Nigeria, pan-Africanism as saviour

The concern over the possible northernisation and Islamisation of Nigeria in a Buhari-Tinubu presidency and the recent comments credited to the Lagos monarch, Oba Rilwan Akiolu, attempting to put the Igbos and indeed other non-indigenes ‘in their place’ flow from the same source: Nigeria has not yet defined itself and located her national purpose. It is yet a babel of opportunistically contending fiefdoms that must yet strive to disprove the Sisyphian construct that all of its attempts to build and develop a strong powerhouse in Africa south of the Sahara ‘is vanity and a mere grasping for wind’ (apologies, the Bible Book of Ecclesiastes).


Your correspondent is a Christian who believes that the almighty God carefully pre-determines all that he does. So British scheming notwithstanding, the question to ask when interrogating the Nigerian construct would simply be why he permitted God amalgamation of disparate territories and nations into a unified Nigerian nation in 1914?


Like America, Nigeria, this writer contends, was only designed to make sense within a larger construct of an expansionary developmental scheme. When Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the pilgrims elected to leave the covering of imperial Britain to not only found a brand new nation, but to also give to themselves globalist institutions that would match the broadness of their vision; they were responding to a divine pull to establish a mega-state that would subsequently stand up to be counted years later for earth-redeeming values like anti-slavery, world peace and the universal brotherhood of man. And so Uncle Sam’s country continues to play its role in the promotion and perpetuation of values like democracy, religious tolerance and global development.


If America was designed to do as much on the global stage, Nigeria this writer is most persuaded, is to do same within the context of Africa. However, when Nigerian leaders retreat into their small and most limiting cocoons and therein push their small, divisive and intra-competitive agendas, what happens is a colossal mismatch. Like fish out of water, the nation can no longer hold. A nation designed to pursue large causes and undertake great schemes has now been so sorely hobbled to the very disgusting travesty where lions now feed on carrion!


One Nigerian leader in our history who was very well placed to advance the pan-Africanist purpose as about the most rational ideological underpinning for Nigeria was the late Nnamdi Azikiwe. In capitulating to the reductionist schemes of his rivals of his time, quitting the Western House of Assembly and returning to displace Eyo Ita in the Eastern Regional Assembly, Azikiwe was putting a sultry knife into the Greater Nigeria project. I stand to be better educated but contend that it is not enough to argue that Zik was pushed out by the antics of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his co-travellers then. What is germane is that in not standing up for the long-term values of the pan-Africanist enterprise that he had long been associated with, and continuing to canvass his case within the framework of the Western House of Assembly and the evolving Nigerian nation, a heroic opportunity had been lost. And so today, we continue to live in fear over what Buhari could do even as the Oba Akiolus of this world now and again shock us with similarly obtuse revisionist perspectives that have never built great schemes, cities and nations.


To advance Nigeria therefore would mean a conscious attempt to look at 'the road not taken' and return to a path of course correction. If the Nigerian elite continues to mis-lead the peoples of Nigeria into seeing the nation within the insular constructs of ethnic and religious atavism as the Akiolu gaffe and the lopsided voting patterns of the just concluded presidential elections clearly epitomize, then the same elite must wait to be judged for squandering the potentials and possibilities of a great nation ‘whose builder and maker is the almighty God himself!’


Indeed, Nigeria’s failure to enter into its ordained role as a mega-African champion is continuing to provoke very frustrating reactions from fellow Africans who can see what is all too obvious and are troubled that we just do not get it! In an encounter with President Robert Mugabe a few years ago, he tersely dismissed the nation as ‘big country, big problems.’ The latest pained expression is from former President Jerry Rawlings who stridently charges President-elect Buhari to see his victory within the context of Nigeria’s pan-Africanist purpose. And he makes sense.


Postscript:

As this script was being reviewed for publication, the dominant news was of the xenophobic assaults in Jacob Zuma's South Africa. He clearly is not a Madiba. And of course he equally does not know the first thing about the pan-African enterprise. It is really very troubling but the sad events there equally reinforce our basic thesis that African leaders must in the main, look for a higher value other than their own parochial limits as the core organisational basis for the nations they have been favoured to govern. It is only then that 'the labours of our heroes past shall never be in vain.' We still believe!