Beyond Boko Haram: The Nigerian Body Politic
Kano was subjected to devastating bombings yesterday, January 22, 2012 http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/news/34020-boko-haram-scores-feared-dead-in-kano-multiple-explosions.html. Given my decision to wade into and weigh in on Nigerian politics publicly, I got some feedback from people who question my integrity and consider me a publicity seeking charlatan. For the record, I am not in the least interested in publicity and my integrity matters to me. I am not for sale and have never been. I decided to come out of my comfort zone to engage Nigerian politics because I love my country and want it to reach its full potential.
Some people have contacted me to say that I don't care about the Boko Haram inflicted fatalities, the most recent in Kano. For the record, I am distraught that there is this loss of lives and wanton destruction. I am appalled. I am saddened. I pray that God will take control of Nigeria and let cooler heads prevail. I pray for the families, friends, acquaintances and loved ones of those whose lives were lost as a result of this and the other bombings, that God grants them the fortitude and gives them all they need to weather this devastating storm. On a personal level, I also have family and friends in Kano. Some of them have been victims of past violence in the city. I am not a casual and heartless bystander. But doesn't everyone say that? The people who know me know that I don't bandy words around just for the sake of talking. And anyway, this is not about me but about Nigeria and the well-being of its people. I encourage all Nigerians to engage our democratic system and struggle for both its survival and for the betterment of the lives of all of us.
This statement below expresses some of my thinking on the Nigerian Body politic and at the end, asks Nigerians to sign a petition. The petition is only a first step, as the statement says.
This House Must
Not Fall!
By Committee of Concerned
Nigerians
The recent mass uprising against the so-called
“removal” of subsidy on petroleum products by the Federal Government headed by
President Goodluck Jonathan has again brought to fore critical questions about
the crisis of governance in Nigeria and the way Nigeria is constituted or
structured. We the undersigned are convinced that, in spite of the ending of
the protests and the industrial action through the compromise between the
Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC)-Trade Union Congress (TUC), on the one hand, and
the Federal Government, on the other, fundamental questions raised by the civil
uprising remain unresolved. They must not be conveniently swept under the
carpet.
We are persuaded that what was displayed on the
streets and by the interventions of Nigerians at home and abroad in the week of
the protests, was not merely a response to the insensitive and ill-advised
increase in the price of petroleum products - particularly petrol, whose price
per litre was increased from N65 to N140. This national uprising was an
expression of the deep frustration of the Nigerian people.
We believe that at the core of this “withdrawal of
subsidy” regime, is the persistence of a contentious relationship between national
and international forces organised around the failed logic of neo-liberalism,
that have pulverised our national economy, destroyed every surviving national
institution of growth and development, reversed the gains of our local
industries, crushed the strength, vitality and steady growth of our educational
institutions, and smashed every process and institution of social services and
social provisioning that had hitherto ensured the survival of Nigerians.
The historical and structural conditions that led
Nigeria to the circumstances described above and the failure of the ascendant
neo-liberal policies, whose purveyors have remained consistently ignorant of
the reality and the specificities of the Nigerian environment, while displaying
condensed disdain for local knowledge and the political economy of the fiscal
crisis, are evident in the condescension and appalling obliviousness recently
displayed by the external and local “experts” who have attempted to define the
“real issues” in the course of the current debate.
In the current circumstances, the truth that we all
know is that Nigeria is broke. The 2012 budget - even if it were to be operated
on the basis of the N140 per litre of petrol - would still be a deficit budget.
However, the country is not broke by accident; it is broke by design. Through a
systematic and sustained process of unprecedented corruption, inefficiency and
lack of vision, the nation’s coffers have been systematically looted directly and indirectly by those in
charge of public administration.
Whether through a regime of self-provisioning -- from
the federal through the state to the local government levels – by means of
which public officers, particularly in the executive and legislative arms of
government, have converted public resources into their private entitlements, or
through a pattern of graft and unconscionable looting which is gradually
returning a nation that was supposed to have settled its external debts only a
few years back into the comity of debtor nations, Nigeria’s stupendous oil
resources have become even insufficient to match the ravenous appetites of our
rulers. This is why, as witnessed since the General Ibrahim Babangida era, and
as poignantly demonstrated many times during the President Olusegun Obasanjo era,
those in power have had to regularly remove a perpetual “subsidy” from
petroleum prices. Creeping but consistent inability of economically
marginalized Nigerians to make ends meet constituted a part of the backdrop of
the ferment witnessed in the streets recently.
Therefore, we are compelled to insist that if those in
power and their allied forces assume that they have won the battle by the
negotiated agreement which fixed the price of petrol at N97, they have missed
both the symbolic significance and the practical import of the heroic actions
recently displayed by Nigerians. The industrial action and mass protests have
been terminated for now, but the fundamental social, economic and political
questions that they raised remain salient and continue to constitute a threat
to, not only the survival of democratic rule in Nigeria, but also to the
corporate existence of the nation.
As the unending rash of terrorist attacks by Boko Haram shows, there is an underlying
structural predicament which this government can only ignore at its peril. The
fact that Boko Haram continues to
ridicule the nation’s security apparatuses, and has rendered President Jonathan
inarticulate about its sources and strength, constitutes an indication of the
urgent need to rethink the bases of the social contract between the state and
citizens in Nigeria.
However, even though they are provoked by, and react
to, different aspects of the national crises, both the terrorism of the Boko Haram group and the gallant efforts
by the masses and the civil society against the increase in the pump price of
oil, are manifestations of a perilous incoherence in the structural composition
of Nigeria and the manner in which the country has been, and is being,
administered. The different forms of questions raised on the corporate
existence of the country in the context of the two, should compel every
patriotic formation in Nigeria to join the task of responding to these
challenges and constructing the conditions and institutions through which these
fundamental questions can be addressed so as to save Nigeria from an imminent
collapse. The question therefore is: Which Way Nigeria?
Against this backdrop, we the undersigned, as joint
stakeholders in the Nigerian project, convinced about our moral responsibility
to join the debate to save Nigeria, persuaded that the nation is headed for the
precipice unless it takes a different course, and influenced by our implicit
trust in the manifest destiny of our country, Nigeria, to be a great and
indivisible nation, do make the following declarations:
1. That, through a
combination of past actions and inactions and the glaring incompetence,
corruption and lack of vision of the current government, Nigeria faces dire
crises which threaten her continued existence as a corporate entity;
2. That, in spite
of the promises that have been made by the present economic managers, the
Nigerian masses and the withered middle class will continue to experience a
life of unrelenting misery unless a new path that encourages a fundamental and
holistic restructuring of our national life, including the economic and
political structures, is started immediately;
3. That the
political (structural) questions raised by the totality of the challenges faced
under this government call for concerted actions beyond mere postulations of
development economics which are not interrogated through nationalistic analyses
of our local circumstances and historical conditions;
4. That, despite
the multiplicity of the challenges and the formidability of the obstacles,
Nigeria possesses the human and natural resources (particularly the former,
both at home and in the Diaspora) to confront and surmount our national crises
without taking instructions from Washington D.C. or London and other Western
capitals;
5. That the
passion, energies and frustrations let loose on the streets in the recent past
can be harnessed and deployed in the service of reconstructing and
reconstituting the country in a way that Nigeria can become a place of pride
again for all Nigerians;
6. That the
government of President Goodluck Jonathan has by its simplistic and haughty
responses to the true wishes of our people for effective and efficient
governance, for a government that is truly concerned about alleviating the
harrowing and devastating poverty that is evident all over the country, for a
united country whose diversity is a strength rather than a weakness, for
egalitarian rule, and for a country that can be restructured in a way that it
starts to function well and function for all, has lost a golden opportunity to
align itself with the people whose mandate it claims to hold.
In light of the
foregoing and based on our conviction that “What is to be Done” about Nigeria
is an on-going, inclusive and expansive project, we call on the people of
Nigeria and all patriotic forces to:
1. Continue
networking and join hands to immediately begin a process that must lead to the
convocation of a national conference. This conference must end in a
comprehensive restructuring of the federation such that it would prevent Nigeria
from experiencing what was experienced in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nigeria
between 1967 and 1970, or is being experienced in Somalia and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo.
2. To utilize this
historic moment when the Nigerian people have clearly spoken, calling for
development and democracy, as a time to fully commit ourselves to justice,
progress, and stability in our country.
3. Continue to
encourage Nigerian citizens to actively participate in the political process
through peaceful and non-violent means. We believe that only through a
consistently active and constructive engagement in the Nigerian democratic
process – both electoral and non-electoral – can we begin to harness the
enormous human potential of Nigerian citizens at home and abroad. We call on
the Nigerian authorities to ensure that Nigerians are secure to exercise their
democratic rights in a peaceful and non-violent manner without intimidation and
violence from the state.
4. For the
avoidance of doubt, whether those in power recognise this or not, Nigeria faces
enormous national crises which threaten to consume not only the government, but
also the nation. Violently extracting, collecting or gathering resources to
sustain the largely inefficient, unproductive and thoroughly incompetent
federal and state governments that we have now, constitutes cosmetic and
unsustainable paths to national survival.
We hope that
this intervention will encourage other Nigerians to continue to think carefully
and act meticulously to address the grave challenges that confront our country.
We intend to continue this debate and engage in high-level deliberations with
Nigerians, home and abroad, on the future of the country and the convocation,
at the earliest possible time, of a national conference to discuss our collective
future as a people.
Please visit the following online campaign, at iPetitions: http://www.ipetitions.com/
Professor Mojubaolu Olufunke Okome, Brooklyn College, CUNY, New York,
US
Professor Femi Vaughan, Geoffrey Canada Professor
of Africana Studies & History, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, USA
Dr. Pius Adesanmi, Carleton University, Ottawa,
Canada.
Dr. Wale Adebanwi, University of
California-Davis, USA.
Incidentally, I tweeted on the Kano tragedies yesterday. I'm new to this. But because I realize that many people believe in tweeting, and my son, who's more plugged in recommends that I do so, I have begun. So, I will see you all on tweeter. Yesterday, I was also interviewed by Wuyi Jacobs on Afrobeat Radio http://afrobeatradio.net/ WBAI 99.5 FM NY. The program streamed live online at www.wbai.org,
You can click on the following link to listen: http://archive.wbai.org/
The subject was as you see, Boko Haram and the bombing. If I was good at tweeting I would have done as my son said, and tweeted it. But I'm not. I'll soon learn though. Here below, you'll find Wuyi's intro.
INTRO:
The Wave of violence
allegedly masterminded by the fundamentalist Islamist group Boko Haram
continues in Northern Nigeria. In what is being described as the
deadliest attack yet, up to 162 people have been reported killed today
Saturday Jan 21, 2012 by media sources in Kano.
A BBC reporter in Kano said he had counted 150
bodies in the mortuary of the city's main hospital. Today’s took place
in the ancient city of Kano, Nigeria's second largest city. Over 30
coordinated explosions reportedly shook Kano, targeting mostly
government offices and police stations.
According to the BBC, a Boko Haram spokesman, Abul
Qaqa, told journalists that it had carried out the attacks because the
authorities had refused to release group members arrested in Kano.
It will be recalled that on Thursday Jan 5, 20 people were
killed in Mubi in Adamawa state as gunmen opened fire in a town hall
where members of the Christian Igbo group were meeting. The group has
staged numerous attacks in northern and central areas of the country in
recent months killing dozens of people, including one such attack on
Christmas Day on a catholic church near the capital, Abuja, in which 37
people were killed. In Bayelsa
More than 500 people were killed by the group in 2011.
President Jonathan, who is a Christian, has vowed to crack down on the
group, however, Christian groups have accused him of not doing enough to
protect them. The President declared a state of emergency in several
regions of the country including Yobe and Borno states in the North
East, Plateau state in central Nigeria and Niger state in the West.
Explosions were also reported today in the
president’s home state of Bayelsa State in the Niger Delta region of the
Southern Nigeria.
We had intended to start
today’s segment on Nigeria on the fuel subsidy removal earlier in the
month which led to a 3 day national general strike which started on
Monday January 9th. The strikes ended after 3 days, and after the
government rescinded the removal of the subsidy.
Latest developments in Nigeria makes it imperative to begin today’s conversation on the security situation in Nigeria.
You
may recall my conversation on these matters with Mr. Jahman Anikulapo,
the Editor of leading Nigerian newspaper The Guardian on Sunday two
weeks ago. Today we continue our discussion on the underling factors
leading to the Boko Haram bombings in the Northern Nigeria, as well as
its implications for Nigeria, and Nigeria’s economic and political
instability for the in the wider West African region.
Joining me from Brooklyn, NY is Prof Mojubaolu Okome
of Brooklyn College. Prof Okome is an International Political Economist
whose regional specialization is the African continent. She is
a Professor of Political Science and past Women's Studies Program Director at
Brooklyn College. Prof Okome is author of several books including “A
sapped democracy: the political economy of the Structural Adjustment
Program and the democratic transition in Nigeria, 1983-1995, and
co-editor of critical journals Ìrìnkèrindò: a Journal of African
Migration which can found at www.africamigration.com & until 2010, Jenda, www.jendajournal.com
I am editing another book that should be published later this year: State Fragility and the Contradictions of self organization in Nigeria. Palgrave Macmillan is the publisher for the book. There will be at least two chapters that address the Boko Haram phenomenon. There also will be chapters on other aspects of Nigerian political economy.
It's great that two books that I coedited are new on the market. Below is information on some of the places where they are available.
West African Migrations: Transnational and Global Pathways in a New Century Edited By Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome and Olufemi Vaughan Palgrave Macmillan
Hardcover :
Transnational Africa and Globalization
Edited By Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome and Olufemi Vaughan Palgrave Macmillan
http://us.macmillan.com/
Transnational Africa and Globalization
Mojubaolu Olufunke Okome and Olufemi Vaughan (Editors)
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/
and
West African Migrations: Transnational and Global Pathways in a New Century
Mojubaolu Olufunke Okome and Olufemi Vaughan (Editors)
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/
______________________________
UK
Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome and Olufemi Vaughan, Editors (2012) Transnational Africa and Globalization Palgrave Macmillan
and
Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome and Olufemi Vaughan Editors (2012) West African Migrations Transnational and Global Pathways in a New Century, Palgrave Macmillan
http://www.palgrave.com/
______________________________
EUROPE
http://www.easons.com/display.
http://www.easons.com/display.
Hardcover :
Transnational Africa and Globalization
Edited By Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome and Olufemi Vaughan Palgrave Macmillan
http://us.macmillan.com/
Transnational Africa and Globalization
Mojubaolu Olufunke Okome and Olufemi Vaughan (Editors)
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/
and
West African Migrations: Transnational and Global Pathways in a New Century
Mojubaolu Olufunke Okome and Olufemi Vaughan (Editors)
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/
______________________________
UK
Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome and Olufemi Vaughan, Editors (2012) Transnational Africa and Globalization Palgrave Macmillan
and
Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome and Olufemi Vaughan Editors (2012) West African Migrations Transnational and Global Pathways in a New Century, Palgrave Macmillan
http://www.palgrave.com/
______________________________
EUROPE
http://www.easons.com/display.
http://www.easons.com/display.
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