Is Another Country Possible?

By Tatalo Alamu 08/05/2011 00:00:00
[img]http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/thumbnail.php?file=Graphic1_955427673.jpg&size=article_medium[/img]
Mrs. Laoye-Tomori, Deputy Governor of Osun State (middle) sobbing while receiving the body of Ayotunde, one of the slain corps members at Governor’s office Osogbo.

Snooper downgrades all other activities in this column this morning to pay tributes to two of his nephews who recently fell in battle. They are Nigerian martyrs. They are NYSC members posted to Bauchi state on service to their fatherland. But they were brought back to their parents in body bags. They were not killed by foreign troops. They did not succumb to enemy fire in some far away battle zone. They were murdered by their own countrymen. They were hacked to death by a murderous mob. The enemy is here, and the warfront is here, too.

An entire town has been thrown into deep mourning. Cry, the bereaved village. The people are distraught and disoriented. It is a strange and tragic coincidence that two slain corps members should come from the same town, and a shouting distance from each other’s quarters. But there you have it. It is an epidemic of wailing and gnashing of teeth. The old people are weeping too, heaving with deep sighs of grizzled regrets. They have become wrinkled pouches of suborned hopes and withered aspirations. They are wondering since when it has become a crime to send promising kids up north. They are wondering when a country will stop slaughtering its most gifted kids at the altar of political folly.

Oh beloved nation, what type of madness is this? What type of diseased pathology and manic fanaticism would make children set upon other children in an sin assembly of murderous hate and disaffection? Where are the wise people of this afflicted and conflicted land? The mob knew the military encampment in Bauchi but did not venture there. They knew the police barracks but did not dare go near. Even a lunatic dog knows better than jumping into an inferno. It was only defenseless citizens that were a fair game.

One of the slain corpers, with prescient clarity and the deep reflective wisdom of his people, had intimations of mortality. He was acutely aware that he had been sent on a suicide mission by the state. He was conscious of danger and the risk he was taking. He was aware that death was lurking in the shadow. Yet he pressed on in the service to his fatherland. He had noted in his diary that if the king sent you on a perilous mission, you dare not disobey. But the old king was no more. He has since been replaced by a berserk post-colonial monstrosity; a deranged hen that sucks its own best eggs. And the boy died.

As this is being written, the eyes are clouding over. It is impossible to resist hot tears as they play poker with manly resolve. Perhaps, it is the pains and agony of being stranded in a faraway  enclave; of not being there to share the bereavement of a heroic town. This is the second time in three years that a corper well-known to this columnist will be slaughtered by an irate mob. Three years earlier, the son of Uncle Bola’s niece was hacked to death in Jos while on youth service. Master Akinjogbin and his two colleagues saw death coming, but there was nothing they could do before the mob overpowered them.

Who is going to be next?

Two caveats are immediately in order here. Those who know this writer will testify to a stolid and impassive character not given to emotional displays or wild outbursts. But Nigeria is beginning to get to one, once again. Things cannot just continue like this. A section of the country cannot continue to offer its best and brightest as sacrificial offerings at the altar of a fake unity.

It is about time the structure that permits these unending human sacrifices be revisited in the interest of those who have been unequally yoked together in this colonial contraption of world-historic cruelty. There is nothing absolutely sacrosanct about a nation or any nation for that matter. It is just a mode of organizing territorial space at a specific historical conjuncture. If it works, it works and if it doesn’t a better arrangement has to be fashioned out. We cannot be slaves to a colonial myth that has become an embarrassment  even to its own metropolitan progenitors.

The second caveat is even more in order. Those who know snooper very well will attest to the fact that he is not easily swayed by ethnic and religious affiliations. Even as a recuperating rebel, community associations, age-group rackets, sub-ethnic solidarity cartels are not his cup of tea. Snooper is a citizen of the world. Having left home very early to forage and slum it out in the megalopolis, snooper glides among classes and communities; among nations and nationalities and with effortless ease and assurance. Let no internet minnow tell snooper how to be a Nigerian nationalist.

The point is that the madness of contemporary Nigeria is driving everybody back to their primordial cocoons, their ethnic laager and not even its most international citizens are exempt from this growing primacy of pre-colonial identification. This is not a sign of a nation that is moving forward but a sign of a nation regressing and unraveling into its constituent parts. In order to arrive at the organic national community, a nation must move from the particularizing to the universalizing; from the disruptive norms of tribal segregation to the liberating ethos of national integration.

Fifty years after independence and almost a hundred years after amalgamation, the amalgamated units cannot boast of a coherent and cohesive national order or some core values.  

A great Dutch anthropologist once spoke about the phenomenon of “villagization”. He was referring to the process by which city dwellers ward off the hostility and adversity of a huge metropolis by reenacting the sacred rites and reinventing the totems and protective rituals of their tribal communities in the city. In contemporary Nigeria virtually everybody is going native, seeking the protection of old gods and associated deities against the baleful exertions of a post-colonial state gone haywire. It is the kraalization of the nation. The nation as a kraal is not a viable proposition.

The question, then, is this. Who will redeem the promise of Nigeria? Who will rescue the greatest conglomeration of black souls on earth from its millennial shame and misery? As we have said at so many forums, Nigeria is the greatest tribute to the colonial imaginary, and its self-subverting genius. But it also puts Africa as the cradle of humanity and civilization on the spot. This chaotic amalgam of violent contraries, this anarchic ensemble of mutually cancelling cosmologies is an impossible gridlock which requires superior visionary governance to get it off the starting block. 

But what do we get instead? A congenitally not-so-smart political elite bent on committing suicide. Even here there are vast and violent differentiations. Some of the constituting communities have chosen the fast track to Armageddon; while others are busy hedging their bets in the departure lounge to nowhere. And when all else fails, the federal might, like a vast homogenizing Leviathan, grinds the rest into brainless conformity.

It is in the sad context of this consuming national tragedy that one must situate the unhelpful comments attributed to Isah Yuguda, the Bauchi state governor, in the wake of the murder of innocent corpers under his watch. While the Deputy Governor of Osun State was openly weeping at the fate of the fallen corpers,  Yuguda was at his senseless and incoherent best. If this is the kind of people thrown up by the leadership lottery of Nigeria at this critical juncture, then darkness is visible indeed. 

This column will not desecrate its hallowed space with Yuguda’s hair-brained inanities. Here is a man who in a famous Freudian slip once referred to Nigeria as a country of one hundred and fifty million naira.  That is the mindset of a mercenary misfit. If you remove a few naira (corpers) from the ingot, there is still a lot to go round from the naira glut. The former first son in law is still sitting pretty on his democratic throne despite the mob and despite blatantly rigged elections. It doesn’t get more nation-disabling than this.

Let it be noted that despite the personal tragedy, this column has been a staunch and unyielding defender of the National Youth Service Corps scheme.

After the ravages of the civil war, the NYSC scheme was a moment of radical epiphany, an instance of visionary genius for the Gowon administration. Many had thought that it was an attempt by a self-indulgent military administration to postpone much earned graduate gratification and the plums of upper middle class arrival. But it did not take long for many those who had violently resisted the scheme to come round to appreciate the intense patriotism and nationalist zeal behind its visioning.

This column has been in personal contact with some of the ranking echelons of the NYSC exchanging vital and valuable ideas about how to move the nation forward and how to sustain the visionary dream behind its conception and faulty execution. But in the light of current developments, it is now time to review the scheme and overall viability. In the absence of other ingredients of elite cohesion and coherence, the NYSC is like putting the cart before the horse. 

NYSC has exhausted its historic and political possibilities. The elite bonding it was designed to foster and facilitate is already in place even if it is by negative default. Nothing is more binding and bonding than the ethos of political criminality. As a rent-seeking class, the Nigerian political elite is cohesive and coherent. It is only as a nation-building class that it is historically remiss. Because of this criminal abdication of responsibility particularly by the feudal fraction of the Nigerian political elite, the ill-educated rabble and unlettered urchins who perpetuate the mayhem will never get to be NYSC members. But they will always get at NYSC members as long as the objective social conditions remain. Are we still talking about the NYSC or a Failed Elite Tribunal? Let somebody get serious please. 

Let us end by returning to the beginning, and the opening question. Is another country possible? This is a question that must form part of a national questionnaire in the quest to redeem a fallen nation. Let us for once look ourselves honestly in the eyes. If another nation is not possible, there is no point in continuing with the current murderous charade. Having been sacrificed at the altar of modern Nigeria, may the soul of all the departed corpers rest in peace.

http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/columnist/sunday/tatalo-alamu/5406-is-another-country-possible.html

Snooper-tatalo hit the home run on almost every paragraph.

Now to the question; Yes we can get a "new" Country, but unfortunately for us and according to every silly survey out there, Nigerians are the happiest people on earth. It is hard to argue with happy people.

When we stop lying about our collective national emotion, when we stop hiding our true feelings as a people, we will get a "new" country.

For now, we will stay in this bubble and smile at the camera.

May they rest in peace,,,,,,this is sad, young chaps cut down in their prime by northern vandals

Hopefully, the wise ones in the great land of odua (especially the YCE) will see the futility in this dungeon called "one nigeria"

As sad, as it makes me to say this, I think we need to have a national discussion on this issue, even if we don't actually call for a referendum. We cannot continue to paper over the cracks in our desire to remain one nation.

Did anyone see the North-South divide at the just concluded Presidential elections? Unless this matter is addressed, and addressed seriously by those at the highest level of government, I am afraid of the chaos that might ensue at the next, useless, unjustifiable excuse for conflict and disagreement.

A new country is possible, but the possibility is very minimal. All we can do is work, act and hope towards positive change.

Kilode?!:
Snooper-tatalo hit the home run on almost every paragraph.

Now to the question; Yes we can get a "new" Country, but unfortunately for us and according to every silly survey out there, Nigerians are the happiest people on earth. It is hard to argue with happy people.

When we stop lying about our collective national emotion, when we stop hiding our true feelings as a people, we will get a "new" country.

For now, we will stay in this bubble and smile at the camera.

Months later and hundreds more hacked, gunned and bombed to death, It is still too difficult to pull "happy people" away from their illusion. .

I think the best thing is sending corpers to their states of origin to serve

kaysy: I think the best thing is sending corpers to their states of origin to serve

Whats your IQ again?