The past week saw several confusing signals from the Nigerian elite, signals that have ominous significance than were previously the case. It was the week or so that there was a hefty handshake of N500m from Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike, to his Sokoto State counterpart, Aminu Tambuwal over the Sokoto Market fire disaster. While that is positive for national unity, it was also the week that youths of Yoruba cultural identity sought to give practical expression to a de-Fulanisation campaign in Yorubaland, fetching a reprisal threat from the Arewa Consultative Forum, (ACF). It was a misguided threat that should have been issued by Miyetti Allah but not by ACF which has even Yorubas as members. And it was still within the week that representative members of the elite gathered in Abuja for the Annual Trust Dialogue. Talk of the uniting and disuniting logic of the postmodern reality that has so complicated meaning making.
The man at the centre of the confusion: President Buhari in a New York Times pix
These confusing signals make it impossible to dismiss those saying that only something of a catastrophe will bring the Nigerian elite and everyone else to their senses. They cite the extreme weakness of the Nigerian State at this moment as one reason for saying so. A state could have a powerful security apparatus but yet be so weak. USSR was a nuclear armed power but it lacked legitimacy to be powerful in a hegemonic sense. At the slightest push from the most disorganized strikers, it scattered like a pack of cards. But even more crucial is also the argument that there is nothing that will stop the totality of angry statements, threatening interventions and enemy images that have been sedimenting from emptying into a catastrophic outcome. Those who hold this view are relying on the well known point that what we say can produce the reality talked about. Everyone has been echoing how artificial Nigeria is, how 1914 is a mistake and how Nigeria should break. What would then stop all those views from reifying all of that in the context of the magnitude of elite fragmentation, a very weak state and the overall incoherence in Nigeria today? This is more so that there is not that sense of urgency from the few actors capable of critical distance from the conflict. But, is this to suggest that all the King’s men and all the King’s horses are no match for the challenge of saving humpty-dumpty?
Not at all, it seems. There seems to be one, the most unlikely hero for that matter. It is still not yet time for those with difficulty in conceding originality to Goodluck Jonathan to recant. But it might not take long before some of them do that even as they still think that he should have denied himself the luxury of 2011 and positioned himself because, as at 2011, he had not got the advantage to rule Nigeria in a manner corresponding to the stature of the region that produced an Eskor Toyo, a JP Clark and a Claude Ake. They would have to if, for the second time, Jonathan has done what others with better advantage in Nigeria have been unable to do or do better.
The first time he did it was in making that call to concede victory and thereby standing himself down at a time everyone else was anticipating the implosion from which recovery would have been impossible. The rest, as it is said, is now history. And now again when everyone else, including Chief Obasanjo, has seen the light on restructuring, so to say, it is Goodluck who is cautioning against certitude, making a risky but progressive analysis predicating restructuring on a set of conditions of possibility.
It is not clear from which analytical lens Jonathan arrived at his own conclusion that restructuring is not the route to anything like an Eldorado. It is possible he has his own intellectual squad with a more critical hook-up on the forces at work on the issue of restructuring in Nigeria. Or, his sojourn in power might have given him the rare insight. Perhaps, his is just a case of the validity of the assumption that most people who have either observed Nigeria on the world stage or studied Nigeria and its maneuverability at that level will rarely accept anything that can be remotely connected to willful dismemberment of the country, consciously embarked upon or unconsciously so. Wherever he is getting his own insights from, it positions him well that he is shouting from the roof top. On the short run, it might fetch him verbal attacks and even insults. Some would say it is all because he sees a possibility of return to power but conveniently forgetting that he got into power in 2007 and in 2011 without ever having said anything. On the long run, he is certain to be happier that he said what he said on restructuring at the time he said it.
In other words, Goodluck joining a few souls in Nigeria to say that restructuring may not be such a magic wand is a good move. Even if restructuring turns out to produce an Eldorado of Nigeria, his caution is still good because his caution serves as a warning against the certitude being bandied about. The anti-colonial campaign followed that path without anyone hinting that some characters had readied themselves to plunder their fellow Africans, lock them out of the benefits of independence and put them in jail if they protest.
Who is pointing out plausible unintended consequences and guarantees against restructuring becoming a case of jumping from the frying pan into the fire itself?
The former president is, therefore, manifesting an interesting discomfort with the sort of certitude and orthodoxy as restructuring that Achebe would say led the Gadarene swine in the Bible to damnation. It does not appear at this point that Jonathan is aware of the grounds upon which American based Prof Ayoob based his case for subaltern Realism. Whether he did or not, he appears to be echoing that line of reasoning that any ‘Third World’ state that accepts to fragment itself through such practices as restructuring risks being done for as far as being anything in the world ahead is concerned. It will remain a laughing stock. The arguments of subaltern Realism remain solid although some people would say it is all academic just as some others would ask why that argument is highly considered everywhere else where it is commonsensical that Nigeria has not got the advantages of belongingness that has given federalism in Australia the spectacularity it has got. This is the main reason his caution is regarded in certain quarters even as it may not enjoy similar rating in some other quarters. But, irrespective of how well restructuring goes, Jonathan might be making a statement that may turn out more meaningful much, much later.
There is a sense that recent frustrations of nation building might have presented a vaguely defined paradigm as restructuring to look like answers to nightmares. There is no doubt about it that restructuring is understandable and attractive. Still, a lot of things are also being said under the pillows. Questions are being asked how, in the case of the Middle Belt, for instance, the Tiv elite or their Igala counterpart in Kogi would joyously be heading back to a revived Benue Plateau where they would cohabit with their Jukun and Berom brothers without creases. The Tiv and Igala examples provide interesting such examples because these are some of the emergent but most comfortable hegemons in the existing structure who are likely to resist moving into hazy terrains where their hegemonic status will be imperiled in the new Eldorado called Middle Belt region or the New Benue Plateau. But Igala and Tiv are not exhaustive. What happens to the people in Southern Kaduna who would be very a uncomfortable group in the Northwest region where they are now but as a battleground? That is why Jonathan is right when he says the problems are also there at the lower levels.
The question that Jonathan implies by making that point is: why have such problems not been mentioned at all in the articulation of restructuring? And does not that ‘silence’, therefore, suggest that the true meaning of restructuring is something that has not been said yet? Is there no way of finding any other solution to the violent Fulani expansionism that is at the centre of the resistance? Can restructuring even respond to violent Fulani expansionism in a deterritorialised world? If the collapse of Europe from undocumented migrants is today a major item in international political analysis, how would restructuring help curb such expansionist agenda in a highly agrarian Nigeria? Why are other options to solving the problem not on the table?
Nothing in the foregone is an attempt at answering what is passing into the lexicon as the Buhari puzzle or why Nigeria has degenerated into where it is today under Buhari’s second time in power. Is it the sinister plan Bishop Kukah talks about in his Christmas preachment or the case of Buhari coming to office without any preparation for it beyond power for power sake as Dr. Usman Bugaje believes? Or, is it just regime incoherence following the leader’s ailment? Could it be the case of an overwhelmed team competing in Formula 1 with Molue drivers as Peter Obi pointed out? Or, might Nigeria be dealing with the outcomes of machinations of opposition propaganda successfully disabling the regime?
Whichever one is the case, the events of the very past few weeks appear to provide reasonable people with sufficient signals of what could get real if the situation at hand does not get more reflexivist attention as opposed to the rationalist thinking that dominate the newspapers today, depending a lot on careless examples and static meaning of people, issues and situations. In other words, who again stands with Goodluck Jonathan in this tense moment on the future of Nigeria? Lagos lawyer, Femi Falana, has been interrogating restructuring lately.
Any other voices that would point out plausible unintended consequences and paradoxes before restructuring comes stuck like Brexit? Perhaps, reading Prof Attahiru Jega’s presentation at the Trust Dialogue last Thursday might be a good exercise another day!
