Both those in approval as well as those in disapproval of Ambassador Usman Sarki’s re-interpretation of Lenin on the national question in his essay below are encouraged to write back. For a richer round of discussion, such readers might wish to refresh their memories by re-reading the late Prof Eskor Toyo’s “Ethnicity, States and Social Dynamics in Nigeria: An Approach to Fundamental Solution of the National Question”; the late Prof AbdulRaufu Mustapha’s “The National Question and Radical Politics in Nigeria”, (the original version rather than the version of it published in ROAPE); the late Dr. Mahmud Modibbo Tukur’s essay on the topic, (see Essential Mahmud); William Pfaff’s “Invitation to War: Ethnic Conflicts in the Balkans” in The New Shape of World Politics: Contending Paradigms in International Relations; Bala Usman’s essays on the national question and, perhaps, Michel Billig’s Banal Nationalism. The first part of this series is here.
By Amb Usman Sarki
This essay is about locating the discourse on the “national question” on the correct premises and the understanding that it is really a deterministic issue prone to be made a subjective problem. The concept essentially deals with the conditions and interests of groups that can be considered as “nations” and therefore; seen to be having common antecedents, interests and purposes. But to what extent such “nations” or groups should be given territorial expressions or identities was a matter that created different sentiments and opinions even among Marxists and Socialists.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s thesis on the national question was mainly premised on the characteristics and nature of autocracy in Russia, which according to him “precludes liberty and equal rights for nationalities, and is, furthermore, the bulwark of barbarity, brutality and reaction in both Europe and Asia”. This backward tendency informed the egregious denial of the rights of the nationalities that were incorporated into the Russian Empire and held by the iron grip of the Tsarist regime. From the socialist perspective therefore, there must be causality to the agitation for national self-determination which should not be antagonistic to the proletarian struggles against capital and the search for working class unity. Internationalism as against insular or separatist agitation must be the framework in which self-determination should be sought if at all it becomes necessary.
Josef Stalin appropriately responded to a proposition by messers Meshkov, Kovalchuk et al, that to be a “nation” a people must have a separate national state, by noting that such a position was “profoundly mistaken and cannot be justified either theoretically or in practice, politically”. It is this territoriality aspect of the debate that seems to be so pronounced in Nigeria particular with regards to separatist agitations and the creation of ethnic enclaves, which also seems to be its greatest weakness.
This is the reality that we must face squarely in Nigeria if we are to bring some sense into the “national question” debate with its attendant problems like “restructuring”, “true federalism” and what have you. In their various works, Karl Marx, Frederich Engels,
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Josef Stalin had addressed the “national question” in relation to the “independence” of countries like Poland, Italy, Ukraine and the other nationalities of Europe. However, their analysis and postulates were predicted upon the historical-materialist or working class perspectives particularly from the viewpoint of the class struggle and the independence of the proletariat from the domination of the capitalist class. This distinction has to be made very clear and unambiguous for the sake of understanding the nuanced aspects of the debate on the “national question” in Nigeria that seems to be driven by the opportunistic interests of the ruling classes in the country particularly those that are allied to ethnic and tribal separatists, sectaries and chauvinists.
The debates on the “national question” have been largely Euro-centric for historical, sociological, cultural, intellectual and even racial and economic reasons among others. They became pronounced and intensified as a result of the breaking down of old orders in Europe and the radical transformation of the political systems and entities in that part of the world especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has to do largely also with the transformative force of the capitalist mode of production that took hold in Europe and the changes that it introduced in social relations and matters like land ownership, labour relations, the movement of capital, displacement of populations and also significantly, the many wars and conflicts that it spawned. To apply the concept of the “national question” as some on the left in Nigerian politics and academia seem to do, will require some circumspection lest we import wholesale a matter that is extraneous to our historical and contemporary circumstances.
Silence! Tutorial on restructuring in session
The nationalities issue in Europe has been linked to the various agitations and struggles for independence and self-determination across cultures and regions in that continent. Applying it to Africa would require first the consideration of historical factors in the continent. The idea of self-determination for instance, becomes problematic when seen in the context of the search for “liberation” and “independence” from foreign or external domination. But in Africa, this is rather a non-issue because in our pre-colonial systems, there was no consciousness of being under any “foreign” rule as such. What obtained was the transformation of dynastic rule from the Habe to the Fulani for instance, in certain polities that fell under the Sokoto Caliphate. Equally in Borno, changes in the dynastic rule from the Magumi Mais of the Sayfuwa Dynasty to the El-Kanemi Shehus took place which subsisted during and after the colonial episode right until this day.
The idea of self-determination, therefore, is a concept that can only be applied to a specific historical phase in our experience which lasted from the 1890s to 1959 when British imperialism was effectively established and consolidated in Nigeria. The period after that from 1st October 1960 formally ended any sense of the search for “independence” or “self-determination” by the various elements that constituted the Nigerian nation. The only exception to this fact was the referendums that took place in the United Nations Mandate Territories in the Cameroons, that were given the option to join Nigeria or remain part of the Republic of Cameroon. Here, the question of “self-determination” appropriately took effect and was exercised by the affected populations.
It would be a fallacy to suggest that there should be a debate on the “national question” in Nigeria around the issue of self-determination or independence as it is now suggested in some of the tendencies and agitations in the country. The biggest fallacy so far that is associated with the “national question” is the latter day construction of artificial and abstract entities around which the agitation for “restructuring”, “self-determination” and what have you, have been conceived and entrenched. The construction of fictional “nations” around the various ethnic entities that make up Nigeria today, and the transposing of their specific interests and conditions to the search for “self-determination” on the platter of the “national question” is far more than the mind can accommodate. The conditions in Nigeria since 1960 did not warrant the introduction of subjective and deterministic constructs like the “national question” simply because the constituent parts of the country cannot be considered to have come under any physical external control or domination that would warrant the agitation for their “independence” or release from that state of servitude.
Can this system hear its falconers?
In this context, seeking self-determination within the Nigerian milieu at this specific point in history is tantamount to what Lenin described as “autonomisation” of groups and entities. This argument is therefore central to this essay. The general trends in the discourses around these subjects especially the vexed issue of “restructuring” are vague and imprecise. A lot is left unexplained while more confusing issues have been introduced into the discussions around the subject. Clarity and context are therefore, urgently needed in the national discourse around the issue of “restructuring” and its associated discontents. It is for this purpose that we venture in this essay to bring out some points that arose from around 1903 to the 1920s before and in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, which provided the occasion or opportunity to discuss the national or nationalities questions in Russia, the rest of Europe and Central Asia. As early as 1903, Lenin correctly understood the significance of the “national question” to the proletarian struggle in Russia and the rest of Europe.
In his article on the Armenian Social Democratic Programme for instance, he framed the “question” not around “national” constructs, but around the interests of the proletariat solely. Lenin’s thesis was thus, “our unreserved recognition of the struggle for freedom of self-determination does not in any way commit us to supporting every demand for national self-determination. As the party of the proletariat, the Social Democratic Party considers it to be its positive and principal task to further the self-determination of the proletariat in each nationality rather than that of peoples or nations”. This is an emphatic and unambiguous statement of the position of the Socialists regarding the “national question” and its attendant objective of self-determination of peoples, which is a bourgeois conception to catalyze the “autonomisation” of people and subjugating them under the rule of capital. The crux of the matter is that the mere acceptance of the idea of self-determination of peoples or nations does not in any way make it an automatic process of recognition of each and every situation based on insular or atomized demands for this privilege.
Accordingly, Lenin asked the rhetorical question “Does recognition of the right of nations to self-determination really imply support of any demand of every nation to self-determination”? What Lenin emphasised was the subordination of the demand for national self-determination to the proletarian class struggle and the evolution of a transformative framework that places the working class at the heart of such a process. “It is this that makes all the difference between our approach to the national question and the bourgeois-democratic approach”, wrote Lenin. Comrade Vladimir Ilyich therefore dealt with the “national question” decisively in his numerous writings before and in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. For instance, he agreed with Marx and Engels who correctly delinked the question of the apparent domination of the South of France by the North from the issue of “self-determination” and the “national question” per se. Lenin would probably agree also with Antonio Francesco Gramsci on his assessment of the regional disparities in Italy in his “Notes on the Southern Question”.
The most serious or gravest oversight by the proponents of “restructuring” is that they failed to appreciate that all Nigerians whether majorly tribes or minorities are indiscriminately oppressed and subjugated to the needs and dictates of capital. We are all slaves under the oppressive weight of global capitalist domination, from whose fetters only a united and determined action by the working people can free us. Vague intellectualism, active enthusiasm, enclave politics, aimless agitations, sloganeering and pamphleteering and all other activities that are ill-conceived and poorly executed, will not bring any succor to us. Only a determined action based on the core understanding of the progress of capital and its many intricacies and the social relations that it has thrown up, can show us the way forward towards building a truly radical, progressive and inclusive democracy in Nigeria.
Elite opportunism in the guise of seductive slogans like “restructuring” and “true federalism” and their incessant clamour for one thing or the other driven by primordial interests, only serve to weaken the working class struggle and sow divisions among the ranks of the downtrodden masses. This is exactly the dilemma which the agitations for “restructuring”, “true federalism” and all other bourgeois elite tendencies have created for the progressive forces in this country. They have allowed themselves to be sucked into the vacuum of empty rhetoric and directionless posturing of the elite whose narrow interests are political ascendency rather than the reconfiguration of the economic power relations in the country.
