Whispering Drums With Maigani
by Musa Ibrahim
Lessons from Sudan
That was 23 years ago, and on one count at least, events in Nigeria since then have proved the civil servant no mean judge. Nigeria has had one too many crises. There have been four-and-a-half military coups (Nzeogwu, Gowon, Murtala, Dimka, Buhari), two-and-a-half years of a very bloody secessionist civil war, sixteen-and-a-half years of military dictatorship and nine years of representative civilian rule. The pity however, is that in spite of all the turbulence, the country has not been able to pull through. The country is still staggering from crisis to crisis and confusion still reigns supreme. For instance, no one knows for sure how many Nigerians there are; no one knows how many languages they speak, or how many tribes there are; or how many religions they practice; or even how many wives the average Nigerian has. The persistent myth though is that Nigeria is the giant of Africa because there seems to be so many of them. The question arises: Why has the country not been able to pull through?
This is the question that has been haunting not only Nigeria but all the nations of sub-Saharan Africa a quarter of a century after independence. The clarion call for freedom from the European colonial powers, the euphoria of independence and the dreams of a better tomorrow have long since receded only to be replaced by violence, dictatorship and all forms of political repression while everybody seems to have lost touch with reality. Is it that the time to pull through is not yet nigh; or could there be something wrong with the African psyche? It is said that if one is not a part of a problem, one has to be a part of the solution. Who are part of Africa's problems? Who are part of the solution? Attempts at providing part of the answers to such questions have been made, but often, these answers have not proved satisfactory because they have not been dealt with frankly, honestly and directly. There has been too much glib talk. How can anybody in his right senses blame all our problems on the legacy of 80 years of colonialism? What has corruption, mismanagement, elitism, military dictatorship, reign of terror by African leaders got to do with colonial legacy?
Usually, it is Africa's intelligentsia that have always tried to analyse the problems of contemporary Africa and try to proffer solutions to them. But their analyses are often buried in worn out cliches, vague and high-sounding but meaningless words. Consider Nigeria's intelligentsia. At independence in 1960, Nigeria had the finest crop of lawyers, doctors, professors, engineers, journalists, etc that any nation could boast of, and everybody expected that these professionals would join hands with the country's new political leaders towards the country's development. But that was not to be. They became engulfed rather, in the formation of bodies and associations to oversee their narrow, selfish and personal interests and soon became the privileged elite class of the society, often holding the country and its leaders to ransom.
Even today, Nigeria still has the highest number of professionals in the whole of Africa but because of the members' insatiable lust for materialism, they are increasingly becoming a part of the country's problems rather than the solution. Having all degenerated into petty bourgeois intellectuals, the Nigerian intelligentsia no longer has room for constructive analyses or criticisms, and to ensure their individual survival, most of them have succumbed to being used as tools of a repressive and illegal regime. There are the members of the Bar Association, members of the Labour congress, members of the university community and many other such professional groupings.
In an interview in one of Nigeria's newspapers, Chinua Achebe, the celebrated novelist, was quoted as saying that it is the masses of Nigeria that has let the country down. I could not help chuckling at the naivety of the good professor.
If the lower ranks of Nigerians are to be blamed for Nigeria’s ills, then the whole class of professionals and academicians to wh Achebe belongs ought to be wiped out completely from the country. Achebe's comment was in reference the masses not revolting against injustices in the society in general, or again Buhari's coup or against the damage, retrenchment and repression from the military, then let me tell the learn professor that history has shown that the masses do not just rise in revolt against anything. They need to be organised and led. And going through history as well, the masses have often looked to the intelligentsia (Achebe and his clique) as their leaders, inspirers and mobilizers. The Bolshevik Revolution was not a major revolt that took place in a vacuum Lenin, a member of the intelligentsia mobilized and led the people. So were Mao Tse Tung and Castro's revolutions. And Che Guevara's.
Coming nearer to home, the coup that ousted Sudan's president Nimein was not a palace coup. It was a coup brought about as a result of major revolts from the masses spearheaded by the professional class - the doctors, the lawyers, the authors, etc. In Liberia, members of the intelligensia in the persons of Mr Baccheu Matthews and Professor Tom Sawyer are busy giving the illiterate, gun-toting master Sergeant a good run for his money in the election campaign The doctors and lawyers in Sudan sure enough could afford to buy their own food no matter the price. Like their Nigerian counterparts, they are in a way more privileged than most ordinary Sudanese. But it was the fate of the ordinary man in wake of the rising cost of food that they rose in unison to protest about. Tom Sawyer of Liberia has no personal cause to go against Sergeant Doe. Doe regards him right from the day of his coup as a "personal, close friend". But to defend the citizens of Liberia from abject poverty and tyranny, he is staking his own life and those of many of his colleagues.
When it comes to "dogon turanci" and theoretics and the "isms", Nigerian intelligentsia are the most verbally agile. But when it comes to the fundamentals, they prefer to deal with intangibles, making the simplest things sound very complicated and confusing everybody in the process. This is a great disservice to the masses of Nigeria and one of the reasons why in spite of all the crises, Nigeria is still groping in the dark. I hope the Soyinkas, the Usmans, the Achebes shed some light.
