Book Review@ITRealms:
In a few weeks, precisely on the
31st day of May, 2016, the writer and political activist, Chido Onumah, will
present his latest book, We are all Biafrans- A Participant-Observer's
Intervention in a Country Sleepwalking to Disaster, to the public.
The book is a deserved addition
to his two previous books, Time to Reclaim Nigeria and Nigeria is negotiable.
A word or two on Chido Onumah,
here. There is something original and courageous about Onumah who, in so many
ways, engages our humanity with courage, exposes some of its triumphs and
defeats, writs his finer thoughts that are consistent with the ideals of
freedom and justice he cherishes dearly on the slate of our public
conversation, advances and trades honest ideas in our marketplace.
In his engagement with the
Nigerian public, he consistently calls attention to our flawed federation,
posing the argument that our country needs to be reinvented. Engaging episodic
upheavals that threaten the Nigerian state is the recurring theme of his public
engagement.
Onumah understands the dangers of
posing issues our governing class considers as settled or closed. He is
familiar with those lonely places public intellectuals who are "unwilling
to accept easy formulas, or ready-made clichés, or smooth, ever-so-accommodating
confirmations of what the powerful or conventional have to say" find
themselves in a country that despises truth, disdains public intellectuals of
courage. The public intellectual, the type Edward Said wrote about in his
acclaimed seminal work, Representations of the Intellectual, as original,
embarrassing, contrarian, questioning, courageous and unpleasant, even to the
point of unsettling his audience, is hard to find in a country like ours that
devalues intellect and promotes mediocrity.
The role of a true public
intellectual is to read and interpret the word, and to change the world. Only
those who display original thoughts, who possess the courage of their
convictions can truly read and interpret the word and change the world!
He is his own man, Onumah. A true
public intellectual with razor-sharp wit, brilliant intellect, who has no
Moloch to look up to for unwavering guidance, or be worshipped, "who has
neither offices to protect nor territory to consolidate and guard".
For him, there are no limits,
there are no boundaries for inquiring into the shenanigans of our governing
elite.
Back to the book: this is what
the media statement announcing its public presentation says: “In his book,
Chido Onumah argues that many, if not all, of the problems of Nigeria are
rooted in the structure of the country. He makes a case, as he did in his two
previous books, for the socio-political restructuring of Nigeria. He argues
that the country needs to engage the episodic political convulsions that threaten
its very foundation, including Biafra, June 12, Boko Haram, the "National
Question", citizens rights and ‘militocracy’.
“In We are all Biafrans, Onumah
takes on Nigeria's indolent and reactionary ruling elite – civilian and
military – and their allies, as well as bandits in uniform, scoundrels posing
as statesmen, and conservative ideologues, religious bigots and ethnic chauvinists
posing as patriots.
“He raises fundamental questions:
what is Nigeria and who is a Nigerian? If Nigeria is a federal republic, what
constitutes or should constitute the federating units? He posits that the
different manifestation of Biafra may as well be a metaphor, to that extent, we
are all Biafrans as long as we seek to confront the clear and present danger.
“The author notes that we can't achieve any
meaningful progress as a people until we come to terms with the reality of our
existence- that Nigeria is a deeply flawed nation- and sincerely and selflessly
confront it. Forging a nation out of the disparate and often antagonistic
entities, in the author's view, is perhaps the greatest challenge confronting
Nigeria.”
“This book, a compilation of
articles published in traditional and online newspapers in the last three years
(2013-2016) is divided into five chapters. The first chapter, “The Politics of
2015”, deals with the high-wire politics of the 2015 election which, given its
zero-sum character, was rightly regarded as a crucial factor in the survival of
Nigeria as a country.
“The second chapter, “Dancing on
the Brink” focuses on the issue of the Sovereign National Conference, a
controversial subject that splits Nigerians right down the middle, but which
rulers of Nigeria have not been bold enough to confront in a fruitful way. The
third chapter, “Unmaking Nigeria”, highlights those phenomena that not only
constitute an ugly phase of our history, but also expose our pretense to being
a nation.
“The fourth chapter, “Of
Scoundrels and Statesmen”, is a narrative of some individuals and groups in and
out of government whose actions have either enriched our polity or reinforced
it as the “giant of Africa” only in name. The fifth chapter, “Last 'Missionary'
Journey”, is again a reminder that unless we sit at the table to negotiate the
terms of our co-existence as a people, our country, to quote the late human
rights activist, Dr. Beko Ransone-Kuti, ‘would continue to go round and
round’.”
Here, Onumah poses two
fundamental questions – what is Nigeria and who is a Nigerian? – that beg for
answers, true and real answers.
There is a growing number of
those who close off the prospect of engaging around the question of what is
Nigeria and what constitutes Nigeria; and it is this closing-off, or attempt at
closing-off engagements, that invariably spawns resistance, rejection,
denunciation and renunciation of Nigeria.
Those who seek a different
perspectival understanding of Nigeria, who pose a different narrative of state
formation, reject the notion of being dragged along by the chariot-wheels of
those who cry, "Nigeria is non-negotiable".
Nothing in the cry suggests that there are
attempts at addressing the question beyond seeking to supplant the aspirations
of diverse ethnic nations with the single unity of the fictional ideal and with
the aspirations of the fictional nation-state.
The problem here is that the
criers assume that Nigeria is a settled question. How can it possibly be?
Modern nation-states are not natural creations, and Nigeria is not different.
As a colonial entity, forged out
of the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria and the Northern Nigeria
Protectorate, Nigeria still presents the historical problems of discord, disharmony,
antagonism, chaos, differences and division sowed at the moment of
amalgamation. Let truth be told, amalgamation did not dissolve ethnic
nationalities identities, nor did it extinguish those ethnic nations that
existed before the Lugardian economic experiment of amalgamation emerged.
Amalgamation enthroned its
tension – the tension of constantly differentiating and reconciling
differences, of constantly seeking to resolve the ambiguities of identity, and
differences.
Nigeria is not an empty
geospatial entity. What constitutes it are the many ethnic nations that emerged
from the pre-colonial empires and kingdoms of the past. The non-recognition of
this logic, this fact of history, and the refusal to articulate and mediate the
tension and differences, makes the search for answers problematic. The closure
of debate and the imposition of a single narrative of unity make the question
of identity more problematic.
The closure of debate, the
refusal to articulate and mediate tension, and the non-recognition of
differences beyond the platitude of the national anthem, implicates the way the
nation-state is often viewed and encountered. A young Bini who glimpses into
the narrative body of his Bini ethnic nation, for instance, to find an
intelligible narrative that gives meaning to his identity and existence would
accept the narrative as true to his story. Here, what is good for the young
Bini is determined by the goodness he finds in the narrative, or in the story
that gives true meaning to his life and his identity.
For him, assuming a national
identity that is hollow and vacuous becomes a taboo. Here, too, the idea of
Biafra flourishes in him and he becomes a Biafran as well.
The return to Biafra, in my
opinion, is driven by three impulses.
First, by the desire to realize
one's first nature, identify with it, and rekindle affinity with a place that
makes better meaning, provides greater clarity to life and its many stories.
Second, and more importantly, to
express the right to self-determination or the right to be treated as equals as
a natural right. Agitation for this right often takes the form of
self-assertion, or in extreme cases as non-constitutional action.
Truth is: self-assertion and
non-constitutional action are escapes from "huge impersonal authority that
ignores ethnic, regional and religious differences, cravings for 'natural'
units of 'human' size".
Third, to challenge the authority
of members of the ruling class who impose their values on the nation-state and
to resist the corrosion of their values.
The return to the metaphorical
Biafra could mean anything from the preservation of cultural legacies and
dreams to the defence of identities.
Social formation like the
nation-state is ever threatened by its constitutive outside.
The antagonistic ‘otherness’ that
Onumah invites us to confront always operates as an enemy of the nation-state.
How can the "other" be
integrated? How can difference be used as a tool for modern nation-state
building? Onumah addresses the questions in his book.
Are we all Biafrans? I shall
provide a brief answer here.
Insofar the Nigerian state
continues to trample on the rights of citizens, abandons its constitutional
responsibility of securing lives and property, ensures unequal distribution of
social and economic wealth and guarantees the greatest happiness for the smallest
number, we are all Biafrans.
The constitutive outside is real.
Nothing exemplifies the un-seriousness of rulers of the nation-state in
addressing the problem of antagonism, division and differences than the brazen
use of divisive political language.
Here is one example of a divisive
remark credited to Mr. President: "With the way Sahara is advancing, with
Boko Haram, growing number of people and uncertainty over rainfall, in a land
where we fought civil war leading to the death of about two million, it would
be foolhardy for someone to just say he would chase us away".
The reader may want to ask who
that someone is, and who are us? To this question I volunteer no answer.
Let it be known that divisive
language drains support for the fictional nation-state, that the binary of WE
and THEM is unhelpful.
*Abdul Mahmud is a lawyer and poet
and President of the Public Interest Lawyers League (PILL), Nigeria.
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Pix: Abdul Mahmud
