By
Tunji Olaopa
The plural status quo of the Nigerian state gives rise to a series of discursive issues from federalism and restructuring to religious fundamentalism, from good governance to democratization, and from economic degradation to nation building. It will not be an exaggeration to say that Nigeria’s social discursive space is one of the most vociferous on the continent. This is in no small measure due to Nigeria’s larger than life status as a continental driver of ideas, and even problematic, around which the continent is perceived. Nigeria generates both rational and irrational but impassioned arguments as to what has happened and the how and why it has happened, as well as what is possible and what is not. From the newspapers stands to the social media, and from the informal settings to the formal academic and intellectual fora, individuals have one opinion or another to contribute to how it got to where it is and what should be done.
All Nigerians are ardent critics of their leadership. Nigeria generates criticisms from below and from above. The artisans, food sellers, traders, and others have something to say. The entrepreneurs, doctors, accountants, sports persons, musicians and other professionals hold perspectives. Academics, scholars and intellectual generate critical analysis. From the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti to the late Gani Fawehinmi, from Wole Soyinka to Odia Ofeimun, from Tam David West to Burna Boy, and from the ASUU to the NBA—there is a broad spectrum of socially discursive individuals and organizations that weigh in regularly on the imperatives of understanding and ameliorating Nigeria’s postcolonial and post-independence predicament.
Social discourse is usually situated in the academics and the media – print, broadcast and social. The university, for instance, as a citadel of learning, has come to denote that space for constant instigation of public and civil discourse on the Nigerian condition. And it becomes all the more interesting because the university, as the emblem of higher education, is also complicit in the predicament of the Nigerian state. This is to the extent that intellectuals and academics have all played one role or another in the determination of Nigeria’s current situation. Academics have been ministers; and Nigeria’s last president holds a doctoral degree. However, you have also found intellectuals who have attempted to stay true to the understanding of the university as an ivory tower that enables a detached perspective from embodied participants.
David Gauke, the British politician and former Lord Chancellor, once remarked that “A willingness by politicians to say what they think the public want to hear, and a willingness by large parts of the public to believe what they are told by populist politicians, has led to a deterioration in our public discourse.” Yet, the schemes of politicians and their populist tactics and tantrums have been the source of trenchant social political analyses. Nigeria, and the social media, have facilitated the emergence of many social and political commentators and analysts, as well as public intellectuals. In this mix, Professor Toyin Falola—the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas in Austin—is unique. He is not just a mere intellectual who has made a significant mark in disciplinary history. On the contrary, he has left an indelible mental print on the African humanities. He brings to the analysis of the Nigerian and African conditions a deep sense of historical awareness, elderly wisdom and pragmatic dynamics that is uncommon in the analysis of significant elements of our collective predicament.
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And recently, he added a unique element to the social discourse on Africa through what he called the Toyin Falola Interviews. This constitutes a new modal framework in Falola’s pan-Africanist credentials, and the objective of achieving excellence in African studies. The objective of the interviews is very simple: “to promote the work of great minds and to spread knowledge to the general public about current intellectual projects that these great minds are pursuing.” This requires having profound conversations with scholars, intellectuals, policymakers, politicians and public figures on past events, current projects, influences and all things relating to Africa and her development and progress. Why is this project unique? It is a profound means by which to excavate and link past actions with present circumstances in order to generate current thoughts and blueprints on Africa’s predicament and the way forward. The interviews are more current, cogent and immediate. The interview format allows the audience to crisscross the interviewee’s mind and motives from what has been done before to what is being done and what is then possible. Essentially, and this is pure brilliance from the master historian—the interviews therefore present social discourse as an alternative source of future historical reckoning.
So far, many significant Africans and Africanists have been interviewed: Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, President John Kufuor, Aisha Yesufu, Tunde Kelani, Prof. Paul Zeleza, Hon. Kojo Yankah, Ebenezer Obey, Prof. Kenneth Harrow, Prof. Nimi Wariboko, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, Prof. Jonathan Haynes, Dr Awolowo Dosumu, Segun Odegbami, Prof. Abiodun Ogunyemi. From this list, Nigeria takes on a huge proportion of the significant personalities interviewed so far. And for a fundamental reason: Nigeria’s political development resonates at the moment across the continent. The plural dynamics manifesting in Nigeria reflects similar incidences across Africa, from the Congo to Senegal, and from South Sudan to Mali. When the Toyin Falola Interviews commenced, Nigeria was just making sense of the COVID-19 pandemic which morphed almost seamlessly into the #EndSARS protests. The latter was a violent chain of reactions by Nigerian youths, powered by the social media, against police brutality, represented by the dreaded and unsupervised Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). The protests eventually metamorphosed into a call for wide-ranging socioeconomic and political reforms that reechoed the existing outcry for the restructuring of the Nigerian polity.
Not surprisingly, therefore, the views of the actors interviewed present a robust and fiery estimation of the Nigerian state and society. The interview started, of course, with Aisha Yesufu, one of the most outspoken faces of the #EndSARS protests. Ms. Yesufu honed her activist teeth with the Bring Back Our Girls Movement that was in itself a reaction against state failure in the abduction of the now famous Chibok Girls that were kidnapped by the Boko Haram insurgents. Next in line was former President Olusegun Obasanjo, former head of state and executive president as well as iconic statesman. This was followed by Bishop Matthew Kukah, the radical cleric who constantly speaks truth to power. And then we have Dr Tokunbo Awolowo-Dosunmu who embodies the political legacies of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. These stentorian voices converged on what ails Nigeria, from their different vantage points; and how Nigeria can get out of the woods.
From the four avatars interviewed by Toyin Falola, Nigeria faces daunting problems, which Falola metaphorized as the four horsemen of the biblical apocalypse. From insecurity to economic underdevelopment, and from infrastructural deficit to incremental poverty, listing these issues is no longer enlightening. Yet, their various diagnosis and prognosis, indeed the very activism of Yesufu, Kukah and Dosumu, as well as the outspoken criticism of Obasanjo, is a cry against despondency and resignation. To fight for one’s nation is to display implicit trust in her capacity to overcome her predicament. Almost all these significant actors agreed on the present state of Nigeria, and her internal contradictions. As was to be expected, the issue of security took the front burner in all the discourses. And security underscores the most minimal of indices to judge the capacity of any leader. It is the very complicity of the law enforcement agents in fomenting troubles, and undermining the security they are meant to secure, that led to the #EndSARS protests in the first place. If, according to Father Kukah, security is not too much to ask for from the government, it becomes significant, in Obasanjo’s assessment that leaders must possess some modicum of experiences, like knowledge of economic matters and global relations. And as Obasanjo came to understand from the grilling he received from the interviews, leadership is a sine qua non for good governance and political stability. The choice of Yar’adua and Jonathan as presidents after him was considered by all to be a disservice to the future of the Nigerian polity.
The issue of federalism and restructuring underlies the very challenge Nigeria is facing, as became very glaring in the interview with Dr Dosumu and Father Kukah. The struggle to federalize Nigeria’s structures and processes points at a critical lopsidedness that keeps weakening every effort at making democracy work for development and well-being. Restructuring has been interpreted in so many ways. Yet, it simply means adopting a federal system of government that adequately addresses Nigeria’s plural existence. It means, for instance, decentralizing critical institutional framework in Nigeria to cater for the aspiration of the people. The idea of state police, for instance, might have been a panacea to forestall a monolithic security structure like SARS. Indeed, the issue of decentralizing the police was prominent in the #EndSARS protest that Ms. Yesufu participated in.
With the #EndSARS protest, the legitimacy of protest as one of the elements for watching over the existence of democracy came alive in Nigeria. That the protest was overwhelmingly youthful speaks to several morbid symptoms of the Nigerian state. For instance, it speaks to the alarming fact of youth unemployment that stands at 14.2 percent. It equally speaks to the preying of the law enforcement agents on a hapless youth population finding means of making ends meet. While the 419/Yahoo boys’ phenomenon is a byproduct of raging unemployment, it is a mark of unprofessionalism for the police to use that as an excuse to dehumanize the youths. And so, while Ms. Yesufu represented the positive potentialities of the Nigerian youths and what they are capable of, Chief Obasanjo canvassed for a very active structural dynamics that involve the Nigerian youth in the democratization and governance process in Nigeria. In this way, it will become very difficult for unscrupulous politicians and cleric to keep harnessing the unemployed energies of the youth for nefarious religious and political agenda.
Let us give Father Matthew Hasan Kukah the last word: no one gains anything if Nigeria should break up. In drawing the voices of significant individuals into critical conversations about the Nigerian condition, Professor Toyin Falola has brought into existence a crucial framework that keeps social discourses about Nigeria alive and current. The essence of this conversations is found in the aphorism that it is better to jaw-jaw than to war-war. There is nowhere that the ominous signs of war and dissolution are more frightening than in Nigeria. Speaking about our condition can bring us to a point of agreement about what to do to alleviate our collective circumstances.
Prof. Olaopa is a retired Federal Permanent Secretary & Directing Staff, National Institute For Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Jos. tolaopa2003@gmail.com
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