Kongi is a spirit

It is hard to dispute that Prof. Wole Soyinka’s Keynote Address at the last South-South Economic Summit was the high point of that gathering. I was in the audience. The end of that speech, probably one of the finest oratorical excursions I have ever witnessed, produced an ejaculation of awe in admiration as I turned to the corporate chieftain sitting by me. Kongi is a spirit, I muttered, elevating the essence of his remarks.

That high tribute acknowledging the profundity of thought in the tour de force of the Nigerian condition by Soyinka as he reviewed the state of our nation was also at once a celebration of a rare personage in patriotism and capacity to take on complex matters, speak truth to power, and communicate it in prose that makes the object of his commentary, if they have the capacity of understanding, to feel naked. On that day in Asaba those who had ears felt the shame of a nation that was in all but garb a failed enterprise in which people who were given the privilege to shape history had all but wasted their life’s journey, damaged the future of their children and set fire to the possibilities of their grandchildren, even if they still think that bank accounts built up in the abuse of the common good will assure the tomorrow of their direct offspring.

Why does the enigma of Soyinka continue to puzzle? In my view, because he has defeated himself and is comfortable with truth and speaking it to those who have become used to being lied to. If his speech did something for me, it was on how to hold many of us to account for the ruining of something so beautiful, the dream of Nigeria.

Mostly, he held the feet of politicians to the fire. Rightfully so, but it is important to show that more are guilty for the catastrophe of what became of the dream of my youth, a great new nation. Surely much blame goes to politicians in fatigues and flowing robes, but many more need to account. Our blame is total in this collapse of culture that has immobilised the sense of service, with literal gang-raping of the citizenry into a state of stupor that restrains them from asking how come the misery index, measured by objective criteria such as unemployment, attainment of the Millennium Development Goals and placement of Nigeria in the United Nations Development Programme Human Development Index remains a show of shame. Even as few of our people boast of bank account sizes that make the wealthiest in countries scoring high on these inculcators could never imagine having, not much seems to have happened here. We continue to scramble for wealth without work in a manner that would make India’s Mahatma Ghandi shake his head in his grave.

The Soyinka speech in Asaba, obviously because you can not say all that needs to be said in one speech, did not highlight how much our men of commerce have helped cripple Nigeria, just as our intellectuals in abdicating their moral authority have added to the challenge of now. In the same vein, the youth cannot be spared for the loss of idealism that marked our younger days and the bureaucracy cannot escape the charge that goal displacement and unbridled corruption as their ways, have left us so far from where we could be. The pain is worsened by the loss of basic civility in how we deal with one another and how the judiciary makes justice seem so out of reach for those who need it most.

I like to begin with men of commerce. Ghandi in his deadly social sins laments commerce without morality. Everyday I interact with businessmen who find in “neutrality” an alibi. They argue that to protect their business they must not only avoid speaking truth to power but avoid those who speak truth to power. But the “neutrality” is a living lie as they aid and abet the looting of an orphan nation in league with those in power. They cooperate in blackmail with elements in the media who blackmail them just as they yield to politicians who they finance and siphon state money through. The outcome is the state of play today that you are supposed to yield to blackmail to get on with the bigger prospect of money worship.

Businessmen are supposed to be smart but you find greed and laziness brought on by a rent-seeking behaviuor in a rentier state make them forget that where wealth by stealth predominates and injustice becomes the social condition, peace becomes elusive. And when anarchy comes, as it seems to have come to us, private jets will find no parking space. I experienced the hypocrisy of the men of commerce first hand when nearly 13 years ago, I created Patito’s Gang as an open forum for all, an electronic village to help speak truth to power. Commercial Nigeria which professed to love the show ran from commercial participation even when the reach was evident to extend their messages. There were clearly exceptions to the rule. Even as Patito’s Gang continues to run today on a few channels at home and on Ben TV in Europe, its history tells a part of the story of Nigeria. Its one year hiatus was laced with remarks by such men of commerce about missing the show that we made it return in January to Galaxy Television. But it really is in trying so hard to be close to men in power, and corrupt abuse of weak institutions and avoiding truth that our business class sets itself up for the judgment of history.

Then come the intellectuals. How many of them speak as clearly as Soyinka? As a graduate student in the late 1970’s, I came to admire a remarkable policy scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, Aaron Wildavsky, because of the title of his book; Speaking Truth to Power; and another of his kind, Yzikiel Dror. In his epic discussion of Leadership, in a book titled, Leadership, a former President of the American Political Science Association, James MacGregor Burns, makes the point that the intellectual derives his leadership attribute from a moral authority that flows from knowledge. Where are our men of knowledge? Why does Ghana make more progress? Is it because its most senior political leaders tend to be intellectuals committed more to the power of ideas than political machines that deliver real and imagined votes? There is a long history of explaining how the military got the sword to become mightier than the pen. In the main, they are rationalisations for abdicating personal responsibility to history. What will Franz Fanon say of us? We fled and sacrificed our children for fear of guns. Surely as intellectuals, we cannot in confidence say we have not betrayed the mission of our generation.

The Clergy seem uncertain about their role. They are often locked in romance with those in power yet power creates conditions that prevent their flock from living out the promise of being co-creators with God, man overcoming his environment, and building a better society. I have struggled with the responsibility of religious leaders on the subject of wealth, poverty and human destiny, a subject often discussed by Michael Novak, philosophically confronted in Doug Bandow’s volume on the subject.

The failure of our religious leaders to strongly affirm the living of a unity of life such that the Tuesday man at the boardroom is same as the hugging usher on Sunday is reflected in why power ridicules truth in Nigeria. Concern about the faithful and dignity of the human person so often crushed by the conduct of leaders that are not accountable to the people should rouse religious leaders to active pursuit of a more just social order.

How did we all come to act with little care for that which we have in common and share? From theories on the curse of oil to leadership recruitment and succession errors, rationalisations have been offered. The real question is, are we willing to salvage this sinking ship in the interest of a generation whose interest we have unfairly mortgaged. If Soyinka’s is a wasted generation and mine is a hapless generation, can we then sacrifice so our grandchildren may have the redeemed generation? The pathway to restoring the dignity of man for Nigeria is for Nigerians to get together and talk in candour. First, we have to talk about what went wrong and then about how to construct a modus vivendi just to all. How do we form civil servants so they do not steal money they do not need leaving pensioners to die uncared for because of their greed? The only reasonable way forward is talk.  And talk we must if we must all move forward as a nation.