‘It gets to you anywhere’: Frustrations of our post-colonial state (letter to Chiji Akoma)

I am writing this piece inside my mosquito net at 3a.m and very clearly to my discomfort and that of my wife and daughter with whom I share the space. Beds from the beginning were conceived as rest and not work places. I am not aware when that intention changed.

I however have to do this not because there are no alternative writing spaces to use but because mosquitos are on rampage in my neighbourhood, no thanks to three other post-colonial afflictions. The first is that five decades after independence, we have in the main been saddled  - in our leadership spaces  - with what the writer, Ifeoma Okoye, very aptly depicted as  ‘men without ears.’  A more ‘hearing’ leadership would have since declared and vigorously prosecuted a real national war on mosquitos seeing their massive contribution to our burgeoning security crisis and indeed, GDP-flight!

The second affliction, the’ Up NEPA’ syndrome, may also be very familiar to the reader. Yes, electricity from the Power Holding Corporation is not available so I can use some of the electric fans in the house to ward off some of the onslaught from mosquitos (to think that it is the same mosquitos that were responsible for felling scores of men in Mungo Park’s expedition party three centuries ago!)  as I use a more comfortable table and chair to pen this (and my body is aching now as I pick up a hand-fan to stir some air around my now sweating self and adjust the pillows on my back to keep writing). Ah, Lamido!(which is another post-colonial tale to be told some other day).

Back to today, the third affliction is the penchant and practice of untramelled urbanisation, which has presently taken the form of very offensive, indiscriminate’ estates’ development in my once more habitable off-Lagos neighbourhood where monkeys and birds from the adjoining greens took turns to play with me on Saturday mornings. But now the unlicensed but untouchable lords of the manor (Twale!) - whose only real claim to their position other than their commitment to violently shove off all hindrances while the state looks on is that their ancestors were lucky to have fist set foot on the soil around here  - have decreed that everything green has to go to guarantee short-term economic gain for them a la land speculation. The emergence and proliferation of more ‘concrete jungles’ called estates, even when they encroach on other previous developments - like the one presently tearing through the middle of the one in which I live – has now become kind of given.

And as the trees are felled and the greenery violated, the once relatively sedate swamp mosquitos with whom we had a virtual MoU of sorts - to leave each other alone - have found it almost impossible to keep their side of the bargain (Now my daughter has awakened and I have to take a station break to pacify her…).

So what do all of these have to do with ‘the post-colonial state?’ I will tell you. As I had written in my earlier post on ‘Where Ibori came from,’ (which I was wisely counseled not to conclude!), the truth of our existence in Nigeria is one in which ‘the evils of our villians past’ continues to incubate new evils that we now have to grapple with. And these are the afflictions of our current existence.

But this piece was not supposed to be about my own share of the afflictions. It had really begun with the afflictions of someone else, an acquaintance who had schooled in Nigeria and left the shores of the old country to go and lecture in an American university. He had the other day been regaling me with the frustrations of his homecoming experience and his dilemma in accepting that the second generation federal university where he was serving  ‘time’ (thank God for ‘little mercies,’ as it may have been worse if he was practically grounded there!) could in all honesty be properly described as a university in the sense that he now knew it. This is really where this piece was born.

Indeed it is even part of the (mental and intellectual, this time!) failings of our system that we have to labour to establish the connections between our post-colonial grounding and the very many distortions that people our national space.

Take the case of the current doctors strike in Lagos, its very poor handling by a post-colonial political elite  and the very obfuscating explanations being peddled in the press by the regime’s chief and his henchmen about why the doctors should not have gone on strike in the first place. Coming from an administration which many regard, and very correctly too, as the finest expression of the democratic project in Nigeria at the moment, it will clearly be seen that the fault indeed is in our stars!

Man Chiji, Now I understand why Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka writes some of the stuff that he does. We really need to pull down all of the faulty foundations in the most systematic way yet possible  (and a honest and properly-intentioned national conference  - backed by a leadership in the mould of Mikhail Gorbachev that is altruistically committed to implementing its conclusions no matter which of our many live oxen is gored - is one). It is only then that we would return to the foundation block and start re-building this house once again to be ‘a nation where truth and justice reign.’

It is at such fora that honest and burdened professionals like you, my very good friend and indeed this writer, can be encouraged to share their thoughts for the system. As you know I have long had plans for, and been involved with  the promotion of books and the reading culture in our land. As part of these plans and activities for example, I am currently reflecting over how we can return to of a culture of school and public libraries as a basic foundation not only for growing a fully literate community in Nigeria but also to help tackle the very alarming wave of a-literacy as represented in the millions of certificated people that do not read again and else cannot express themselves beyond posting their photo albums online!

No, no, it is not that I am envious of the founders of Instagram and their recent creaming of a billion dollars for their photo apps. No sir, on the contrary I am encouraged that they could benefit so much from growing and developing their natural, God-given passions. But clearly, if we continue to use apps developed elsewhere to merely snap pictures of ourselves and post them on cloud computing systems that we have equally not made any national inputs into, does it not continue to situate us in the negative post-colonial reality of ‘formidable consumers and negligible players?’

Back to where we are and given your appreciation of the close connections between reading, education, life-long reading, continuing education and GDP, you will agree that it is literally akin to an ‘eight wonder’ for our current leaders to want to leap-frog our country into being ‘one of the top twenty economies in the world. without addressing the currently most decripit reading and educational foundations that you have physically re-encountered in the course of this sabbatical year. So we must make plans to have functional print and electronic libraries (and reading clubs to boot) in every hamlet in the land like the Chinese are not only establishing, but which is also grossing for them the attendant lifestyle and GDP results that everyone can see. ‘Reading maketh’ a people, they always said.

And talking of fixing our reading problems, a second component of my proposal is to have a system of annual educational symbiosis where burdened patriots like you and my very good friend  - who are functioning so seamlessly in basically yet literate communities - would volunteer and take out time in the year to come to the homeland and participate in well designed reading re-immersion activities. I remember how very enthusiastic Professor Niyi Osundare was to sign up for and participate in the scheme when I first mentioned it to him a little over a decade ago. And I remain confident that with the right logistics in place, this is one project with a massive potential to put an end to the joke about ‘hiding truths from Nigerians by storing them up in books!’ Indeed, other than the power sector and mosquito wars, this is another well-deserving national emergency that our leaders should commit to. 

These are the issues that undergird my politics. And knowing the power of the state in helping to bring about this kind of society of my dream, I continue to canvass the right values and principles that will help post-colonial Nigeria, and particularly its leadership, get its moorings right.

Finally my brother, I remain upbeat (your very appropriate choice of word) and most resolute that even this current cup will pass. My attitude fundamentally then is that these are but light afflictions that will yet work out the exceeding glory that He has put in us. And I am fully persuaded that indeed, we have been built up for and despatched to our country ‘for a time like this.’ Fight on brother, we shall overcome. Make we dey go first.

The author can be reached on richard.mammah@gmail.com