria and its peoples. Whereas perceptive minds elsewhere in the world mirror the ills of society and such becomes a corrective instruments with which such societies grow and develop, we get entangled with our own predictions and perceptions. More often, than not the wrestle us to the ground. In the process of struggling to free ourselves from such baggage, we become one with it.

The result is that you can hardly draw a live between Nigeria and its problems. Both appear to be Siamese trines. The danger in separating one from the other looms large every moment. That is why Nigeria and Nigerians seem to have reconciled themselves with those odds that have been weighing the country down. This partly explains why Nigerians hardly feel embarrassed that their yesterday was better than their today and that the prospect of a better tomorrow is hardly there.

As the country celebrates in a few days time, the traditional thing to do would be to remember the struggles of our independence heroes. Governments across the country will tell their stories with gusto. But the purveyors of such exotics will hardly pause to ponder whether the country has a sense of direction. There is every reason to believe that Nigeria is merely ambling along without a clear-out direction.  The movement is merely compulsive. It has no aim or objective. It is only perceptive Nigerians that realize this debilitating state of affairs. Nigerians who have a sense of history can easily come up with a mental note which will readily tell you that the country is on a steady decline. In Nigeria, life yesterday, comparatively speaking, remains better than life today. It is also being taken for granted that this state of affairs will continue because the people do not seem to bother. They do not even appear to know the difference. For the typical Nigerian, any situation goes. One is as good or as bad as the other, as the case may be. The next few days will, once again, bring home the celebrative rituals. For us, Independence Day is merely an annual ritual of remembrances and reminiscences. We do not see it beyond this. It is not supposed to propel us into action. We do not see it as an occasion for introspection and reflection. We merely let it go. We lean nothing from it.

It is because our national day means nothing to us that a certain Nigerian government, in 1999, declared May 29 as Democracy Day. Then you wonder why. Such a distinction between our national day and this new-fangled one was made at the time because Nigerians and their governments never saw 1st October as a day that should be celebrated beyond the rituals. In a proper country, democracy or democratic governance is a culture. It is a major ingredient of nationhood. It is intrinsic in the governance value that guides nations. But here, the contrary is the case. The government of General Obasanijo thought democracy was a privilege. When therefore Nigeria returned to civil rule after many years of military interregnum, the new government forgot the essence of the notion and decided to subjugate our national day to its own new creation- Democracy Day. Situations like this diminish a people. But then again, Nigerians do not care a hoot about being diminished. They see that as inexorable. They merely surrender themselves to it. They see it as a fact of their nationhood.

It is because Nigeria’s National Day has been thrown to the dogs that those who have been wearing the toga of democracy since the annulment of the June 12, 1993 elections seem to seize the stage once every year. Every June 12, one major demand must waft out from the covens of the June 12 apostles. They want this day (June 12), not May 29, to nationally recognized as Democracy Day. In all of this, nobody makes reference to 1st October. Whereas May 29 and June 12 are significant, 1st October is just a date. We can afford to gloss over it. That is how inconsequential our national day has become in our eyes and in our estimation.

Even though we, as a people, have never taken issues of development seriously, we plunged deeper into frivolity with the undue attention we have been paying to inconsequential dates. Rather than reflect on why democracy has never taken roots in Nigeria, we are busy allocating a date to it. Rather than worry about those indices that make countries rank high or low in the comity of nations, we are busy struggling for power and the spoils of office. Rather than aspire to ensure that the primary reason for the existence of government does not elude Nigeria, the people have chosen instead to take the law into their hands and by so doing rendering government irrelevant in the scheme of things. Indeed, Nigeria is a country of the obverse. The people are more inserted in aberrations than in normal set-ups. That is why they are not expressing worry that politics in their country has been left in the hands of upstarts. These men and women of low acumen have reduced the country to their imbecilic level. Because the political scene is dominated by upside-down men, the sane ones in the polity have taken a flight. They are scampering for cover while the scavengers are having a free reign. No nation can ever make progress in this kind of set-up.

Whereas the society which Evelyn Waugh depicted escaped a fall because the system purged itself of untoward things, Nigeria appears to be deaf, dumb and even blind. As I noted earlier, the people have come to see decline as a fact of their statehood. They have no qualms about that. They do not fret over it.

But you would expect that a people who do not care a hoot about decline should also not worry if it eventuates in a fall. Surprisingly, Nigerians appear to be very conscious and aware whenever this extreme situation is contemplated. They howl whenever it is made an issue. But again, the contradiction is that those who are uncomfortable with talks of a fall do nothing in the face of the challenge. They appear to resent it. But beyond that appearance, there is no real or concrete step to suggest that they want to save the situation.

But analysts, strictly speaking, do not believe that those who appear to resent suggestions of a fall for Nigeria mean business. They are no more than patriotic do-gooders; they are the quintessential tails pretenders who give society a false sense of itself. But Nigeria cannot continue to wallow in self-deceit. If it does, it will end up scoring an own goal.

 

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Read this article in the Sun Newspapers

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

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