Comment
Oath Of Silence
Now here comes Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, Head of State of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, imposing his own oath on his 100 million or so countrymen. He has decreed that there should be no political debates in the country and his imposed silence would be broken in the knowledge that there would be dire consequences.
In the nineteen months that General Buhari and his colleagues have ruled Nigeria, they have demonstrated quite clearly that they are impervious to public opinion. It appears to be an article of faith for them not to even give the impression that they are influenced in any way by what the people think.
It might be their own perverse way of showing they are answerable to nobody. Professor Wole Soyinka, the eminent Nigerian poet and playwright commenting on this phenomenon has explained his decision not to give any opinions on current Nigerian affairs by saying that he does not speak to deaf people. In Soyinka's opinion, there is no point in talking to deaf people and the present rulers of Nigeria have shown that they are deaf. Strong words these, but then the poet had always had a way with words.
Thus there now exists in Nigeria, a situation where not only have the rulers made themselves deaf to anything being said by the ruled, they are now preventing any talk whatsoever also. Having shown that they are not overly impressed by public opinion and perfected the hearing no evil gimmick, it surely would have cost them nothing to allow the talk around them to continue. African elders are known to ask slow children "if you cannot hear, can't you see?". Gen Buhari does not want to hear, he does not want to see.
He started with the newspapers and every time that he feels one of them stepping out of the official line, he puts the heat on. There was the matter of the newsprint shortages that hit the privately-owned newspapers, then there came the decision not to place vitally-needed government advertisements in the private press and now there is the open threat to close any privately-owned newspaper adjudged by General Buhari to be out of line.
While he might very well succeed in making life that much more difficult for the privately-owned newspaper, the real damage is in fact caused to the government- owned newspapers and radio and television which are exclusively in the hands of the state. For it does not matter how hard the journalists on the government-owned media work nor how ever professional is their approach, the image persists, unfortunately, that they exist and flourish only because they toe the official line. The result will be that no matter how hard they shout, nobody will listen to them. The habit of self- imposed deafness or blindness is terribly catching, and Gen. Buhari will discover, if he has not already, that very soon, nobody will hear him, precisely because he will not hear anybody.
The greater tragedy, of course, is that simply because Gen. Buhari has decided to see or hear no evil, does not mean that the evil will disappear, if evil indeed it is.
The problems that face the people of Nigeria will not go away because nobody talks about them or writes about them. Nor will it even be easier for Gen. Buhari to discharge his self-imposed duties in the silence that he seems to crave so much. The General appears to think that Nigeria is a difficult country to govern because of the loud and sometimes hysterical debates that accompany public life. The likelihood might well be that the country will become totally ungovernable (as opposed to difficult to govern) when silence is imposed.
To be fair to Gen. Buhari, he appears convinced that "putting the country on a sound economic footing" should be the all-consuming passion of his administration, what he fails to appreciate is that it is impossible to achieve this very laudable aim in the atmosphere of sullen silence he wants to impose on the country.
And the General must surely be misguided in his apparent belief that politics is a luxury to be indulged in only when vital problems of a country have been solved. The fact of the matter is that it is precisely when there are so many desperate problems that it is imperative to hear the voices of the people. There never will come a time when the affairs of Nigeria will be in such an ordered state that politics can be indulged according to the Buhari theory.
The economy of a country is not "put on a sound basis" through the efforts (however well-intentioned) of a few colonels and generals. They could possess the sharpest brains on the subject of economics which is yet to be demonstrated, and still not be able to achieve this miracle they have set themselves.
It does not need much imagination to assume that Gen. Buhari and his colleagues must rank very high in the department of self-confidence to have decided that their small group is more capable than the combined talents of the elected representatives, but it is intolerable arrogance to suggest that they are the sole repositories of wisdom on all things that affect Nigeria.
Gen. Buhari claims that because he had appointed some civilians to serve in his government and because some people write to the newspapers on some national issues, it means that there is representation and discussion, that is a suggestion that is so ridiculous as to be insulting to the intelligence of the Nigerian.
Obviously considering the lamentations that Gen. Buhari has been airing about the fate that has befallen all his predecessors as Head of State of Nigeria with a sole exception of Gen. Obasanjo, he wants to radically alter his own inevitable fate by reducing this dynamic country to a nation inhabited by the three proverbial monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.
But it will take more than a thousand Buharis to reduce Nigeria to such a state. With the help of Decree 4 and Decree 2 and any others that he might dream up, he might succeed in keeping people quiet for a while.
The danger, however, lies in the deafening silence
