_For the Record_
_Theme: The Nigerian State: Transcending Challenges; Attaining True Nationhood._
My criticism with this government has always been at the level of the quality of communication with Nigerians, on very clear policy articulation, because all of these will help to mitigate the anxieties and the fears of the people because Nigerians are understandably very cynical about those in positions of power, and for very obvious reasons.
For the purpose of this conversation, my first focus is to look at what we mean by Journey to nationhood. I will be treating myself to the whole course of what a journey really looks like. It is important.
As we know, every journey is characterised by all kinds of assumptions that we must have; the quality of map reading, the sense of destination, the right people to be able to have the right vision to identify the road, the thieves and thorns on the road, depending on whether we are walking or whether we are swimming, whether we are in a ship or whether we are in a boat, or whether we are in a plane, every journey presupposes a certain level of knowledge of destination. The problem we had in Nigeria is not so much the distance of this journey, it’s not so much the cost of travel, it’s that somehow, as the British musician of blessed memory, Phil Colins said, ‘Somehow, something happened to us on the way to Heaven.’
I think the best place to start, especially for an audience like this is for us to look at the book of Exodus. I’m not going to dwell on the extra contents of
the book of Exodus but just metaphorically to say that for everything we have to say about a journey, the characteristics; the rises, the falls, the tears, the sweat, the journey are all captured in the agonies that we see in the book of Exodus, suggesting very clearly that every journey has its own troubles. And I think Nigeria cannot expect that its own journey to nationhood will be different.
Recently, I think at the beginning of this year, young Nigerians came up with their own notion of ‘we no go gree for anybody’. The timing was actually so auspicious. But is important to note that if you look at the book of Exodus, the people of Israel kept telling everybody, ‘we no go gree anybody, we no go gree God, we no go even gree Moses.’ So, it’s part of this frustration about any journey; whether it’s journey we have in private life or as a family, it’s not so much the troubles, it is the capacity that a country or a people develop to renew their energy. And those who are into athletics; there is a concept in athletics called the concept of the second wind.
Now, what they say in athletics, or what is called the second wind speaks to the fact that when you run and you get tired, somehow, if you don’t stop then you continue, there is something called the second wind, and the second wind comes from a renewal of the energy in the lungs. How that happens, I’m technically not able to explain. But I make the point therefore, that for us as citizens of Nigeria, in our journey to nationhood, we must have the ability to keep a straight eye and to keep a clear focus on where our destination is. And as we see from the story of the book of Exodus, it was not so much the fact that God had a covenant with the people of Israel, God was faithful to His covenant, the people kept breaking the covenant, but at end, even when the people of Israel had free food and free water, and they really didn’t need anything, it did not stop them from complaining.
So, I think the challenge for us in Nigeria, and the challenge for every nation is to raise the issue, ‘Who will raise the serpent for us, after we have been bitten by the serpents of pain, suffering, unemployment, hunger, thirst, and so on as we saw in the book of Exodus, even though the people were bitten by serpents, it was again this serpent that became a metaphor when Moses raised the serpent, and everybody who was bitten by the serpents looked at this serpent. It’s a content of the cause, but it also speaks to the fact that in the Cross is our salvation.
So, when we are talking about being on a journey, we must also not expect that there will necessarily be shortcuts. In this journey, every generation transfers its pains, its sufferings, it’s anxieties and its hopes to the next generation. That is why our hope and our prayer is the words of Isaiah 40:31, and pray that the Lord will constantly renew our strength, and so that we will soar like eagles, we will run and not be wary, we will walk and never get tired, because the journey to nationhood is a journey in which ordinary human beings are encouraging themselves as they journey along.
However, our journey in Nigeria has been slow, it’s been convoluted, its frustrating, but I will go back to the words of WB Yeats, the poet, in his poem, ‘the second coming’, from where Chinua Achebe derives the title of his book, ‘things fall apart.’ But the first verse of that poem which I think is fascinating and is worth reading.
Many of us just say the words, ‘things fall apart.’ But the poem says and I quote (recites the verse).
My argument and my conclusion in my paper is that actually, we now have a country in which the best lack conviction, and then, the worst are those who are full of passionate intensity. And what we can see very clearly is that people who went to Harvard, people who went to Oxford, people who have gone to the best universities in the world; Nigerians that have excelled, Nigeria that have a standing army, Nigeria that has all the apparatus of security now being collectively held hostage by a band of marauders, criminals, a ragtag army of people. The only thing distinction between them and us is they have intense passion, even though it’s for the wrong reason.
So, I think you can leave it for us to ask, many of us are anxious and understandably so. Nigerians think we have suffered enough, we haven’t seen anything. Every time we celebrate our independence, Nigerians come back, and the elite in particular remind themselves that after 64 years, we are still crawling. They say to themselves, ‘after 64 years, we have not achieved anything.’
The tragedy with our country Nigeria is that we lack a collective sense of history. And by the way, it’s not true that the government took history out of our syllabus; the government did no such thing. What happened and is story for another day is that young Nigerians mesmerised by the emergence of wonder banks, stopped reading history themselves. The percentage of those who were registering for history in the universities began to diminish.
Except to say for juries of this nature, no nation has ever had a shortcut. Indeed, about two years or so ago, the former British Prime Minister, John Major delivered a lecture in Westminster, one of the things he said to the audience, “after 850 years of our experimenting being a democracy, please all of you in this audience, if anybody says or feels that after 850 years, we have done very well please raise your hand. Of course, no hand went up because after 850 years, British people collectively still think that they don’t have what they bargained for, and that democracy has still not been delivered.
My good friend, Bishop Godfrey Onah, the Bishop of Nsuka and I published an article in this year about synod, raising critical points as to whether democracy is a feasible proposition for us in Africa. But that really is not the point. The point is that the journey to nation building is a long distance run, and we must run with the instinct of the long distance runner.
China’s secret plan to overtake America as a world power
The is that In 1949, when the Chinese communist party won the election, they embarked on a 100 year marathon journey to nationhood. What they set out was from 1929 to 2029, which is a 100 years. I imagine how in 2029, China would be the most powerful nation in the world.
The point is when Nigerians express their frustration, when Nigerians say the country is not working, when Nigerians say nothing is happening in our country, I am the first to admit there are a lot of things we could have done better. We absolutely know that. And we have failed in many areas. It’s important to understand that the journey to nationhood has no shortcut.
So, I make this point because I remember just about a month or so ago, Chief Emeka Anyioku, led a group of members of the Patriots to go and see the president, and they were talking about Nigeria wanting a new constitution. Quite a good number of us have become quite critical over the constitution. The president said to Chief Anyioku and his members that, ‘I am going to work on the economy first, then after that, we can turn our attention to the constitution.
And the president came under a lot of criticisms. And I actually felt sympathy for the president’s argument because for me, the question on whether the
constitution is more important than fixing an economy, my belief, my feeling is that if you don’t fix an economy, it is when an economy is fixed that you will hear as you are hearing in the politics of America, hearing in the politics of Europe where the focus of politics is not on region, is not on whose son it is, the focus of politics is will you reduce taxes or will you raise taxes. So, it is only when you have an economist elite that is able to contest for opportunities, privilege, whether it’s under a capitalist system or whatever it is that people can now begin to look at the race. First of all, there are no perfect constitutions. But by itself, almost like say we have the Holy Bible, but the Holy Bible by itself can only lead to Heaven those who read and believe what the Bible is saying. But its mere presence is not enough to offering people a way to Heaven.
The point I am making therefore is a constitution is a very important document. But when people say that the constitution we have is a useless document because people say, ‘Oh, it says we the people, but we the people did not write the constitution, it was handed to us by the military.
I have a problem with that argument, but I don’t think we need to go into details but we know that with enough knowledge, we know that the soldiers themselves never wrote any constitution. I don’t think there were lawyers as members of the military council at any point in time. It’s not the point. The point is that many of us are lying complicit in some of these arguments, in fact because the 1976 draft constitution where we have the 50 wise men, made up of lawyers, professors of law and so on and so forth. These initiatives have always had quite a number of lawyers who have been involved in the conversation. I myself was secretary of the political reform conference in 2005, and I know that when we tend to be talking about a section of the constitution, we had a subcommittee chaired by Chief Afe Babalola. And there were either 13 or 17 Senior Advocates in that committee
Our problem is not with the quality of the constitution. Our problem is with the mental disposition and the willingness of the political elites to lead according to the principles of the constitution itself. And I think that’s where our focus should be, because no constitution ever dropped from Heaven. And I just use an example of the American constitution for example. I’m not a lawyer, but I think I have earned my own rights also because I ‘ve worked with three judges. I worked with Justice Okputa on Okputa Panel, I worked with Justice Owet on electoral reform committee, and I worked with Justice Nick Utomi in the committee to review the constitution. So, I have a little bit of an understanding. The major weakness in all of these assemblies is that the assemblies are always full of politicians angling for positions. Often, 90 percent of the members of these initiatives are either deliberately chosen for their political interests, or they spend a lot of the time there just plotting and planning, and scheming for political advantages, and so on and so forth.
I remember in 1979 when Alhaji Shehu Shagari of blessed memory and a lot of other people walked out on the constitution assembly. What was very impressive was that I went back and checked the records, they set up a 23 or 24-man committee, chaired by the late Chief Simeon Adebo when they walked out of the assembly.
Now, somehow, these 23 or so wise men; I went and checked the profile of each and everyone of them, and it turned out that apart from Simeon Adebo, all of them ended up as politicians; and they almost all ended up in the NPN. The point I am making is that the assemblies review in the Nigerian constitution maybe full of ground standing and politics. If you look at the American constitution, about which I know just a little, but just to make a point. In 1776, that was when the declaration of independence was written.
As you know very well, by 1787, the Americans had a draft of their constitution which was rectified in 1788. It came into operation a year later. But I think what is very important is whereas these Nigerian jamborees have always had a minimum population of 300 to 400 people, the delegates at the American Congress where barely 55 delegates, and only 39 of them finally signed the constitution. But they were all extraordinarily, brilliant and experienced men of different ages. Jonathan Beckin who was the youngest of them was only 26 years old. Benjamin Franklin was 81 years old. They were able to give the Americans a constitution. And that constitution, the major flaw in American constitution was that it was a constitution written for white propertied men, not just for white people but for white propertied men. It took them the 13th, the 14th and the 15th amendment of that constitution. First, the 13th amendment abolished slavery. The 14th amendment gave citizens of America rights. The 15th amendment enabled black people to vote.
But unfortunately, it took until 1920 before white women could cast the vote. The point I am making, and this is really for me the knit of my reflection is that mere constitutional provisions are not enough. The challenge is the quality, the nature of the vehicular initiatives that citizens kept in place to achieve these rights.
So, for example, by 1909 or so, in America, the Concus clan was going around killing people all over the place. So, the black people started what they called the National Association for Advancement for Coloured People. That association from Booker Washington to Debua to Tobud Michael to Martin Luther King etc . All these people used that platform to make the black lives better, even for contesting and confronting America with what the constitution had to offer to black people.
The point I am making is that fighting for the rights of citizens, the so-called country of our dreams is not something that will drop from Heaven because no such thing happens. It is that every country’s history is a convoluted account of trials and failures, blood, sweat and tears. The challenge therefore, is that Nigerians someway like to outstraw their obligations and responsibilities.
So, the focus every time is that Tinubu is not doing well, Buhari is not doing well, Obasanjo is not doing well. We focus on occupants of the position, and we assume that somehow, we will wake up one day and a fantastic president has emerged who will give us everything that we have ever dreamt of. It doesn’t work like that.
So, nation building cannot be outsourced. All of us have to struggle by ourselves. Now, the American struggle also is long spent, because when Americans decided finally, towards the end of the 19th century, they came up with this idea of a supreme court ruling that simply guaranteed their rights. It took the contestation and the struggle of the ANNCP, with people like Tobud Michael to argue all the way to the supreme court before Americans were able to begin to access what they consider to be right.
FIVE POINTS
The point is that first of all, we have to continue to contest in the frontiers of freedom. And IFemi Falana, Gani Fawehinmi among other lawyers and profound intellectuals have done extra ordinary good work.
This is the nature of the contestation that must go on. In a very strange kind of way, all these people I have mentioned, I don’t know how it happened. But apart from Gani Fawehinmi, most of those who have been on the frontline of this struggle, Olise Agbakogba, all the people I have listed, all so happen to be Catholics. I don’t know why? But it is to say that contesting the frontiers of freedom, which means going to court, which means agitation, which means advocacy, that is a very important point.
The second point is the quality of the bureaucracy we have in place. Very often, Nigerians have spent a lot of time blaming the president, blaming the governors, and they deserve to be blamed. But really, in the final analysis, it’s the quality of bureaucracy you have in place that can assure the delivery of goods and services.
So, the biggest challenge that Nigeria faces is the quality of bureaucrats and people who run the bureaucracies. Right now, everybody’s attention is in Singapore. And we just heard about this former minister of transport plead guilty of having all the money, again he didn’t see the money but got them from favours here and there.
The important thing is that Singapore was Yuayu was in power for 40 years, staying in one place for 49 years. In 40 years, Nigeria was able to produce about five, six or seven heads of stste. So, political stability is important in productivity. Now, the very interesting thing is that in 2022, we got a message from our class at the Kennedy School that our classmate had just been elected prime minister of Singapore. We were all very excited, and I decided to go and put a call through to him to congratulate him, but I was told it wasn’t time for congratulations yet. He was elected prime minister in 2022, then he was only sworn in this year. The situation in Singapore is there are questions you must answer in your private life as prime minister elect. It may take one year before investigations are concluded .
They sound like things that we should be laughing at, but these are the qualities that Singapore has put in place.
So, in this kind of situation, you cannot just jump into power. Justice Okputa spoke on human right, and I quote him. He said, ‘Every aggrieved person is looking for justice from the court, for redress, for remedy, for restitution or else an injunction of justice’. But he said, ‘Rights and justice are actual contest because nobody has ever seen justice walking on the streets. No one knows the latitude and longitude of human rights’. But he said, ‘ The judge is a magician, and he must perform a miracle for justice to come about’.
So, the core point is the quality of the judicial system. The dissenting judgement that was given by Justice Nweze in the case of the Imo state governorship election at the Supreme court, the dissenting judgement given by Kayode Esho in the 19 two thirds of the state, and then, the dissenting judgement given by Justice Akas in the case of Osun State election. In many of these cases, these judges were finally proved to have been right in their judgement.
So, the final point is the question of what is the quality of civil societies that we have to be able to engage the state and contest its boundaries of freedom.
For example, many of us remember the case of Floyd, the young man who was killed by a policeman. I think this is why it is important that we are not just looking at government and holders of office in terms of issues of justice. All of us can do something. A young girl, 17 years old, Daniella Freizer, it was her video of Shagin’s knee being on the neck of this young man that was what went viral and at the end of it all, the city of Minneapolis had to pay compensation of 27 million dollars to the family of Floyd.
Our daughter Deborah was killed in Sokoto, and the guy who killed her went around with a match stick saying, ‘I’m the one who did it. Up to today, nothing has happened, and probably, this is Nigeria; nothing will happen.
Finally, Martin Luther King said on the 28th of August, 1963, ‘I have a dream’. But in that scene, one of the things that Martin Luther said is he said, ‘we have come to dramatise our condition. We are dramatising our condition because the promises in the declaration of independence, the promises in the American constitution have not been realised as far as the black people are concerned.
Chapter two of the Nigerian constitution promises us paradise. It’s actually like a Catholic catechist. Nigerians therefore must confront the Nigerian state. And this has nothing to do with President Bola Tinubu, because usually when I talk, people say to me, ‘ Bishop, you don’t like our government’. I have got nothing to do with any government. Like I say to people in power, some of us were here before you came, we will be here after you have gone. But our business is for us to take our people to the required destination, we must continue to confront the Nigerian state to keep its promises to the people, at least with promises enshrined in chapter two of our constitution.
So, it is still morning yet on creation day. We still have a long way to travel.
But I like to thank all of us. I want to congratulate the Archdiocese of Lagos. I want to congratulate you Archbishop for this celebration. But also to remind ourselves that the in 1924, these young missionaries started a newspaper. They also built St. Gregory’s. They also built St. Finbarr’s, whose exploits we still remember. Where are the children and grandchildren of St. Gregory’s and St. Finbarr’s? They should be the ones governing Nigeria today. But I don’t think there are people in any significant position who are holding up this flag.
Today, these young missionary Fathers; Fr. Slattery of blessed memory, a man who deserves a centibrstion.of his own. In 1924, this paper became a platform for us to confront the iniquity of the colonial state. Today, as we are speaking, Secretary to government of the federation, I challenge you, and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu I challenge you. Today, anybody can set up a radio or television station, but the Catholic Church because it’s a religious organisations, according to the laws of the Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation, the Catholic Church cannot set up a radio or television station because they are afraid we may use it wrongly. If you are serious, abolish that law. And the time to abolish it is now.