Nigeria’s Diversity is An Asset But Managing It Has Remained A Big Challenge.
The good thing about living in this country is that, no matter how bad your situation is, you will never be able to monopolize your partner. When we were at the airport lamenting the fact that our flight has been delayed, there was a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and a retired Army General, they were going to Ibadan, they said, ooh , we came to the airport by 9 o’clock, we actually boarded our flight, the plane was about to take off when they discovered that one of the propellers was not working. So as at 4 o’clock, they were still at the airport. But as you know in Nigeria, we have very limited right, that even after you have waited for 12 hours, when they call your flight, you still say , thank God, and the person sitting next to you who is still less fortunate will say, , ooh , God done help you, we will still wait here. So we arrived and I was able to squeeze out time out of Warri. But I am here because I have a speaking engagement tomorrow at Muson Centre, and on Saturday , I still have to return to Abuja, because there is an old friend of mine who turned 80 and I have to be at his 80th birthday celebration, and then I must finish that mass, catch a flight to Oslo. I am coming back on the 21st and on 22nd, I have a convocation lecture. So I am not trying to bore you with my life but just to let you understand that it is pretty tough, though quiet exciting most times. This country you will hardly lack something to say. Yesterday, while I was at the airport, I met Prof. Isaac Adewole , the Minister for Health , not a small academician, very big man, he was a former Vice Chancellor, he gave me the greatest consolation ever yesterday. He said, Bishop, you have mellowed down, that was the greatest compliment I have ever received. He said, Bishop, you have mellowed down now, you don’t sound as radical as you used to sound. I said I am really happy to hear this, but I am not sure that is the case. However, I heard the chairman talked about logistics, this is a very interesting country, every time, you hear about new words, new vocabulary, and you ask, what is logistics? If you are a politician in the North and you want to contest for Senate, your supporters will ask you, where are the tools for work? But my most interesting expression which is common in Nigeria is that “You Don’t Carry Others Along”. First time I heard of this was in the Senate (I will not call the name of the Senator). There was a big debate about Senators having gone somewhere to do oversight. I am sure you know what oversight is. Apparently out of their oversight, there were able to appropriate something up to a billion naira. By the time they got to Abuja, there was trouble, there were lots of arguments. And when it was the time for people to state their grievances, one of them said, the problem with Senator X is that he didn’t carry other members along, so there are constantly “new narratives” in Nigeria.
However, for me, there is always something to say and I am happy the gentleman here said it. You are right. I always wanted to be a priest but not for the same reason I am a priest today, but the kind of reason a young boy will have and not for the big things. I have a friend, he was a priest but is dead now, his own reason for being a priest was, you know, every time, “Father” comes to the village, he always goes away with eggs and chickens, that was a good motivation. In my own case, my real motivation was that when I wanted to be a priest, I was living with my grandmother and I wanted to explain to her what a priest was, there was a parish priest in my village , not really in my village , his village was farther from my village. He has a Pick Up van and that was the only vehicle we saw around our community. And because we had to raise 3 shillings to buy the form the question my grandmother asked is , this priesthood what will it be? I tried to explain to her , I will do what the Father is doing, celebrating Mass and she looked at me and said, what about the skin, what will happen to it because the priest was a white man, there was nobody in my village in that vocation, I was the first person. Then my grandmother said, so if you are a priest, will you also be driving a vehicle like this, I said yes, that was what paid for my seminary form.
Life in the Seminary
But when I got to the seminary, I realized that wanting to be a priest is different from being a priest because you can actually be thrown out. It was then I thought of alternative. But for me, it is either I became a priest or a dam good lawyer, but here we are. So you are right, I was either going to be a lawyer or a Journalist.
Mainstreaming the Media
The media is so critical, not only for shaping society but also informing society. But just like every other segment of Nigeria’s life, the media is in crisis. One of the things we like to deceive ourselves in Nigeria is we think it is the people in government who are damaging our country. We have a way of outsourcing our responsibilities, so we are blaming other people. We accuse journalists of taking brown envelop and being corrupt. So a journalist takes N5,000 or N10,000, but again, just as you know, the story is much more complicated than that. Corruption is so pervasive that it is in every aspect of our national life. Our inability to recognize and admit those realities has made it that where Nigeria is now is not where we are supposed to be. We must ask ourselves in Nigeria that how does it happen that a country with such exceptionally gifted, brilliant people, excelling in everywhere except in our own country. It also not an accident that the first great men who shaped our expectations as a country were journalists :Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Tony Enahoro, Peter Enahoro, Sam Ikoku, you can go through the whole list. It is not an accident.
A Kenya writer, Ngugi wa Thiango once said that every writer is a writer in politics, depending on which side you are on. I think, the most critical thing for us and the duty and responsibility of journalists is why are we writing. Writing is a very risky business, but as the saying goes “it depends on which side you are on”. That is the reason why some people who write, write for recognition and there are people who write so that somebody can “recognize me and give me a job”. Journalism has become sophisticated and it is responding to the dynamics of society. The result is that, it is possible people are being paid good money to ensure that certain names don’t appear in newspaper while others pay so that their faces will appear on the pages of newspapers. Journalists have to face these constant choices: what to report, when to report and how to report. Now it is also very interesting that right from the beginning of our independence, people like Zik , Awolowo, Enahoro etc who were the starting block of the struggle had a clear idea, what kind of society they wanted-an egalitarian society.
Yesterday, I spoke in Warri on the whole question of “Managing Diversity Against the Backdrop of the Sentiment of Our National Anthem”. That how is it that we wanted a country where no malice operate , or where tongue and tribe may differ but it was very clear to see that we have absolutely no problem in having a united nation and contrary to what Nigerians think.
I was at the airport with a lady together waiting for the plane and she was agonizing: this country it is ethnicity that is destroying our country, religion is destroying our country. I said it is not true, it is not testable evidence. Cain and Abel were of the same father, the same mother, obviously spoke the same language but Cain killed Abel his brother. Today in the United States of America, almost every language is speakable including this my own little language, my people are in America, everybody people are in America, so there is no country in the world that is so ethnically diverse as America. So how does it happen that it is the most powerful nation in the world. Contrary to what our people say and contrary to what has become popular, diversity is an asset but the critical question is how we manage it. I think our inability to design a mechanism to manage our diversity is where the problem lies. We have all kinds of dubious constitutional provisions that say okay, it must reflect federal character, so on and so forth. But how does the inflation of federal character necessary undermine or improve the quality of governance.
Of course it is natural, that we must have a provision to manage our dereferences, but the most dangerous thing in our conversation is that intellectuals, very gifted, educated people, professors, bishops, who should be pointing the way, are often the most guilty. We have literally become hostages to our own environment. I stand to be corrected but 90% chances I am correct. I have not met, though they may exist having met quiet some few, a Professor, who is a Yoruba that I can say can speak eloquently about Northern Nigeria or about Eastern Nigeria, or a professor who is from Eastern Nigeria, who can speak eloquently about Yoruba land or a professor Abdulahi who can speak eloquently about Yorubaland. All of us have become hostages. The only people who manage to bring politics to the center are those who have the capital, those who had other resources, the politicians. The convocation lecture I am giving in Jos, I titled it “Broken Truth, Nigeria’s Elusive Quest for National Cohesion”. It is elusive because this struggle to unite Nigeria has continued to escape us. I have mentioned some of the issues here. A lot of things is tied to our colonial legacies but our colonial legacy is not good enough because we have had the opportunities but how did it happen that the best universities in Nigeria: University of Ibadan , University, Ahmadu Bello University , Obafemi Awolowo University , Ife, etc.But how did it happen that every university, federal universities in Nigeria, the idea is that an Abdulahi can’t be Vice Chancellor of Obafemi Awololwo University, its virtually unthinkable, Prof. Chukwuma, who has all that is required to turn Uthman Danfodio university around, can’t be Vice Chancellor, he can’t even cross the Niger, or the very idea that the Yoruba man who has capacity for fund raising and everything to be Vice Chancellor of University of Calabar is unthinkable and yet, how come, the Yorubaland with all their education, remember the Yoruba has their first school in 1834, how come the first Vice Chancellor of University of Ibadan was not a Yoruba, how come the first Vice Chancellor University of Lagos, the centre of Yoruba land was not a Yoruba. Now with the nostalgia, it is not enough to think about the new narrative, what happened to the old narrative? This is a critical question. I used to say to my people pastorally, when I go to settle between husband and wife, I used to say to them, oga take it easy, the solution to a bad marriage is not a new marriage, try and understand what the issues are. You know, we like new things. How does it speak, we are now talking about convoluted political environment, how did it happen that President Buhari is now president of Nigeria today but every time he contested election from 1999 till date was under a different political platform. How come that political party formation in Nigeria has never gone beyond one period of litmus test? Every time, the political parties in the 60s are not the political parties in 80s and 90s and by 2019, we are going to have new nomenclature. What are we expecting. Somehow, they are thinking you slam a label on something, the content will automatically change. There are lots of difficult issues we must find a way to resolve.
Now we are talking about The New Narrative, there is something I have done, I did it for the paper, I don’t want to betray myself. I have taken the time, go back and read the speech Nzeogwu delivered in 1966, read the speech. Here is what Nzeogwu said: “ We have come here to get rid of those who take bribes and demand 10%, those who seek to keep the country permanently divided so they can remain in office, we promised that you will no longer be ashamed to say we are Nigerians” January 15, 1966.
But guess what, fast forward, just randomly what is also very interesting how some of these speeches interplay. I sat down, read all these speeches from beginning to end of these coup plotters.
When Buhari came in 13th December 1983, he said: “ We will not tolerate kickback, inflation of contracts, over invoicing of imports, we will not condone forgery, embezzlement, misuse of and abuse of power.”
When Babangida and his people overthrew him, hear their speech “ It turned out that Maj. Gen Buhari was too rigid and uncompromising with his attitude to issues of national security , efforts to make him understand that divers polity like Nigeria requires recognition and reposition of differences in perception only served to aggravate this attitude”. I don’t want to bore you but do you remember something?/Because whenever I read these speeches, you realize how confused all of us were.
Every military coup, they will say please stay tuned to your radio for further announcement. You just sit down there, one bottle of tombo liquor after the other. What does it tell you? It tells you that those who make the announcement were not prepared for anything, so hold on why we try and sort out what we need to do. Now most of these have not changed and is not going to change and will not respond to new narrative.
Let us try and end, now that we are in the excitement of June 12 and the fall out. I can deliver a complete lecture on that because I went to the best school in Nigeria; that is the Oputa Panel. I don’t know whether some of you have read my book “Witness to Justice”, actually it was in this hall that I formally presented the book. When I finished writing the book , it was 650 pages. Then my publisher said, Bishop nobody will read this in Nigeria and I said okay, we had to cut to about 400 plus. But the good thing was that almost everybody who read the book said to me, when we started, we couldn’t stop. Some people asked, were these things happening in the country, are we still in this country, is it really possible. The saddest thing about us is that the reaction about everything always breaks the tempo.
Suddenly, we have resurrected Chief MKO Abiola. Either we are for a Abiola or against Abiola, either we are for June 12 or against June 12. Meanwhile the deepest issues still remain unresolved, and the concern, the contents, the structure of the system that we are running that are constantly reinforcing inequalities, we are refusing to deal with the difficult question: how are nations formed, how do nations grow? I just finished reading a book by Condolisa Rice( former United State’s Secretary of State) and she made a point. She said “Democracy is a complex phenomenon being operated by imperfect human beings”. Everything that Nigeria wants is quick, quick, and what is more dangerous is that we have outsourced our responsibilities. Are we not ashamed of yourselves that we are expecting Buhari to change Nigeria and we think that Buhari has not changed Nigeria? The question is that how does Buhari change Nigeria, by coming to our kitchen and changing our menu, by coming into our town and community to change the way we do business, by coming into the banking hall and forcing us to do business in a different way. This trend to outsource our responsibilities either to God or to some external agents, what it does is that it saves us from the difficulty of thinking about our own complicity. I should be ashamed of myself if it is a politician I am looking up to for a change because the very essence of my life as a Christian when Jesus said that I am the light of the world, the salt of the earth. Nigerians said that they want a Messiah, but I said , you cannot have a messiah in Nigeria because a messiah has to be recognized. Muslim messiah will not recognize Christian Messiah and a Christian Messiah will not recognize a Muslim Messiah. I was reading from the newspapers today, the Sultan of Sokoto said this is the time we are citing the moon, some Yoruba Muslim will say no. I normally joke with the Sultan especially at this time, when they put their advert that if you see the moon call this number. I will jokingly call the Sultan and say I have sighted the moon, he will say to me, you can’t sight the moon you are an infidel. I will say to him what if I am a Muslim but I am blind.
What I am saying is that we have to develop a capacity and a mindset that democracy is about exchange of ideas. Very often, the reason why the colonial administration was afraid of the South was because of education. Because Southern Nigeria was troublesome. The first school to be built in Northern Nigeria was in 19 22, there was already a newspaper in 1847 or there about in the south. Even that one in 1922 didn’t include us. If you read the mind of the colonial administration, it was for the children of the Emirs and the big people who was to govern the Northern Nigeria and by extension, Nigeria. It took another 50 or more years before the missionary reached us. Notwithstanding, the suspicion about education is also the suspicion about the capacity to compete.
There is always a feeling that if people don’t have the capacity it will slow down the process. Actually most of these people who get first class, they are brilliant, but from the point of view of ordinary survival, they have a problem. I can tell you, I have a nephew who has a First Class, a great guy, but his younger brother who has a Third Class , he is smarter, streetwise.The point I am making is that it is critical how our society manages diversification. My southern brothers, all of you gathered here think that having a degree or first class necessarily mean you are better than others. A society must figure out the fact that “the chain is as strong as its weakest link”. If we don’t have a society that can carry everybody along, if we don’t have a society where everybody knows where the direction is, there is a problem. I sit down with my friends and we watch Super Eagles we are clapping. If theSuper Eagles are playing well, everything is fine, if they are not, my friends from the South will say, you see, they have turn the Super Eagles into quota system. They have Ahmed, they have Sanusi, and everybody has to be in this team.
Conclusion
By way of conclusion, what I want to say is what we want is a society where the media holds the possibility of what our society could be. One of the greatest agents of democracy is ambiguity. Ambiguity lies in the fact that we don’t know who is going to win. If I am going to sit for a test or an interview and I already know that somehow, it is not going to work in my favours, why would I worry myself? The only reason everybody is gathered in Russia with a lot of excitement and expectation is because we don’t know who will win and because we don’t know who will win it could be us. That is the kind of discipline we are looking for in our society. With that, we know that we have a fair chance.
Because I keep saying the reason our society is so dysfunctional is because we have a situation whereby all the architecture of governance from security agency to everything has become so nepotistically constructed.
Where in the world , you want to join the army, it depends on who you know, you want to enter the security services, it depends on who you know, everywhere in Nigeria , it depends on who you know. The danger is that for a plural society such as ours, loyalty is transferred from the centre to the periphery. Because if I am the one that helped you enter the Army, your loyalty is to me and not the Federal Republic of Nigeria. If I help you join the security services, your loyalty is to me. And if you have a situation where the Director General of the Security Services, Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Naval Staff all have those who helped them get into these organisations, what is going to happen is that you don’t have a national Army or national security services and to that extent you continue to remain vulnerable. The point I am making as I conclude is that, we need a society where certain things are unpredictable and that you know the benefits of what hard work really are.
But if we have as the situation really is in Nigeria where one person commands the loyalty of who is going to be Chief of Army staff, Chief of Naval Staff, Chief of Air staff, DG of the State Security, we don’t have to go too far to find how we have been caught in this web.
Thank You
