To date, addressing the National Question in Nigeria has been based on the assumption that the logic behind the demand for its resolution will be based on “reason” hence the expectation that such “reason” will prevail. So far, “reason” has not prevailed, which is why, in spite of all sorts of talk shops that have been held, the conveners always end up converting it to their own stated or unstated purposes. The talk shops thus served as necessary political diversions without touching upon the crisis created by the National Question. Yet, it is apparent that every Ethno-Nationality in Nigeria has its own grouse with the post colonial Nation State even as the question would be asked whether such a grouse would constitute the main contradiction for the Ethno-Nationality. For the Yoruba, there is an underground move to redefine this contradiction as being of an anti-North, anti-Fulani character without contextualizing it within the alienation engendered by the post colonial Nigerian State affecting all of Nigerian Nationalities.
As long as the fundamental contradiction is defined in this Ethno-National manner, so long will its manifestation become an inter-Ethnic agitation, leaving the post colonial Nation State the arbiter, when actually this Nation State is the problem. It also becomes impossible to migrate the resolution from the altar of “reason” to that of practical politics, for the “reason” of the Ethno-National opponent will become continuously questioned. Yet, the political is the only platform through which a resolution can be found and without which the extant state of affairs will allow the continuous isolation of the quest for Restructuring from the political field thus limiting its effectiveness and possibility of engaging the post colonial Nation State, the necessary precondition for its resolution, will become non-existent.
While there may be many reasons/factors responsible for this state of affairs, with the extant attitudinal disposition of the politicians and associated privileges being made out as immediate causes, the remote and more important reason is the failure of an overall strategy which can be described as nothing short of a dis-organized retreat from a position of strength; such strength being found in the weak underbelly of the post colonial Nation State, at this time characterized by near economic collapse and uncertainties, political immorality and opportunism established by the national legislature, aided by a willing Judiciary and the security mechanism of the Nation State, especially embroiled in an anti-terrorism campaign, all emanating from the structural imbalance that had been at the core of the problem since the deconstruction of the Federal and Regional System in 1966 all based on a false assumption of the 1999 Constitution as being of “We, The People”.
This existing state of affairs necessarily creates room for great disappointment and, for many, outright disillusionment; indicative of a lack of a not well thought out overall strategy. And, quite clearly, if a strategy is not well thought out, it implies that its intellectual back-up is weak!
Thus, the Restructuring process, having been made to fail on this point and with an intellectual base unable to create the political and programmatic space for itself sufficient enough to meaningfully influence the political choices that needed to be made, became a ball tossed to and fro when it is known that if a desirable degree of influence had existed, there would definitely have not only been a better articulation of the political choices available to us as a people but also a definitive movement towards the resolution of the contradictions presented by the National Question.
This situation reflects a failure to fully appreciate the enormity of the obstacles attendant to the quest for Restructuring revolving around the robust determination to at best panel beat the Nigerian Nation state into a supra-national state under the banner of “unity” without a determination as to who and what is to be united. Supra-national here is in the sense that all ethno-national centers of power would have to be neutralized as a necessary pre-condition and replaced with the “Nigerian idea”, largely espoused by the military, whose praxis is found in its occupationist origin, from being a colonialist enabler to becoming transformed into its full embodiment by coming up with all sorts of political and economic templates that had no bearing on making the peoples the Subject of the Restructuring but would rather make them an Object which is also the colonial foundational aim. Nowhere is this manifested more than the Babangida regime’s hearty welcome and celebration of the “brain drain” era as being beneficial for bringing in foreign exchange through remittances from those who left the country. This is coupled with its “pan-Nigeriansm” which is totally oblivious to the social and cultural make-up of the country since, according to this mindset, such had become mute, as it were, within its own formation. Yet, the only way for this ambition to be pursued was partly through the creation of alternative and/or new political power bases through the instrumentality of presidential patronage; a system perfectly compatible with its own existence.
The effect of this was more pernicious in Yorubaland where the attempt was towards the achievement of the sort of neutralization program that was embarked upon by the Babangida-Abacha-Diya trio; where, specifically, the attempt was based on tinkering with the 1999 Abubakar Constitution (i.e. with no fundamental changes) via first, Obasanjo’s All-Parties Technical Review Committee followed by the 2005 Political Conference and its political fall out where the AD, creditably the “Yoruba Party” of choice at the time, was all but wiped out were it not for the lone resistance mounted by Lagos State AD, later transformed into AC, ACN and now APC.
What would have happened to Yorubaland could only be imagined had Lagos also succumbed, for not only would Yorubaland lay prostrate for the PDP to play around with as it pleases, the idea of Restructuring would have become extinct. Going by what eventually happened to the Obasanjo “tendency”, the prime mover of this attempt, disguised as necessary for its own survival within the PDP, it was itself emasculated by the Jonathan “tendency” whose regime attempted to substitute itself for the leadership of Yorubaland. We need no soothsayer to tell us that Yorubaland would have become completely neutralized and turned into a plaything of other regional power centers, especially when it is historically noted that the control of Yorubaland by either or both of the North and East appears as the motivating factor for the “pan-Nigerianist” project .
This is even more so when Jonathan’s Yoruba enablers completely and totally jettisoned the Yoruba Agenda in favor of whatever it was Jonathan’s Conference would come up with, even before the Conference formally commenced sitting, simply following on its 2003 capitulation.
Using “public sittings” as a form of legitimacy, both the 2005 and Jonathan’s Conferences were able to create a false image of a democratic and localized participation without a formal input by the people, which can only be exercised through a Referendum by the people themselves.
“ooduapathfinder” is mindful of what “public debates” have done to our body politic in legitimizing doubtful socio-political legacies – IMF debates, Political Bureau, Niki Tobi’s Constitutional review, Abubakar, Obasanjo and Jonathan’s consultations. In each of these instances, it was a case of working to the answer, where, at the end, a pre-determined position emerges which will vitiate the struggle for ethno-national autonomy.
Where then do we go from here? “ooduapathfinder” posits that with the Lagos resistance having, to a very large extent, solved the teething political problems, it is time to move to the next level, whereby the consolidation of our historical, political experience will become formalized in its being made the heart of our praxis as a logical consequence of the Lagos resistance which was not a function of simple political survivalism but a historical necessity whose time has now fully come.
SOURCE: OODUA PATHFINDER
