The Super Eagles Have Crash Landed
(Nigeria’s World Cup: A Post Mortem)
A time comes when a nation exhausts its stock of miracles, when its prayers for divine intervention fail like bounced cheques because it has long overdrawn its account of justifiable help from above. In the end, no amount of prayer could help the eagles’ wretched performance at the world cup. Even when divine aid was apparently delivered in the shape of Argentina beating Greece and the eagles needed a seemingly feasible victory over South Korea to grab a spot in the round of sixteen, it was beyond their talents. Instead we are left to ponder Yakubu Aiyegbeni’s ghastly miss from three yards out with the goal at his mercy. In the inquest that follows the eagles’ exit, we will revisit defining moments of our very brief world cup adventure. People will, no doubt, cite Sani Kaita’s moment of madness against Greece, needlessly incurring a red card for violent conduct and leaving his team a man down; or Yakubu Aiyegbeni (again!) failing to score when put through and Chinedu Obasi’s even more galling inability to slot home the rebound at close range. Had either of the two forwards utilized this gilt-edged opportunity, we just might have beaten the Greeks.
It is comforting to blame the Swede Lars Lagerback’s formation that deployed Yakubu as an at times isolated lone striker. Alas, all these are only symptoms. The truth is that Nigeria’s eagles have offered a mediocre brand of football for a while now. There is little a coach can tell a premier league striker about how to kick the ball into the goal from well inside the penalty box with no pressure whatsoever. Yakubu’s atrocious finishing against Korea is not a coaching matter. It speaks to the player’s motivation, hunger and sense of professional responsibility. But let’s not make this about Yakubu. For the better part of the last decade, Nigeria has fallen as a football medium power to an also ran even on the African continent. Let us remember that Nigeria made it to South Africa only after a lackluster qualifying campaign and had needed Mozambique to defeat its close rival Tunisia to win its world cup place. Thereafter, an equally mediocre showing at the African Cup of Nations earned the team an undeserved third place finish. Amodu Shuaibu who had overseen the last gasp qualification for the world cup and the dismal venture at the African Cup was sacked and replaced by Lagerback who in classic Nigerian tradition was asked to perform miracles. The Swede obliged persuaded by a contract reportedly worth twenty-five times what his predecessor had been earning. The ignominious showing in South Africa was thus foretold. In view of all this, news that a 56 year old Enugu resident and father of three died shortly after Argentina scored their goal against the eagles is especially lamentable as a waste.
What lessons can we learn from our latest misadventure? It is impossible not to interpret the eagles’ failure as a metaphor of our own failings as a nation. For decades, Nigeria has adopted an ad hoc strategy by default which discounts planning and relies heavily on talent and magical thinking. This fire brigade approach is precisely what it means. We have evolved a way of doing things that is a series of emergency protocols laced with prayers for divine intervention. Our preparation for events is a study in chaos, crisis mismanagement and damage control. In the past, we have somehow managed to get by because we had sufficient talent to gloss over our abject inability to plan. What the 2010 world cup showed is that we no longer have the talent to compensate for our organizational shortcomings.
In the current generation of the Super Eagles, there is no playmaker in the mould of Jay-Jay Okocha – a midfield general that can hold the ball and distribute it to the forwards. John Obi Mikel, a pretender to the throne was injured before the tournament and in any case has never performed in that role having been converted to a defensive midfielder by Jose Mourinho at Chelsea. The most natural successor to Okocha is Rabiu Ibrahim, an alumnus of the Under 17 World Cup-winning Golden Eaglets of 2007 but he was not picked. The current eagles have no holding midfielder in the league of Sunday Oliseh, nor wingers in the class of Finidi George and Emmanuel Amuneke. Thus, the team had no capacity for ball-winning, retention or distribution. The forwards were starved off decent supplies but were woeful when called into action. True, Yakubu’s close range miss was one of the bloopers of the tournament but the supporting cast – Obasi, Nsofor, Odemwingie, Martins – scarcely covered themselves in glory. The obvious exception is Kalu Uche who scored both of Nigeria’s goals at the tournament. Of the lot, Odemwingie and Martins did not get much playing time. It seemed Lagerback was undecided as to a preferred striking combination. Overall the team lacked leaders on the pitch; it had no midfield general or dean of the defence. Decision-making in the final third of the pitch was often poor. The team lacked character. But let it be known that these problems did not begin in South Africa.
Success in any endeavour is not miraculously generated on the fly. It is the outcome of systems and institutions built over time. Excellence takes organization and planning, not wishful thinking, prayer, fasting or gambling. It is instructive that the eagles could not summon the will and the hunger to win even with the offer of pecuniary incentives. Tom-Tom, the team’s official candy had an initiative to reward the eagles with $1000 per shot on target. It was a creative, if desperate response to the team’s poor chances of success. Note that the prize money was for shots on target not goals. It is absurd that top footballers should need monetary motivation to strike the ball in the direction of the goal in the world’s biggest football competition. The point of the game, after all, is not that the ball should be kept in the centre circle or fired at the corner flag. Before they were knocked out, the eagles had earned $5000 for mustering one shot on target against Argentina and getting four against Greece. More tellingly, they entered the history books as the first team ever beaten by Greece at the World Cup finals. The eagles may have been among the highest paid teams at the tournament but financial incentives can only accomplish so much for a team of overpaid and overrated underperformers. Even at the highest levels of the game, playing for honour, pride and country still trump playing for cash.
It is significant that the last generation of Nigerian footballers to win international laurels – Oliseh, Okocha, and Rasheed Yekini etc. – emerged during the reign of the Dutch manager, Clemens Westerhof. What was remarkable about the Westerhof era was not the man himself but the fact that he had considerable latitude in terms of time and primacy over national football matters. Westerhof coached Nigeria from 1989 to 1994. In those years, he scoured the local league, unearthed raw diamonds like Finidi, Uche Okechukwu and Daniel Amokachi among others and saw to it that they moved to foreign clubs for cutting and polishing. He gave Kanu his senior debut and was not afraid of experimenting with new finds from the local league. But the point is that Westerhof was given time and full authority over the national team. He was able to focus on his work without the distraction of meddlesome dolts in the football federation. Just as important, Nigeria had a local league that was worth the name at the time. That was when Iwuanyanwu Nationale, Shooting Stars, Ranchers Bees and Sharks of Port Harcourt could still engage the imagination of football followers. Then it was possible for Finidi George to move straight from Sharks to Ajax Amsterdam.
If today, our national league commands scant interest even from local sports journalists, it is not because of the ubiquitous presence of the English premier league or the Spanish La Liga. It is because it simply fails to capture our soccer-loving hearts. With pitches better suited for grazing cattle, poorly run clubs with players on slave wages, all too common hooliganism and a monopolistic corporate sponsorship deal that reeks of graft, the Nigerian league is hardly a spectacle of the beautiful game. Over the years as the local league has degenerated, there has been a dearth of talent coming into the national senior team. Consider the fact that since the departure of Amuneke, we have not had a natural left footer on the left side of midfield. During Westerhof’s time at the helm, Dotun Alatishe, Friday Elaho, Amuneke and the two-footed Victor Ikpeba variously occupied this position. Since Okocha’s retirement, we have lamented the hole in the centre of the eagles’ midfield. The misguided calls by some analysts for Okocha to come out of retirement signify the dearth of talent in our time. Under Westerhof, we had able midfielders like Moses Kpakor, Friday Ekpo and Mutiu Adepoju who marshaled the midfield with distinction. Indeed, Okocha played second fiddle for a while to Ekpo, and did not become a regular starter until Westerhof’s departure because Samson Siasia (converted from attack to midfield) was preferred.
Without a well run league, there will be no nursery for fledgling talent. Our most promising footballers will continue to falsify their ages so as to play for age-grade teams and market their skills on the world stage or simply sign away their lives in slave contracts with foreign clubs. The effect is that when such players eventually make it into the eagles, they shine brightly but briefly as supernovae rather than stars. Their careers are cut short by diminishing marginal returns and recurrent injuries brought on by middle-aged limbs protesting their overuse. Consider Julius Aghahowa, Pius Ikedia and a host of talented players that have gone too soon into retirement or obscurity. Like Shakira’s hips, hamstrings and muscles in the throes of midlife don’t lie.
President Goodluck Jonathan’s reversed decision to suspend the eagles from international football may have been well-intentioned but was consistent with the Nigerian tradition of taking sensational and superficial actions that appear populist but have little beneficial practical value. The presidential decision risked incurring a FIFA ban on Nigeria. That would have been unfortunate. For Nigeria’s ascent as a football power was cut short by similar presidential meddling in 1996 when the Abacha junta pulled the eagles out of the African Cup of Nations being hosted in South Africa for political reasons. That earned the country a ban by CAF for another two years that stalled our progress. There is still room for presidential action but it must be directed at fundamental causes rather than superficial symptoms. Government control of football is an important cog in the wheel. The fact that candidates for the leadership of the football federation often court the backing of the presidency is a problem. We need to resuscitate the local league, renegotiate the silly contract that has placed local football in the pocket of one corporation. We need to revitalize school competitions, the Youth Sports Federation of Nigeria (YSFON) and our soccer academies – the seedbed of football talent. Whether or not Lagerback is kept on as coach, whoever heads the team should be given a long-term contract with an eye on the next African cup of nations and the Brazil 2014 World Cup. We should start planning for the future now.
Long suffering Nigerians will want to believe that our misadventure in South Africa will mark a radical change in football administration in this country; that the national disappointment will provoke dramatic transformation of Nigerian football. History suggests otherwise. It seems more likely that our inability to learn lessons from the past will once again take hold of events. We have, after all, been here before. Remember that we did not even qualify for the last world cup, Germany 2006 and that we suffered a first round exit in Korea-Japan 2002. Neither failure sparked off any revolutions. Crocodile tears were shed and some recrimination ensued, but nothing transformative happened. The same thing might happen now. Nigerians are jaded having been hurt for so long by their underperforming footballers. The parallel with the relationship between Nigerians and their political leaders is unmistakable. Overpaid footballers break our hearts and overpaid politicians dash our hopes. It is so easy to pessimistic. But we can still hope, can’t we?
Monday, July 12, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Ending The Politics of Victimhood
Before or shortly after the return to civil rule in 1999, a curious word crept stealthily into the national lexicon. It was “Marginalization.” Suddenly every ethnic, religious and cultural group was claiming marginalization. Even individuals with their political fortunes in eclipse pleaded marginalization. The politics of victimhood emerged. Since then, the country polarized along religion, ethnicity, gender, culture and geopolitical zones has seemed locked in a neurosis of mutual victimization. Histories have been revised and new narratives drafted to accommodate a new cast of arch villains and faultless victims. Ethnic groups blame their lack of progress on the machinations of other ethnic groups. Conspiracy theories of agendas for domination are rife. Of course, before 1999, it was usual for various groups to claim that other groups were marginalizing them. However, from 1999, claims of marginalization crystallized into a handy ideology for political engagement. The all-pervasive claim to victimhood resonates with a multiethnic society in which politics is a brutish scramble for the lion’s share of the national cake. In Nigeria, the officially recognized victim status of any group is a passport for its elite through the portals of political power and allied economic advantages. The poetry of victimhood is an effective means of rallying the tribal warriors and mobilizing the ever-dependable kinfolk.
To be sure, there are legitimate issues of fairness, equity and justice that need to be resolved in the polity. The republic is far from perfect but few of its problems stem from actual ethnic animosity as proposed by the champions of marginalization. If politics is to provide solutions to the Nigerian condition, it must evolve beyond its current fixation on convenient scapegoats and mutual recrimination. This must happen across the board. This shift will be driven by a new sense of civic vigilance, a willingness to interrogate the myths that pass for political gospel and to repudiate the falsehood and hypocritical cant that characterize so many claims of marginalization. As citizens, we must exercise greater discernment in our appraisal of the political rhetoric on the airwaves and in the news headlines. With this, we can properly apportion culpability and identify the true antagonists of the Nigerian cause.
Among sections of the northern elite, it is now customary to blame the Obasanjo administration and a larger southern conspiracy for the rampant beggary and squalor in the region. They cite as an example the region’s poor representation in the financial sector and claim that Obasanjo’s banking sector reforms were designed to erase northerners from the financial domain. This is clearly bogus. The problems of the region preceded the Obasanjo era. In fact, the northern elites impoverished the north by their blatant neglect of investments in education, health and social infrastructure. Northern politicians plundered the Bank of the North, the region’s bank, and ran it aground. External machinations cannot account for why a child born north of the Niger is more likely to endure a quality of life far lower than that of a compatriot born in the south. It certainly does not explain the surrender of millions of youths in the region to the incendiary alchemy of nihilism and homicidal zealotry draped in the banner of religion. Southern intrigue is not the reason why substance abuse and narcotics addiction is highest in the northwest zone. However, we can argue with veracity that decades of clueless northern politicians using religion as a smokescreen for their misrule have only deepened the misery of their people. Northern elites, heirs of an illustrious legacy of learning have turned their land into a hub of illiteracy and ignorance.
Politicians from the Niger Delta can lay claim to victimhood with more seriousness. They can convincingly narrate their suffering at the hands of oil companies, an insensitive federal government and “parasitic” northern elites. Multinational oil companies have had a checkered history in the region and have fully earned the distrust of the oil-producing communities. But let us be clear, it is one thing to insist that the oil companies observe the highest standards of environmental and operational safety in their extractive activities; it is quite another to demand that they must build schools, hospitals and roads as a sop to those communities. There is a reasonable argument for corporate social responsibility but these companies also pay taxes. The real issue is how the government utilizes the taxes paid by these companies. We should worry more about the absence of local government in the area (and beyond) despite the billions of naira allocated to them. We should be asking what governors of the zone do with the hefty amounts that accrue to them each month. Over the past decade, during which the country experienced an oil boom, the richest states in Nigeria, apart from Lagos, have been in the Niger Delta. Asking multinationals to build schools and hospitals in these communities is asking them to assume the role of local governments – an alarming invitation to state failure.
The picture that is emerging is that of politicians using the misery of their people to extract queer concessions from oil companies. It is extortion, really. As for the rap about “parasitic” northern elites, a dispassionate appraisal of the Niger Delta will conclusively establish that southern Nigerian elites are no less parasitic than their northern counterparts are. The ignoble exploits of former Bayelsa State governor, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha and the continuing saga of former Delta State governor James Ibori now on the run from both Nigerian and British law enforcement suggest that more oil money and a revised revenue allocation formula will not solve the Niger Delta’s problems.
The elites of the Middle Belt like to attribute the woes of their region to the diabolical machinations of the so-called “Hausa-Fulani” hegemony. However, Hausa or Fulani domination does not explain the range of social plagues now devastating the region – the disintegration of families, the epidemic spread of alcoholism and the fact that the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in this area is the highest in the federation. A supposed “Islamic Fulani agenda” does not account for the bizarre culture of sloth that has gripped middle belt communities even as their leaders point to the entrepreneurial dexterity of other ethnic groups as evidence of a plan to dominate the region. Besides Middle Belt elites have been willing partners with their far northern (mostly Musli ) counterparts in their pillaging of the commonwealth. It is absurd to argue, for instance, that former Plateau State Governor Joshua Dariye’s theft of state funds was inspired by a nebulous conspiracy in the far north. Here and elsewhere in the federation, the Nigerian people are suffering from the self-impoverishment wrought by their own leaders.
The politics of victimhood is leavened with the yeast of hypocrisy. This is what makes it untenable as a basis for intelligent debate or for constructing the nation’s future. Sections of the so-called Lagos-Ibadan media axis may persist in demonizing “the north”, the “Hausa-Fulani” or the “Sokoto Caliphate” as the arch-foes of the Nigerian enterprise while conveniently sidestepping the collaboration of the southwestern liberal elite with northern-led military regimes. Their diatribes cannot mask their disingenuous belated realization of a supposed “northern conspiracy” only when one of their own was denied political power in the 1990s.
At first glance, Igbo elites can justifiably plead marginalization. The southeast bore the brunt of the civil war and many Igbos lost much more than property during those dark days. Even now, in the scheme for allocating federal assets and resources that denotes our politics, the east can convincingly argue that it has been shortchanged. Forty years after the end of the civil war, we can also contend that forces of decay other than those unleashed by external intriguers are at work in the Igbo heartland. It will take more than marginalization to explain the scale of banditry now sweeping the region, the steep decline in male school enrolment figures, the apparent monetization of the culture that sustains the veneration of rich dimwits and the celebration of overnight wealth generated through fraud and other criminal endeavours. Marginalization does not explain how an assortment of pocket emperors and dubious panjandrums claiming aristocratic pedigrees that have no basis in historical reality have overrun a fiercely republican people with a neo-Calvinist work ethic and a disdain for aristocracy and inherited privilege.
Let there be no mistake: interethnic tensions exist in some parts as they do in all culturally diverse societies. The quest for fair shares and equitable relations in the polity is important and should be intensified. Nevertheless, the plagues that ail us are not only those pertaining to constitutional structure; they are also of the culture. We should certainly work to institute systemic guarantees for fairness and equity that will nullify the zero-sum idea that one group’s progress means another’s retardation. We can all make progress together. But it is also clear that a debilitating moral contagion is afflicting our communities across the nation submerging any sense of socio-cultural etiquette and public virtue beneath tidal waves of violence, greed and sloth. The crisis of our politics is at its root a cultural and moral collapse. The values that once made our disparate communities strong have melted away depriving us of the spiritual and social capital needed for progress.
The rhetoric of marginalization is marked by its conspicuous lack of referents to personal and communal responsibility and self-discipline. The notion that individuals and communities can take charge of their own destinies is almost lost. The politics of victimhood stokes the embers of hate by making religious, cultural and ethnic differences marks of rivalry and antipathy. When we define communal identities in sharp contrast or contest with other communal identities, an “us against them” siege mentality develops. Demagogues take over politics with ethnic cleansing and genocide not far behind. These trends in our public life make our society so violent and insecure.
The politics of victimhood distracts us from the imperatives of addressing our moral squalor and cleansing our culture because it persists in pointing the finger at imaginary external enemies. When politicians lay the blame for our communal failings on the doorsteps of some other group, they distract us from the all-important task of scrutinizing their conduct in office. Raising the bogey of domination by some other group is a diversionary tactic. Nigerians are indeed victims but not of their fellow citizens of differing ethnicities and religions. They are victims of a pan-Nigerian confederacy of political pirates, which despite its occasional apparently sectional façade is of a resolutely national character. The politics of victimhood serves to divert our attentions from the true nature of this leviathan and erodes our capacity to discern its real character and confront it accordingly. The portrait of blame for the Nigerian condition, if it is to be true, must be painted with very broad-brush strokes. All of us are in some sense marginalized, all of us are legitimately aggrieved and above all, all of us have sinned against each other. In the often-contentious plurality of Nigeria today, no one group has a monopoly of just grievances or stands upon the moral high ground.
The politics of victimhood has failed because it is manifestly not about improving the material condition of the Nigerian people. It is about elites using the legitimate grievances of the poor to negotiate power and privilege for themselves. The rancid poetry of marginalization prevents us from noticing that even as we dance to the drums of sectarian disharmony, a fate of dispossession, hopelessness and indignity has been foisted on Nigerians, binding them with chains of a common victimhood from Talata Mafara to Brass, Shendam to Abakiliki, and Sagamu to Garkida. The task of reformist intellectuals, politicians and activists in this generation is to highlight the civic solidarity latent in our shared victimhood. Much more has always bound us together than divided us. In our common victimization, we can surely realize a solidarity that serves as a basis for organizing redemptive social and political action.
To be sure, there are legitimate issues of fairness, equity and justice that need to be resolved in the polity. The republic is far from perfect but few of its problems stem from actual ethnic animosity as proposed by the champions of marginalization. If politics is to provide solutions to the Nigerian condition, it must evolve beyond its current fixation on convenient scapegoats and mutual recrimination. This must happen across the board. This shift will be driven by a new sense of civic vigilance, a willingness to interrogate the myths that pass for political gospel and to repudiate the falsehood and hypocritical cant that characterize so many claims of marginalization. As citizens, we must exercise greater discernment in our appraisal of the political rhetoric on the airwaves and in the news headlines. With this, we can properly apportion culpability and identify the true antagonists of the Nigerian cause.
Among sections of the northern elite, it is now customary to blame the Obasanjo administration and a larger southern conspiracy for the rampant beggary and squalor in the region. They cite as an example the region’s poor representation in the financial sector and claim that Obasanjo’s banking sector reforms were designed to erase northerners from the financial domain. This is clearly bogus. The problems of the region preceded the Obasanjo era. In fact, the northern elites impoverished the north by their blatant neglect of investments in education, health and social infrastructure. Northern politicians plundered the Bank of the North, the region’s bank, and ran it aground. External machinations cannot account for why a child born north of the Niger is more likely to endure a quality of life far lower than that of a compatriot born in the south. It certainly does not explain the surrender of millions of youths in the region to the incendiary alchemy of nihilism and homicidal zealotry draped in the banner of religion. Southern intrigue is not the reason why substance abuse and narcotics addiction is highest in the northwest zone. However, we can argue with veracity that decades of clueless northern politicians using religion as a smokescreen for their misrule have only deepened the misery of their people. Northern elites, heirs of an illustrious legacy of learning have turned their land into a hub of illiteracy and ignorance.
Politicians from the Niger Delta can lay claim to victimhood with more seriousness. They can convincingly narrate their suffering at the hands of oil companies, an insensitive federal government and “parasitic” northern elites. Multinational oil companies have had a checkered history in the region and have fully earned the distrust of the oil-producing communities. But let us be clear, it is one thing to insist that the oil companies observe the highest standards of environmental and operational safety in their extractive activities; it is quite another to demand that they must build schools, hospitals and roads as a sop to those communities. There is a reasonable argument for corporate social responsibility but these companies also pay taxes. The real issue is how the government utilizes the taxes paid by these companies. We should worry more about the absence of local government in the area (and beyond) despite the billions of naira allocated to them. We should be asking what governors of the zone do with the hefty amounts that accrue to them each month. Over the past decade, during which the country experienced an oil boom, the richest states in Nigeria, apart from Lagos, have been in the Niger Delta. Asking multinationals to build schools and hospitals in these communities is asking them to assume the role of local governments – an alarming invitation to state failure.
The picture that is emerging is that of politicians using the misery of their people to extract queer concessions from oil companies. It is extortion, really. As for the rap about “parasitic” northern elites, a dispassionate appraisal of the Niger Delta will conclusively establish that southern Nigerian elites are no less parasitic than their northern counterparts are. The ignoble exploits of former Bayelsa State governor, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha and the continuing saga of former Delta State governor James Ibori now on the run from both Nigerian and British law enforcement suggest that more oil money and a revised revenue allocation formula will not solve the Niger Delta’s problems.
The elites of the Middle Belt like to attribute the woes of their region to the diabolical machinations of the so-called “Hausa-Fulani” hegemony. However, Hausa or Fulani domination does not explain the range of social plagues now devastating the region – the disintegration of families, the epidemic spread of alcoholism and the fact that the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in this area is the highest in the federation. A supposed “Islamic Fulani agenda” does not account for the bizarre culture of sloth that has gripped middle belt communities even as their leaders point to the entrepreneurial dexterity of other ethnic groups as evidence of a plan to dominate the region. Besides Middle Belt elites have been willing partners with their far northern (mostly Musli ) counterparts in their pillaging of the commonwealth. It is absurd to argue, for instance, that former Plateau State Governor Joshua Dariye’s theft of state funds was inspired by a nebulous conspiracy in the far north. Here and elsewhere in the federation, the Nigerian people are suffering from the self-impoverishment wrought by their own leaders.
The politics of victimhood is leavened with the yeast of hypocrisy. This is what makes it untenable as a basis for intelligent debate or for constructing the nation’s future. Sections of the so-called Lagos-Ibadan media axis may persist in demonizing “the north”, the “Hausa-Fulani” or the “Sokoto Caliphate” as the arch-foes of the Nigerian enterprise while conveniently sidestepping the collaboration of the southwestern liberal elite with northern-led military regimes. Their diatribes cannot mask their disingenuous belated realization of a supposed “northern conspiracy” only when one of their own was denied political power in the 1990s.
At first glance, Igbo elites can justifiably plead marginalization. The southeast bore the brunt of the civil war and many Igbos lost much more than property during those dark days. Even now, in the scheme for allocating federal assets and resources that denotes our politics, the east can convincingly argue that it has been shortchanged. Forty years after the end of the civil war, we can also contend that forces of decay other than those unleashed by external intriguers are at work in the Igbo heartland. It will take more than marginalization to explain the scale of banditry now sweeping the region, the steep decline in male school enrolment figures, the apparent monetization of the culture that sustains the veneration of rich dimwits and the celebration of overnight wealth generated through fraud and other criminal endeavours. Marginalization does not explain how an assortment of pocket emperors and dubious panjandrums claiming aristocratic pedigrees that have no basis in historical reality have overrun a fiercely republican people with a neo-Calvinist work ethic and a disdain for aristocracy and inherited privilege.
Let there be no mistake: interethnic tensions exist in some parts as they do in all culturally diverse societies. The quest for fair shares and equitable relations in the polity is important and should be intensified. Nevertheless, the plagues that ail us are not only those pertaining to constitutional structure; they are also of the culture. We should certainly work to institute systemic guarantees for fairness and equity that will nullify the zero-sum idea that one group’s progress means another’s retardation. We can all make progress together. But it is also clear that a debilitating moral contagion is afflicting our communities across the nation submerging any sense of socio-cultural etiquette and public virtue beneath tidal waves of violence, greed and sloth. The crisis of our politics is at its root a cultural and moral collapse. The values that once made our disparate communities strong have melted away depriving us of the spiritual and social capital needed for progress.
The rhetoric of marginalization is marked by its conspicuous lack of referents to personal and communal responsibility and self-discipline. The notion that individuals and communities can take charge of their own destinies is almost lost. The politics of victimhood stokes the embers of hate by making religious, cultural and ethnic differences marks of rivalry and antipathy. When we define communal identities in sharp contrast or contest with other communal identities, an “us against them” siege mentality develops. Demagogues take over politics with ethnic cleansing and genocide not far behind. These trends in our public life make our society so violent and insecure.
The politics of victimhood distracts us from the imperatives of addressing our moral squalor and cleansing our culture because it persists in pointing the finger at imaginary external enemies. When politicians lay the blame for our communal failings on the doorsteps of some other group, they distract us from the all-important task of scrutinizing their conduct in office. Raising the bogey of domination by some other group is a diversionary tactic. Nigerians are indeed victims but not of their fellow citizens of differing ethnicities and religions. They are victims of a pan-Nigerian confederacy of political pirates, which despite its occasional apparently sectional façade is of a resolutely national character. The politics of victimhood serves to divert our attentions from the true nature of this leviathan and erodes our capacity to discern its real character and confront it accordingly. The portrait of blame for the Nigerian condition, if it is to be true, must be painted with very broad-brush strokes. All of us are in some sense marginalized, all of us are legitimately aggrieved and above all, all of us have sinned against each other. In the often-contentious plurality of Nigeria today, no one group has a monopoly of just grievances or stands upon the moral high ground.
The politics of victimhood has failed because it is manifestly not about improving the material condition of the Nigerian people. It is about elites using the legitimate grievances of the poor to negotiate power and privilege for themselves. The rancid poetry of marginalization prevents us from noticing that even as we dance to the drums of sectarian disharmony, a fate of dispossession, hopelessness and indignity has been foisted on Nigerians, binding them with chains of a common victimhood from Talata Mafara to Brass, Shendam to Abakiliki, and Sagamu to Garkida. The task of reformist intellectuals, politicians and activists in this generation is to highlight the civic solidarity latent in our shared victimhood. Much more has always bound us together than divided us. In our common victimization, we can surely realize a solidarity that serves as a basis for organizing redemptive social and political action.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
The Bonds of Freedom
It is the hubris of a generation to think itself set apart; to assume that its nation’s history begins and ends with it and that it can therefore single-handedly decide the country’s fate. As a society this has been and remains our greatest transgression. Pundits and critics fill the news pages and airwaves with summary dismissals of Nigeria’s prospects as a nation. Others flippantly propose the dissolution of the country without considering what is at stake. We are obsessed with merely momentary episodes of our history or with the peculiar inconveniences of our own time, when we should concentrate upon the entire fabric of our national existence. This inability to see the big picture is our greatest undoing. Wisdom tells us that each generation is part of the existential continuum of its nation and therefore part of a larger story. Our time is only a chapter of the national odyssey. Understanding that we are part of an epic narrative gives our lives purpose and meaning, and enables us to overcome the existential challenges confronting the society. We call this taking the long view.
To begin with, nations are not presented gift-wrapped by historical circumstances. They are built from the ashes of transience and adversity by people who deign to forge a collective destiny. The blueprints are in the dreams and visions of our founding fathers and mothers – the ancestors of our political genealogy. Without an understanding of where we are coming from, we will be unable to see where we are going. In our past, we will find assets and resources with which we can more accurately chart our course. The dreams and visions that ignited the Nigeria’s beginnings were neither local nor petty. They were illustrious. We find them in the poetry and prophecy of luminaries like Marcus Garvey and WEB DuBois who dreamed of an African civilization that would manifest the glories of the black race. Nnamdi Azikiwe spoke of the renascence of the African spirit – a New Africa of which Nigeria would be centrepiece and capital. By and large, these were dreams that possessed our founding fathers. The values of the renascence would be liberal democracy, community, justice and freedom. Other dreamers envisioned a republic in which Africa’s triple heritage of western civilization, eastern civilization and indigenous values would be harmonized in a symphony of social and spiritual wisdom. This was to be and remains Nigeria’s manifest destiny in the comity of nations.
As Frantz Fanon said, “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it.” It took a generation of anti-colonial agitators and nationalists to end colonialism and win our independence as a nation. It took another generation of pro-democracy activists and campaigners to terminate military dictatorship and earn the country another opportunity for democratic rule. The historic mission of the present generation of Nigerians is to recover the old dreams and interpret them anew in our own time. This is the post-oil boom generation that was born into the twilight of the Nigerian promise, came of age during the dark years of military misrule and now bear the brunt of pervasive dysfunction. This is also a generation that has largely succumbed to cynicism, apathy and despair. For them, there are only two imperatives – the necessity of an emergency exodus in search of greener pastures abroad or fatalistic resignation to the dreariness of life in a failing state. But there is a third option.
We have moved beyond military dictatorship into a more ambiguous era, when berets and swagger sticks have given way to Babanriga and briefcases. In this age, the false god of military Messianism – the idea that soldierly strongmen can miraculously transform our society – is rightly dead. The golden calf of oil wealth as a magical cure all for all our ills stands similarly discredited. New ways, means and strategies of seeding change are required. In politics, this means building a vibrant civil society, engaging actively in civic life and public service. In culture, it means crafting ideas, art, songs, myths and stories that can stir the soul to greater heights of virtue and nobility. In business, it means shifting from the rent-collecting contractor mentality to a culture of wealth creation, vocational excellence and authentic entrepreneurship that will widen the circle of prosperity in the land. In faith, it means translating belief into social action; into acts of courage, conscience and compassion in the public square and in the marketplace. By getting involved in any of these domains, we become active participants in the processes now shaping the future.
Our national anthem speaks of a Nigeria as “One nation bound in freedom…” The imagery of the bonds of freedom is profound for it implies that freedom carries certain restraints. Freedom itself imposes a set of responsibilities on us and defines the ways and means by which we may pursue and apply it. Keeping an eye on the big picture is to recognize that a society’s progress in freedom is piecemeal. Each generation must expand the borders of freedom, deepen its meaning and pass it on as an inheritance to their children. For the nationalists that fought colonialism, freedom meant relief from British rule and the right to self-determination. For the pro-democracy activists that challenged military dictatorships, freedom meant an end to the reign of fear and the oppression of jackboots, and the right to choose one’s leaders. For us, freedom means entrenching democracy, justice and equity and defeating the forces of graft and kleptocracy. It is our generation that must take democracy beyond nominal voting rights to the liberalization of opportunities for health, wellbeing and happiness for all regardless of creed, ethnicity or gender.
Taking the long view of our nation and our place in the scheme of its destiny is to accept that accomplishing these objectives is necessarily a generational struggle demanding investments in sweat, blood, toil and tears – the symbolic elements of redemptive suffering. Sceptics might question if all or any of these lofty dreams can be achieved. The point is that the struggle for freedom is a chain and each generation is a link in that chain. Our ancestors in the struggle did not realize all of their dreams but they ran their race and passed the torch of liberty to their children. Every generation is meant to realize more fully the promise of what its forebears sought to accomplish. For us too, the important thing is to run our own race and to leave a legacy of hope for our children.
Predictions of our impending and inevitable national doom are not cast in stone. Nothing about our future as a society is settled yet because the key determinant of civilizational destiny is human agency and moral choice. Human beings through their actions or inactions, choose the fate of their societies. It is within our powers to choose life or death, order or chaos, redemption or perdition. It is crucial that we discern the choices facing our generation at present. Our children will surely have their own problems – this is the way of life – but what matters is that we work to give them a richer freedom and a more edifying reality than the one we know today. Posterity itself compels us to do this. To betray this calling is to transgress against the future and to commit cosmic treason. These are the bonds of our freedom.
To begin with, nations are not presented gift-wrapped by historical circumstances. They are built from the ashes of transience and adversity by people who deign to forge a collective destiny. The blueprints are in the dreams and visions of our founding fathers and mothers – the ancestors of our political genealogy. Without an understanding of where we are coming from, we will be unable to see where we are going. In our past, we will find assets and resources with which we can more accurately chart our course. The dreams and visions that ignited the Nigeria’s beginnings were neither local nor petty. They were illustrious. We find them in the poetry and prophecy of luminaries like Marcus Garvey and WEB DuBois who dreamed of an African civilization that would manifest the glories of the black race. Nnamdi Azikiwe spoke of the renascence of the African spirit – a New Africa of which Nigeria would be centrepiece and capital. By and large, these were dreams that possessed our founding fathers. The values of the renascence would be liberal democracy, community, justice and freedom. Other dreamers envisioned a republic in which Africa’s triple heritage of western civilization, eastern civilization and indigenous values would be harmonized in a symphony of social and spiritual wisdom. This was to be and remains Nigeria’s manifest destiny in the comity of nations.
As Frantz Fanon said, “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it.” It took a generation of anti-colonial agitators and nationalists to end colonialism and win our independence as a nation. It took another generation of pro-democracy activists and campaigners to terminate military dictatorship and earn the country another opportunity for democratic rule. The historic mission of the present generation of Nigerians is to recover the old dreams and interpret them anew in our own time. This is the post-oil boom generation that was born into the twilight of the Nigerian promise, came of age during the dark years of military misrule and now bear the brunt of pervasive dysfunction. This is also a generation that has largely succumbed to cynicism, apathy and despair. For them, there are only two imperatives – the necessity of an emergency exodus in search of greener pastures abroad or fatalistic resignation to the dreariness of life in a failing state. But there is a third option.
We have moved beyond military dictatorship into a more ambiguous era, when berets and swagger sticks have given way to Babanriga and briefcases. In this age, the false god of military Messianism – the idea that soldierly strongmen can miraculously transform our society – is rightly dead. The golden calf of oil wealth as a magical cure all for all our ills stands similarly discredited. New ways, means and strategies of seeding change are required. In politics, this means building a vibrant civil society, engaging actively in civic life and public service. In culture, it means crafting ideas, art, songs, myths and stories that can stir the soul to greater heights of virtue and nobility. In business, it means shifting from the rent-collecting contractor mentality to a culture of wealth creation, vocational excellence and authentic entrepreneurship that will widen the circle of prosperity in the land. In faith, it means translating belief into social action; into acts of courage, conscience and compassion in the public square and in the marketplace. By getting involved in any of these domains, we become active participants in the processes now shaping the future.
Our national anthem speaks of a Nigeria as “One nation bound in freedom…” The imagery of the bonds of freedom is profound for it implies that freedom carries certain restraints. Freedom itself imposes a set of responsibilities on us and defines the ways and means by which we may pursue and apply it. Keeping an eye on the big picture is to recognize that a society’s progress in freedom is piecemeal. Each generation must expand the borders of freedom, deepen its meaning and pass it on as an inheritance to their children. For the nationalists that fought colonialism, freedom meant relief from British rule and the right to self-determination. For the pro-democracy activists that challenged military dictatorships, freedom meant an end to the reign of fear and the oppression of jackboots, and the right to choose one’s leaders. For us, freedom means entrenching democracy, justice and equity and defeating the forces of graft and kleptocracy. It is our generation that must take democracy beyond nominal voting rights to the liberalization of opportunities for health, wellbeing and happiness for all regardless of creed, ethnicity or gender.
Taking the long view of our nation and our place in the scheme of its destiny is to accept that accomplishing these objectives is necessarily a generational struggle demanding investments in sweat, blood, toil and tears – the symbolic elements of redemptive suffering. Sceptics might question if all or any of these lofty dreams can be achieved. The point is that the struggle for freedom is a chain and each generation is a link in that chain. Our ancestors in the struggle did not realize all of their dreams but they ran their race and passed the torch of liberty to their children. Every generation is meant to realize more fully the promise of what its forebears sought to accomplish. For us too, the important thing is to run our own race and to leave a legacy of hope for our children.
Predictions of our impending and inevitable national doom are not cast in stone. Nothing about our future as a society is settled yet because the key determinant of civilizational destiny is human agency and moral choice. Human beings through their actions or inactions, choose the fate of their societies. It is within our powers to choose life or death, order or chaos, redemption or perdition. It is crucial that we discern the choices facing our generation at present. Our children will surely have their own problems – this is the way of life – but what matters is that we work to give them a richer freedom and a more edifying reality than the one we know today. Posterity itself compels us to do this. To betray this calling is to transgress against the future and to commit cosmic treason. These are the bonds of our freedom.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Genocide Theology and Nigeria's Sectarian Holocausts
The times call for much introspection and soul-searching among people of faith. We live in times of holy warlords, false prophets and sundry oracles spewing all kinds of hate-filled theologies. These warped theologies represent a potent existential threat to Nigeria. Recently, the central Nigerian city of Jos was enveloped in sectarian violence that claimed the lives of several hundred people and displaced up to forty thousand more by one estimate. Similar bouts of violence have torn the city apart four times over the past twenty years. At those times, we have witnessed the familiar rituals of politicians calling for peace, the deployment of the military; the establishment of probe panels of inquiry to examine “the immediate and remote causes” of the conflicts and then the burial of those reports until the inevitable next round of violence.
Jos is by no means the most violent place in Nigeria nor is the sectarian hate that has poisoned its otherwise serene climate unique in the Nigerian experience. Sadly, the tin city is only the latest theatre of a pattern of conflict that is increasingly prevalent across the federation. Nigeria has never been an oasis of peace. Military dictatorships were in power for more than three decades during which time, the civic aspirations of the Nigerian people were viciously repressed. It endured a terrible fratricidal civil war in which over a million people were killed. It has remained united but suffers from fairly frequent eruptions of ethno-religious conflict. This isn’t novel. In a multicultural society, ethnic and religious tensions and conflicts are to be expected. Intelligent governance can manage, defuse and in time, neuter these tensions and their latent potential for flaring into wars. But Nigeria has notably not been blessed with intelligent governance.
What is troubling about the current spate of conflicts is how thoroughly infused with hate they are; the murderous ardour with which mobs are encouraged to demonize and exterminate their enemies including women and children; there is a sense, not yet full-blown but increasingly evident, that particular people are “evil” because of their ethnicity or their religion and that they ought to be stamped out or exorcised from a defined space. These views are promoted subtly and unsubtly by some politicians, elements of the media and most disturbingly by clerics. We should fear that the seeds of generational hatred and conflict and cycles of violence are being sown. We should be alarmed that we are setting the stage for a legacy of discord and inherited strife to haunt the next generation and their children’s children. We should worry when children aged ten years and even less are being raised to hate Christians or Muslims and to see people of differing creeds and ethnicities as enemies by default. And religious clerics who are the most powerful non-state actors in the public square are complicit in this crime against the posterity of Nigerian humanity.
Even as the immediate and remote causes of the Jos crisis are investigated, we as a society must question what kind of moral climate permits our cities and towns to collapse into orgies of wanton genocidal butchery. What explains the speedy transformation of these locales into sectarian slaughterhouses in which even places of worship are attacked? What spiritual and theological influences are at work when religious leaders subtly and overtly justify religious violence? For the avoidance of doubt, theology matters. It is theology that generates the values that define the ethical climate of the society. The prevailing ethical climate in turn generates particular patterns of moral choice, public conduct and social example and these further reinforce the moral climate. All our problems as a society can be attributed to the framework of anomic values that now undergirds our public life. This essay addresses the largely unremarked theological and socio-psychological dimensions of sectarian conflict in Nigeria.
Religion in our society mostly fulfils the human need for what psychologists call ‘other-blame’. When things go wrong for communities, the instinctive response is to look for scapegoats upon which to heap the blame for our misfortunes. For the ancient Hebrews, the scapegoat was the vessel symbolically imbued with the sins of the society and then released into the wilderness to be consumed by the demons of the desert thus achieving the ritual cleansing of the community. According to some theological perspectives, the use of the scapegoat was simply a placebo – a superficial therapy of the conscience that did not address moral responsibility and therefore offered no actual cleansing. Nevertheless, the logic of scape-goating is the dominant element of theology and popular spirituality on these shores.
Significantly, scape-goating tends to occur within the context of economic realities. As recession reduces the financial inflows, economic and cultural paranoia set in. We begin to look for those who we suspect are reducing or shortening our rations. When we find them, we dub them aliens, strangers, unbelievers, settlers or non-indigenes and heap upon them the blame for our collective misfortunes. Such psychopathologies emanate from a national soul besieged by both material and spiritual poverty. For instance, Adolf Hitler cast the Jews as scapegoats for Germany’s economic woes during a time of depression and hyperinflation. And most Germans reeling from their country’s defeat and humiliation in the First World War and its subsequent economic decline agreed with him and became complicit in the Nazi genocide of the Jews.
It was during the 1980s, when Nigerians suffered the flagellation of structural adjustment programmes and inflation that a new neo-Pentecostal theology emerged. It attributed the economic decline at personal and social levels to the activities of witches, wizards, demons and other malign spiritual forces. According to its exponents, epileptic seizures, plane crashes, hit and run accidents, cerebral malaria, fire outbreaks or collapsed buildings could just as well be demonic afflictions or witchcraft attacks. Trace elements of this immensely popular brand of faith are evident in the crisis of social aggression that has beset our communities. For years these preachers have excoriated the devil without precisely identifying his earthly agents. Rather than confronting the machines of social injustice grinding life out of the people, the preachers blamed a host of metaphysical entities. It is these “demons” that are now being given human form and flesh as “strangers”, “non-indigenes” and “infidels” to satisfy the need for other-blame. Theology informs how we perceive and approach reality. If are directed by our imams and pastors to look for enemies – scapegoats responsible for our failings – we will find them eventually in the shape of members of other sects, denominations, faiths or ethnicities.
As poverty becomes more endemic, more people become susceptible to the belief that they stand a better chance as a group in staking a claim to a bigger share of the national cake. There is a belief that others ought to be elsewhere – they should not share our space, or the land that belongs to our people and the civic arena in which we determine our destiny, especially in times of material scarcity and political uncertainty. And if we allow them to share of our physical space, it is under our terms or those prescribed by tradition. A demarcation emerges between self-proclaimed sons of the soil, the community landlords and the so-called strangers and aliens, the presumptive tenants in the emergent social equation. New ideas of religious, ethnic and socio-cultural supremacy emerge. Communities are polarized between master races and serfs.
Sectarian animus can also be attributed to psychological factors. Having enemies fulfills an important human need whether it is children on the playground forming rival packs or university students forming rival fraternities. Psychologists say that nothing promotes social, ethnic and national harmony as surely as a common object of loathing. As all students of power know, fostering an “us against them” dynamic is a central element of demagoguery. There can be no “us” without there being a corresponding “them” to oppose. In group psychology, the alien other embodies the worst aspects of the group itself. We simply project our greed, avarice, paranoia and cowardice on to the other group. Such stereotyping frequently becomes the wholesale demonization of entire peoples and generates the sort of rhetoric that inspires hate crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide. This is the substance of what I refer to as genocide theology.
The need for enemy formation is so potent that sustaining it is emotionally gratifying. It is easier for the Berom in Jos to think of the Hausa and the Fulani as their arch-foes or for the Hausa and the Fulani denizens of the far north, in turn, to think of the Igbo as an invasive presence. The same sentiments denominate relations between the Tiv and the Jukun or the Urhobo and Itsekiri and many other ethnic groups in the federation. Genocide theology is a vehicle for an even deeper psychological malaise. It may well be that to compensate for their inability to rise up against a bankrupt ruling class, Nigerians are directing their rage at each other. Our chances of mitigating these aggressions depend on how mature we become spiritually and politically. The more mature we become, the less need we will have to externalize our failures upon an enemy, and the more discerning we shall be of who the real enemies are. This calls for a new kind of civil theology that empowers us to take responsibility for our collective destiny rather than search for metaphysical or physical enemies to blame.
Conflicts of the sort that periodically wrack Jos and other communities are difficult to pigeonhole and do not submit to easy categorization. They are not simply religious conflicts; they are sired by a complex intercourse of factors – ethnic, social, cultural, political and religious. We can argue with supporting evidence that the Jos crisis is only superficially religious. In a society characterized by dysfunctional governance, elite delinquency, a demographic boom and infrastructural collapse, millions of young people without education, employment or prospects for the future are susceptible to genocide theology. Under such circumstances, the baser impulses that drive mobs to loot, maim and kill are draped in the sacred garments of religion. Genocide theologians summon scriptural justification for the demonic lusts lurking in the society’s subconscious.
We have not heard the sort of theologizing and rhetoric that emphasizes concepts like forgiveness, reconciliation and inclusion. The notion Of Al Kitab – that we are people of the book, heirs of a common body of revelation despite our differing interpretations thereof – contrasts sharply with the flagrant ease with which the labels, “infidel” and “unbeliever” and their implicit subhuman classifications are generously plastered on perceived enemies. Very little is heard of the imperatives of constructing bridges of empathy, forbearance and compassion across ethnic and religious divides. The tragedy is that voices of moderation and reason that ought to shape a necessary interfaith conversation have largely fallen silent. In their absence, the interfaith conversation, if it can be so-called, has degenerated into demagoguery and occasionally careens into the realm of guns, swords, machetes and assorted weapons. Even within the different religions, it is reactionaries and zealots that are in the ascendancy. Millions of Nigeria’s Christian and Muslim believers are illiterate and ignorant even about their own faiths. Zeal has not been tempered with knowledge and is now running riot in a climate of unreason and superstition. So far, the extremists are winning and it is not a good sign.
The need to resolve the role of religion in our public life continues to loom large. Secularism remains the best option for a society that hosts a diversity of faiths but it does not mean as some religionists charge that the public arena will become a values-neutral wasteland. A secular social order means that the public square cannot be monopolized by any one faith; public life can be enriched by our moral values but cannot be colonized as the domain of any particular religion. Today, the public square is a theatre of conflict where various faith groups contend for domination. The political elite have long been adept at manipulating religious sentiments to build bases of political support. And too many politicians and clerics have been willing to consecrate political chicanery, electoral heists and allied injustices as “God’s will” blurring the boundaries between the religious and political dimensions in the process.
To save the state itself from complete devastation by sectarian warfare, we must redefine those boundaries. Some actions readily commend themselves: Government sponsorship of pilgrimages to Mecca and Jerusalem should be terminated. The use of public funds for affairs that fall under the province of personal devotion is wrong. The patronage and courtship of religious clerics by public servants should be discontinued. Such measures will help to renew the Nigerian state. The paradox is that our grotesque brand of civil religion has turned the public square into precisely the sort of values-neutral wasteland feared by religionists.
There is also the matter of the gaping vacuum in the public square that ought to be occupied by clerics that can speak truth to power and repudiate the spirit of sectarian strife that threatens all of us. We have not heard the ringing condemnations of violence perpetrated by Christians and Muslims from the pulpits and mosques. Some religious leaders, imams and pastors have denounced the violence but these are relatively few voices. All too often, clerics who should be standing on the non-partisan moral high ground advocating truth and justice are themselves sectional champions of the worst kind conflating their inherent bigotries and prejudices with “the will of God.” We are called to occupy this moral high ground where the loss of a life, any life whether Muslim or Christian or of any persuasion at all, can be interpreted rightly as a human tragedy instead of as a victory for a particular religion. It is upon this holy ground that the authenticity of our faith and humanity will become manifest.
The rising incidence of sectarian violence is best understood in the context of a failed or a failing state. Extremism, sectarianism, bigotry and genocide theology generally prevail in failed states. Think of Somalia, Afghanistan and Yemen among other countries that have become outposts of international terrorism. While Nigeria is not in the league of failed states, we can surmise that she is steadily heading in their direction. The healthy balance and creative tension that should exist between politics and religion has been disrupted. Ideally, religion enables us to pursue the “treasures of heaven” – a metaphor for the use of transcendental moral values to guide our personal and social conduct. The state exists to enable us access earthly treasures by providing the public goods that make for citizens’ welfare. Where the state fails to provide public goods and underwrite the welfare of the society, non-state actors like religious movements will step into the void often with disastrous consequences.
In a multi-religious society, people will tend to see themselves first and foremost as adherents of particular faiths and only secondarily as citizens or not at all. Religious movements will invade the state’s domain and purport to have the keys of access to earthly treasures. Inevitably, there will arise messengers intent on creating a paradise on earth whether an Islamic theocracy or a New Jerusalem. In such a realm, people are persuaded that by converting to a particular faith they are guaranteed social mobility and economic advancement. Consequently, terms like “Muslim” and “Christian” increasingly refer not to adherence to particular moral codes but to competing political categories with a predictable set of partisan beliefs and allegiances. In most parts of Northern Nigeria, this is already the case. This is the context that permits the growth of extremist movements like Boko Haram and Maitatsine – religious movements with avowedly political objectives – and sustains the spread of genocide theology. The civic domain ends up disfigured. This is what has befallen religion and politics in Nigeria.
The chief task for politicians of this generation is to rebuild the Nigerian state so that it can spread a broad umbrella of inclusive welfare that covers all her citizens and provides them with civic meaning, purpose and hope. Only a state guided by nationalistic welfarist principles and operating as an impartial arbiter in the public realm can neuter the centrifugal forces at work in the polity. A state that is hostage to sectarian zealots and partisan agendas will simply self-destruct.
Without a federal administration committed to promoting social and economic rights – access to education, health care, shelter, food and employment – the nightmare scenario long envisioned by observers of Nigeria will come to pass. It is the spectacle of more holy warlords and false prophets enthralling millions of dispossessed Nigerians who have nothing to lose. Pocket theocracies, genocidal turf wars and ethno-religious insurgencies will scarify a landscape patrolled by vigilantes and militias as the state recedes from the public consciousness. International terrorists will find a haven in yet another failed state. It is upon this road that genocide theology has set Nigeria – not to a paradise on earth but to a hell that will consume everyone regardless of what God they purport to believe in.
Jos is by no means the most violent place in Nigeria nor is the sectarian hate that has poisoned its otherwise serene climate unique in the Nigerian experience. Sadly, the tin city is only the latest theatre of a pattern of conflict that is increasingly prevalent across the federation. Nigeria has never been an oasis of peace. Military dictatorships were in power for more than three decades during which time, the civic aspirations of the Nigerian people were viciously repressed. It endured a terrible fratricidal civil war in which over a million people were killed. It has remained united but suffers from fairly frequent eruptions of ethno-religious conflict. This isn’t novel. In a multicultural society, ethnic and religious tensions and conflicts are to be expected. Intelligent governance can manage, defuse and in time, neuter these tensions and their latent potential for flaring into wars. But Nigeria has notably not been blessed with intelligent governance.
What is troubling about the current spate of conflicts is how thoroughly infused with hate they are; the murderous ardour with which mobs are encouraged to demonize and exterminate their enemies including women and children; there is a sense, not yet full-blown but increasingly evident, that particular people are “evil” because of their ethnicity or their religion and that they ought to be stamped out or exorcised from a defined space. These views are promoted subtly and unsubtly by some politicians, elements of the media and most disturbingly by clerics. We should fear that the seeds of generational hatred and conflict and cycles of violence are being sown. We should be alarmed that we are setting the stage for a legacy of discord and inherited strife to haunt the next generation and their children’s children. We should worry when children aged ten years and even less are being raised to hate Christians or Muslims and to see people of differing creeds and ethnicities as enemies by default. And religious clerics who are the most powerful non-state actors in the public square are complicit in this crime against the posterity of Nigerian humanity.
Even as the immediate and remote causes of the Jos crisis are investigated, we as a society must question what kind of moral climate permits our cities and towns to collapse into orgies of wanton genocidal butchery. What explains the speedy transformation of these locales into sectarian slaughterhouses in which even places of worship are attacked? What spiritual and theological influences are at work when religious leaders subtly and overtly justify religious violence? For the avoidance of doubt, theology matters. It is theology that generates the values that define the ethical climate of the society. The prevailing ethical climate in turn generates particular patterns of moral choice, public conduct and social example and these further reinforce the moral climate. All our problems as a society can be attributed to the framework of anomic values that now undergirds our public life. This essay addresses the largely unremarked theological and socio-psychological dimensions of sectarian conflict in Nigeria.
Religion in our society mostly fulfils the human need for what psychologists call ‘other-blame’. When things go wrong for communities, the instinctive response is to look for scapegoats upon which to heap the blame for our misfortunes. For the ancient Hebrews, the scapegoat was the vessel symbolically imbued with the sins of the society and then released into the wilderness to be consumed by the demons of the desert thus achieving the ritual cleansing of the community. According to some theological perspectives, the use of the scapegoat was simply a placebo – a superficial therapy of the conscience that did not address moral responsibility and therefore offered no actual cleansing. Nevertheless, the logic of scape-goating is the dominant element of theology and popular spirituality on these shores.
Significantly, scape-goating tends to occur within the context of economic realities. As recession reduces the financial inflows, economic and cultural paranoia set in. We begin to look for those who we suspect are reducing or shortening our rations. When we find them, we dub them aliens, strangers, unbelievers, settlers or non-indigenes and heap upon them the blame for our collective misfortunes. Such psychopathologies emanate from a national soul besieged by both material and spiritual poverty. For instance, Adolf Hitler cast the Jews as scapegoats for Germany’s economic woes during a time of depression and hyperinflation. And most Germans reeling from their country’s defeat and humiliation in the First World War and its subsequent economic decline agreed with him and became complicit in the Nazi genocide of the Jews.
It was during the 1980s, when Nigerians suffered the flagellation of structural adjustment programmes and inflation that a new neo-Pentecostal theology emerged. It attributed the economic decline at personal and social levels to the activities of witches, wizards, demons and other malign spiritual forces. According to its exponents, epileptic seizures, plane crashes, hit and run accidents, cerebral malaria, fire outbreaks or collapsed buildings could just as well be demonic afflictions or witchcraft attacks. Trace elements of this immensely popular brand of faith are evident in the crisis of social aggression that has beset our communities. For years these preachers have excoriated the devil without precisely identifying his earthly agents. Rather than confronting the machines of social injustice grinding life out of the people, the preachers blamed a host of metaphysical entities. It is these “demons” that are now being given human form and flesh as “strangers”, “non-indigenes” and “infidels” to satisfy the need for other-blame. Theology informs how we perceive and approach reality. If are directed by our imams and pastors to look for enemies – scapegoats responsible for our failings – we will find them eventually in the shape of members of other sects, denominations, faiths or ethnicities.
As poverty becomes more endemic, more people become susceptible to the belief that they stand a better chance as a group in staking a claim to a bigger share of the national cake. There is a belief that others ought to be elsewhere – they should not share our space, or the land that belongs to our people and the civic arena in which we determine our destiny, especially in times of material scarcity and political uncertainty. And if we allow them to share of our physical space, it is under our terms or those prescribed by tradition. A demarcation emerges between self-proclaimed sons of the soil, the community landlords and the so-called strangers and aliens, the presumptive tenants in the emergent social equation. New ideas of religious, ethnic and socio-cultural supremacy emerge. Communities are polarized between master races and serfs.
Sectarian animus can also be attributed to psychological factors. Having enemies fulfills an important human need whether it is children on the playground forming rival packs or university students forming rival fraternities. Psychologists say that nothing promotes social, ethnic and national harmony as surely as a common object of loathing. As all students of power know, fostering an “us against them” dynamic is a central element of demagoguery. There can be no “us” without there being a corresponding “them” to oppose. In group psychology, the alien other embodies the worst aspects of the group itself. We simply project our greed, avarice, paranoia and cowardice on to the other group. Such stereotyping frequently becomes the wholesale demonization of entire peoples and generates the sort of rhetoric that inspires hate crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide. This is the substance of what I refer to as genocide theology.
The need for enemy formation is so potent that sustaining it is emotionally gratifying. It is easier for the Berom in Jos to think of the Hausa and the Fulani as their arch-foes or for the Hausa and the Fulani denizens of the far north, in turn, to think of the Igbo as an invasive presence. The same sentiments denominate relations between the Tiv and the Jukun or the Urhobo and Itsekiri and many other ethnic groups in the federation. Genocide theology is a vehicle for an even deeper psychological malaise. It may well be that to compensate for their inability to rise up against a bankrupt ruling class, Nigerians are directing their rage at each other. Our chances of mitigating these aggressions depend on how mature we become spiritually and politically. The more mature we become, the less need we will have to externalize our failures upon an enemy, and the more discerning we shall be of who the real enemies are. This calls for a new kind of civil theology that empowers us to take responsibility for our collective destiny rather than search for metaphysical or physical enemies to blame.
Conflicts of the sort that periodically wrack Jos and other communities are difficult to pigeonhole and do not submit to easy categorization. They are not simply religious conflicts; they are sired by a complex intercourse of factors – ethnic, social, cultural, political and religious. We can argue with supporting evidence that the Jos crisis is only superficially religious. In a society characterized by dysfunctional governance, elite delinquency, a demographic boom and infrastructural collapse, millions of young people without education, employment or prospects for the future are susceptible to genocide theology. Under such circumstances, the baser impulses that drive mobs to loot, maim and kill are draped in the sacred garments of religion. Genocide theologians summon scriptural justification for the demonic lusts lurking in the society’s subconscious.
We have not heard the sort of theologizing and rhetoric that emphasizes concepts like forgiveness, reconciliation and inclusion. The notion Of Al Kitab – that we are people of the book, heirs of a common body of revelation despite our differing interpretations thereof – contrasts sharply with the flagrant ease with which the labels, “infidel” and “unbeliever” and their implicit subhuman classifications are generously plastered on perceived enemies. Very little is heard of the imperatives of constructing bridges of empathy, forbearance and compassion across ethnic and religious divides. The tragedy is that voices of moderation and reason that ought to shape a necessary interfaith conversation have largely fallen silent. In their absence, the interfaith conversation, if it can be so-called, has degenerated into demagoguery and occasionally careens into the realm of guns, swords, machetes and assorted weapons. Even within the different religions, it is reactionaries and zealots that are in the ascendancy. Millions of Nigeria’s Christian and Muslim believers are illiterate and ignorant even about their own faiths. Zeal has not been tempered with knowledge and is now running riot in a climate of unreason and superstition. So far, the extremists are winning and it is not a good sign.
The need to resolve the role of religion in our public life continues to loom large. Secularism remains the best option for a society that hosts a diversity of faiths but it does not mean as some religionists charge that the public arena will become a values-neutral wasteland. A secular social order means that the public square cannot be monopolized by any one faith; public life can be enriched by our moral values but cannot be colonized as the domain of any particular religion. Today, the public square is a theatre of conflict where various faith groups contend for domination. The political elite have long been adept at manipulating religious sentiments to build bases of political support. And too many politicians and clerics have been willing to consecrate political chicanery, electoral heists and allied injustices as “God’s will” blurring the boundaries between the religious and political dimensions in the process.
To save the state itself from complete devastation by sectarian warfare, we must redefine those boundaries. Some actions readily commend themselves: Government sponsorship of pilgrimages to Mecca and Jerusalem should be terminated. The use of public funds for affairs that fall under the province of personal devotion is wrong. The patronage and courtship of religious clerics by public servants should be discontinued. Such measures will help to renew the Nigerian state. The paradox is that our grotesque brand of civil religion has turned the public square into precisely the sort of values-neutral wasteland feared by religionists.
There is also the matter of the gaping vacuum in the public square that ought to be occupied by clerics that can speak truth to power and repudiate the spirit of sectarian strife that threatens all of us. We have not heard the ringing condemnations of violence perpetrated by Christians and Muslims from the pulpits and mosques. Some religious leaders, imams and pastors have denounced the violence but these are relatively few voices. All too often, clerics who should be standing on the non-partisan moral high ground advocating truth and justice are themselves sectional champions of the worst kind conflating their inherent bigotries and prejudices with “the will of God.” We are called to occupy this moral high ground where the loss of a life, any life whether Muslim or Christian or of any persuasion at all, can be interpreted rightly as a human tragedy instead of as a victory for a particular religion. It is upon this holy ground that the authenticity of our faith and humanity will become manifest.
The rising incidence of sectarian violence is best understood in the context of a failed or a failing state. Extremism, sectarianism, bigotry and genocide theology generally prevail in failed states. Think of Somalia, Afghanistan and Yemen among other countries that have become outposts of international terrorism. While Nigeria is not in the league of failed states, we can surmise that she is steadily heading in their direction. The healthy balance and creative tension that should exist between politics and religion has been disrupted. Ideally, religion enables us to pursue the “treasures of heaven” – a metaphor for the use of transcendental moral values to guide our personal and social conduct. The state exists to enable us access earthly treasures by providing the public goods that make for citizens’ welfare. Where the state fails to provide public goods and underwrite the welfare of the society, non-state actors like religious movements will step into the void often with disastrous consequences.
In a multi-religious society, people will tend to see themselves first and foremost as adherents of particular faiths and only secondarily as citizens or not at all. Religious movements will invade the state’s domain and purport to have the keys of access to earthly treasures. Inevitably, there will arise messengers intent on creating a paradise on earth whether an Islamic theocracy or a New Jerusalem. In such a realm, people are persuaded that by converting to a particular faith they are guaranteed social mobility and economic advancement. Consequently, terms like “Muslim” and “Christian” increasingly refer not to adherence to particular moral codes but to competing political categories with a predictable set of partisan beliefs and allegiances. In most parts of Northern Nigeria, this is already the case. This is the context that permits the growth of extremist movements like Boko Haram and Maitatsine – religious movements with avowedly political objectives – and sustains the spread of genocide theology. The civic domain ends up disfigured. This is what has befallen religion and politics in Nigeria.
The chief task for politicians of this generation is to rebuild the Nigerian state so that it can spread a broad umbrella of inclusive welfare that covers all her citizens and provides them with civic meaning, purpose and hope. Only a state guided by nationalistic welfarist principles and operating as an impartial arbiter in the public realm can neuter the centrifugal forces at work in the polity. A state that is hostage to sectarian zealots and partisan agendas will simply self-destruct.
Without a federal administration committed to promoting social and economic rights – access to education, health care, shelter, food and employment – the nightmare scenario long envisioned by observers of Nigeria will come to pass. It is the spectacle of more holy warlords and false prophets enthralling millions of dispossessed Nigerians who have nothing to lose. Pocket theocracies, genocidal turf wars and ethno-religious insurgencies will scarify a landscape patrolled by vigilantes and militias as the state recedes from the public consciousness. International terrorists will find a haven in yet another failed state. It is upon this road that genocide theology has set Nigeria – not to a paradise on earth but to a hell that will consume everyone regardless of what God they purport to believe in.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Enemy at the Gates: A Poetic Meditation on the Jos Crisis
Enemy at the Gates
The beast rises from the deep
Baring fangs of twisted metal
Festooned with flesh torn limb from limb
And the blood of generations born to bleed
In times of presumptive peace
For those seasoned in lifetimes of war
Again, there is talk of enemies
Of alien others and demon strangers
Baying for our blood at the barricades
We hear rumours of war
Conspiracy theories and unsubtle spin
Quickened from front pages and nightly news
Via cyberspace and mobile phones
Summon dread and hate
In prayer meetings of the beleaguered faithful now turned séances
Whisper it in the dark
Over fresh corpses and still smouldering carnage
The enemies are abroad and there are strangers among us
Learn the secret codes of unspoken intent
Etched in marks that are not of our own tribes
Subtle stripes on dark cheeks scream:
“Slash the enemy from ear to ear;
Gut him before he guts you.”
Shadows of demented wolves
Lengthen in the pale light of a darkened crescent
Hungry warriors of a wretched brood
Enchanted by the battle cry of the dead
Hasten to the summons of the sirens
To the bugle that calls for holy war
By the bonfire of crooked crosses inflamed with unholy ardour
Enemies will be named and shamed
Claimed or maimed by lynch mobs with God on their side
If not the infernal legions of abominable martyrs
The enemy is at the gates
On our threshold knocking on doors not without but within
Stir the brackish waters of the whirlpool that is the heart
The beast lurks here
In unexpected depths and uncharted regions
In the abyss of the Gadarene herd
The mirror cracks in the instant of self-revelation
When self-righteous masks slip to reveal
The hideous alien other;
The fearsome stranger that must be destroyed
The crack is the fault line rippling through
Land cursed by fraternal blood sport
Wastelands irradiated by mutual abhorrence
And malice as unyielding as the grave
But the rift is within
Disfigured souls rent asunder
By the beast borne deep in psychic marrows
Breaching the gates from the inside
There the enemy rests
To rear its head and strike unexpectedly in unwary hours
Till we aim our weapons inward
And exorcise the infernal legions
That war within these stately citadels of the self,
Where Ego, id and superego nestle
Resplendent in the temples of St. Narcissus;
These white-washed sepulchres
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