The 60th birthday of a former president of the defunct National Association of Nigerian Students, (NANS) can hardly be a strictly family affair. Great and important that children, friends, ‘enemies’, former teachers and seniors will make it thick, there is also something in it that points in two different significations simultaneously. The first is the progression from student politics to traditional politics. There is an element of joy in this because the political education of the average activist in the Lukman generation sees the state as something to avoid. So, joining politics so as to become part of state processes is something that comes to them as corruption of the radical gaze. In other words, the idea that the state is a contested space in which the control of the ruling class is hardly ever that complete is not part of their consciousness. Those whose took the countervailing position that it is not contradictory to pursue a professional career in politics or something like that while still a part of the larger radical agenda – and they are now many – provide the evidence on which the orthodox conviction can be re-assessed. That is a matter of joy.
This question again!
But there is then the burden that this joy turns into in that too many of the dramatis personae of the radical nationalism of the 1980s are now 60 years and above. And this is happening when the democracy their activism forced into the agenda is in the slaughter slab, surrounded by powerful buccaneers. The buccaneers have no idea that the democracy in Nigeria today was paid for by the ones who bore the pains of expulsion, rustication, police invasion of campuses and death between 1980 and 1995 when NANS existed along with other fighting platforms.
So, there is a paradox that makes the joy of turning 60 a burden for all those who started life believing that the social order is too unfair to the majority and should be tweaked somehow. There is a huge debate regarding the relationship of History and Memory. Is one superior to the other or they are just different or even the same? Interestingly, this is a young elderly debate in which some of the canonical authors (with apologies to challengers of the idea of classifying any texts as such) have participated. However the debate ever gets resolved, no one will ever say memory doesn’t count. If memory will continue to count, then we can be sure that the leading participants in that era are all grappling with what we are calling the burden of joy.
Individuals have moved on and, indeed, had to because nature abhors a vacuum. But Nigeria itself has moved even farther away from the standards that were being protested at and said to be in need of being changed. And there are no alternatives to stabilizing Nigeria. There is actually no escaping Nigeria. It is so beautiful in spite of being repeatedly raped by the buccaneers. Can anything be done before that generation that knows what it means to suffer pains for the sake of Nigeria disappears as a generation?
Evidence exist to show that this question is troubling many and is receiving attention in certain quarters, with particular reference to what can be achieved in that regard within the contradictions of informtionalised capitalism. But that effort has not been theorized. Although it is producing results, the results cannot add up because as great as the marksmen involved, they are not philosophers of what they are doing. So, writing democracy in Nigeria faces a theoretical problem, no matter how much we hate the word theory just because the mention of theory doesn’t sit well with some people. Again, another burden of joy! If Salihu Lukman’s 60th birthday serves to bring attention to this, great!
Let’s not close this without recognizing the mother of the ‘Kaduna boys’ and ‘Lagos girls’ – Amina Salihu – whose hands can be seen everywhere in the making of Salihu Lukman @ 60.
