FEATURE ARTICLE

E O EkeSunday, April 21, 2013
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REFLECTIONS ON NIGERIAN DEMOCRACY AND LEADERSHIP (CONCLUSION)

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Continued from Part 1

�If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future� --Winston Churchill.

hat is needed for Nigeria to make progress is ideologically driven and values orientated politics and a north that is able to balance the overall interest of Nigeria with its own sectarian interest in a fair and just manner. Northern leaders cannot continue to be selective on the ill they condemn and continue to see Nigeria as a country to exploit to serve its sectarian interests. Many of them like the rest of Nigerian ruling elites are silent on corruption, the cost of government and Islamic fundamentalism. A person like Sanusi Lamido who condemns corruption in Nigeria has remained silent on Islamic fundamentalism. He argued for the establishment of Islamic Bank and so far there is no evidence that he has made any effort to expose the source of fund to Boko Haram with the aim to stopping it. Instead of arguing for the social investment needed to stop all youth from gravitating to crimes, they have resorted to a sectarian solution. What Nigeria needs are leaders who will not be selective about the ills of the country they condemn but have the courage to condemn evil, even when it is in their own family. Educated people like Sanusi, Lamido, who understand how divisive implementing Sharia law would be but prefers not to condemn it because he is a Muslim, are the real tragedy of Nigeria.

They put their ethnic interests and religious beliefs over and above the overall interest of the country and this is where the real problem of Nigeria lies. Nigerians can no longer ignore the threat the pursuit of sectarian interests by the ethnic champions who masquerade as national leaders poses to the survival of Nigeria as secular democracy. There is need to compel them to bring their religious beliefs and cultural peculiarities in line with the overall interest of Nigeria to enable Nigeria emerge as a secular society which guarantees the liberty of all. The choice is now for the rest of Nigeria to decide what to do in the face of the intransigence of the north and its determination to remain an Islamic enclave with its own laws in a supposedly united country under one circular constitution.

Very encouraging, the Yorubas have provided leadership in this direction they have called for true federalism. This is the starting point. They must go further, they must continue to make the argument for a true federation and lead the rest of the country in fighting for this through democratic means by using the current provisions in our imperfect constitution. Hopefully, the Igbos and other ethnic groups will wake up from their intractable political infighting, epidemic of armed robbery, kidnapping and endless court cases, and join them to create a truly democratic Nigeria, where each region has the degree of autonomy it needs to develop at its pace and stay true to whatever type of God it wishes to believe in without endangering the lives of others. We need to quickly move into the next stage which is deciding the nature of this federalism and this requires a constitution of the people written by the people and adopted by the people in a referendum and not an old constitution written by the military and amended by those whose world views created the problems in the first place.

This position may be unacceptable to the north for obvious reasons and some northerners may see unfairness in using the behaviour of the misguided extremists in their region to justify what has been the position of those who blame her for all Nigeria�s woe. This may have informed the threat of its ex-generals to go to war before they would allow it to happen. The north does not see this option as a way to make Nigeria better but a clever ploy by separatists to dismember Nigeria into its ethnic nations because they have concluded that Nigeria will never become a viable state. On the surface, this would seem a reasonable position considering the magnitude of the problems and the dependence of the north on the oil from the south. However, the Nigerian problem requires a bitter pill of self-reliance which must be administered if the country will have a future. It is only a greater degree of regional autonomy that can enable it to remain faithful to Islam in the way it wants without endangering the security and progress of the rest of the country. Sooner or later, an Islamic north will become less attractive to investors as the menace of Boko Haram worsens and it would be too late to reverse the inevitable decline and many northerners would be forced to migrate from the north to earn a living. Therefore, what the north should fear is not further degree of regional autonomy or true federalism, but Islamic fundamentalism which is a more potent threat to its future. It has natural resources in its region which if well managed will give it comparable income to that from oil. There is gold in Zamfara state which will also benefit from a policy of more regional control over natural resources.

The sooner the north accepts that it cannot conquer the rest of Nigeria through terror, the sooner peace will return to Nigeria. The attitude of the north reminds me too much of the attitude of the Serbians in the old Yugoslavia. Their intransigence only made the breakup of Yugoslavia inevitable and today they are worst for it. How can the north benefit when its use of terror is resulting in capital and human flight from the region. Who would like to invest in a place where faceless terrorists sponsored by politicians would blow up buildings and attack with impunity? The north would soon realise that it has cut its nose to spite its face just like the east has done by the menace of kidnapping, targeted assignation and armed robbery. Instead of scheming to regain the presidency of Nigeria without a clear agenda of how to move Nigeria forward, it should concentrate in laying a solid foundation for its development by addressing the cultural, ethnic and religious problems that would continue to retard its progress no matter whoever is the president.

Nigeria cannot ignore the fact that the real cause of the conflicts in Morocco�s western Sahara, Mali, Fiji, Palestine, Uganda, Sudan etc., to mention but a few, is attempt by one ethnic group to dominate the rest. It was the fear of ethnic domination or rather response to the domination of the Tutsi in Rwanda that was the real cause of the Rwanda genocide. Perennial massacre of Igbos in north Nigeria has been linked to fear of domination by Igbos. The problem is that this fear does not need to be real to compel people to engage in acts of terrors, which is why it is important for a government to build its values on justice and the rule of law and take the threat by Boko Haram very seriously and act without respect of persons in the best interest of Nigeria. Many regions are watching with interest the kid gloves with which the government of Nigeria is dealing with northerners who are behind Boko Haram and people usually copy what they think worked elsewhere.

The government of Nigeria cannot afford to continue to ignore the ethnic and religious arrogance at the root of the Nigerian problem. This false belief by some Nigerians that one� ethnic group is superior and religion right, while those of others are inferior and wrong underpin most of our problems. The Nigerian Psychic is a state of mind dumbed by religion, tradition beliefs and overvalued ideas. Its psychological defences are essentially primitive. They are prone to believing and then justifying, instead of seeking before believing. This rather minor difference in attitude to life is where the Nigerian problem, and in fact most of the problems of the African lies. It is in this unique way of understanding the world that her over representation in religious groups, acquisitive crimes, corruption and violent and aggressive approach to issues may reside.

This basic dysfunctional assumption is reinforced throughout life in churches and mosques and in many ethnic meetings. The result is a people who are kind and nice to their kind, but prepared to kill and perpetrate all kinds of atrocities against other people in the name of God and ethnic nationalism. Part of my reasons for writing is to enable Nigerians to reflect on how they see other people and realise that our problem originate in our minds. A good and responsible government would attack this problem at its very origin with good education and enlightenment, instead of worsening the divide by reinforcing this primitive attitude to life. It is the duty of every enlightened Nigerian to help Nigerians to understand that mixing religion (Christianity and Islam in particular) with politics creates the prejudices which divide societies and sow the seeds of conflicts. Religious intolerance and ethnic bigotry are the two volatile variables which when mixed with our politics results in explosion. No nation can teach people that their religion and ethnicity make them special and superior to others and have peace. You cannot teach a child that because of what he believes and who he is that he will go to heaven and others who do not believe like him and different from him will go to hell, and expect that child to grow up and respect people he has been taught God hates and would send to hell fire. This is how religion weakens the cord that should bind us together and prepare us for conflicts. It is time to wake up and reflect on what our religion turn us into and begin the change we need to create a better country. Europeans have improved their understanding of what they taught our fore fathers many years ago and what we have as understanding of God is a bit out dated. I hope and pray that Nigeria survives.

Ethnic domination either by way of religion or simply by raw greed for political power, delivers conflicts, wars and suffering. At a certain point, dominated people would rather fight and die than continue to live as second class citizens in their own country. Nigerians have to wake up. Multi-party politics in Africa and many other continents often degenerate into ethnic contest for power, unless there is a conscious attempt to build a multi-party democracy based on civil values on the principles of justice, equality, tolerance and the rule of law. Ethnicity and religion are two very narrowly defined constructs on which people should not segregate in the way and manner Nigrians have. It would therefore seem to me that that the nascent Nigerian democracy is fast degenerating into ethnic contest for power. With the AC dominating in the west, CPC in the north and the half-hearted attempt by APGA to dominate in the East, it is clear that the catalyst for the complete disintegration of Nigeria may be the domination of the PDP by the northerners and a deep sense of injustice by other ethnic groups in the party . Therefore, the simple solutions to preserve Nigeria unity and give Nigeria a chance, are; for PDP to support a qualified and detribalised Nigerian who will see the whole of Nigeria as his constituency or a second term for Jonathan on a very clear agenda to deliver a true Federalism which will give other ethnic groups the confidence that with time, that the political permutation will throw up a president from their region or for a coalition of political parties to deliver a good and qualified Nigeria to pursue a new vision for Nigeria. A vision based on sound economic and social constructs and not only on ethnic and religious considerations.

Alternatively, if the terrorist activities of Boko haram continues, regional political parties in the south of Nigeria can go into coalition which would deliver a government which would stabilise the country and offer the regions a referendum to decide if they still wish to be part of a federal Republic of Nigeria. However, this will not be possible as the south south will not support any plan that would not endorse Jonathan for a second term. Such an alliance would also damage the east relationship with South South and south south relationship with west which would force south south to join forces with the north to spite the east and west thereby returning power to the north. The result would be a more fractious Nigeria where political horse trading instead of values would decide its politics and this would be very sad. Therefore, the future of Nigeria rests on a completely new non-ethnic, non-religious political party with new ideology based on the rule of law, equality tolerance and justice. Nigerians must dream new dreams to survive. Recycling old dream rooted in ethnicity, religion and corruption will not surface. Will Nigerians dare? This article was written before the formation of APC, and I have seen no need to change my views. I rest my case on Nigeria and wishes Nigeria well.

Continued from Part 1

E O Eke is qualified in medicine. At various times he has been a General medical practitioner, Medical missionary, Medical Director and senior medical officer of health in Nigeria. He specializes in child, Adolescent and adult psychiatry and lives in England with his family. His interest is in health, religion philosophy and politics. He cares for body and mind.

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