How to Transform Nigeria

Part 1 – The Challenge We Face

At the Nations Development Seminar in 2005 in Monrovia, Liberia, President of Congress WBN, Dr. Noel Woodroffe said that "Sharp conflicts have always indicated transformation points to the consciousness of the world and provide pivots to a new design of human action".

Dr. Woodroffe was speaking against the backdrop of the historical origin of most West African nations (both indigenous existence, repatriation, colonization) which had in the past crippled their capacity to dream, to envision, to create a new future.

Moving forward he added required peoples in the West African region to abandon the position that explains non-productivity and lack of responsibility for their destiny on the residual impact of their past experience and to evolve new nations.

Put in very plain terms, Dr. Woodroffe was in essence saying that most nations in West African including Nigeria were defined by their past experiences rather than being pulled forward by a vision of what they want to evolve into or become.

This more than any other reason explains the preponderance of conflicts not just in Nigeria, Senegal, Cote d'Voire, Burkinafaso, Liberia, Togo but also across Africa as we have witnessed in Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Kenya, Sudan to mention a few.

The latest round of violence in Nigeria that followed the declaration of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan as winner of the April 16, 2011 Presidential Election can also be traced to this residual principle which in our case is based on colonialism.

One hundred years after the British colonial government amalgamated Northern and Southern Nigeria, and 50 years after that amalgam was granted independence the response to the outcome of the April 16 election was defined by our past.

We witnessed some people in some eight states in the former North resort to violence to protest the outcome of the April 16 election which had favored a candidate from the former South against another candidate who was perceived to be flying the flag of the former North.

We witnessed these people lashing their venom on other Nigerians perceived to be from states in the former South especially targeting members of the National Youth Service Scheme who are supposed to be symbols of national unity.

We witnessed voting patterns for both main presidential candidates that almost seem to follow the 1914 divide between North and South of Nigeria before the amalgamation, but for the role played by voters in the Middle Belt region.

We witnessed presidential party primaries of the Peoples Democratic Party that were fought along the divide of the former North and South as if we were in 1914 and Lord Lugard was still the Governor-General of Nigeria, with the losers pitching tent with another candidate from the former North. 

Since the return to democratic rule in May 1999, we have witnessed the dominance of the Peoples Democratic Party in the governance of Nigeria simply because of its recognition of a zoning arrangement that rotates political power between candidates from the former South and North.

We have witnessed the Jos crises in Plateau State where generational settlers and indigenous peoples are slugging it out in what is fast becoming a full scale war as the resort to sophisticated weapons and bombs that are used in places of worships, markets, schools, villages now attest.

We have witnessed the Ezalla and Ezillo crises in Ebonyi State that is a type of guerrilla warfare between settlers and indigenous people over land rights that have become political which has not spared travelers journeying through the two communities.

We have witnessed where a Nigerian residing outside his or her state of origin is technically regarded as a settler but who cannot aspire to political rights and in many instances is discriminated against in obtaining education, health and other benefits such as land ownership.

These are the issues that generate sharp conflicts that have over the years resulted in the loss of millions of human lives, maiming of millions of people, destruction of properties worth trillions of Naira, displacement and dislocation of millions from lives and environments they have grown accustomed to.

Since the recent crises that occurred after April 16, some have again called for Nigeria to be divided as these conflicts are indicative of Nigeria being a union of strange bed fellows or better put a 'mere geographical expression', to borrow the words of one of our late sage.

By division they do not tell us if that means dividing Nigeria along the lines of its 250 ethnic groups or an arrangement that leaves these ethnic groups under the control of those they claim are the major tribes in Nigeria?

Sanusi Lamido, the Central Bank Governor aptly described the problem we face when in 2009 he said the following at a book launch in Lagos:

“My grandfather was a Northerner, I am a Nigerian. The problem with this country is that in 2009, we speak in the language of 1953. Sir Olaniwun can be forgiven for the way he spoke, but I cannot forgive people of my generation speaking in that language.

“Let us go into this issue because there are so many myths that are being bandied around. Before colonialism, there was nothing like Northern Nigeria, Before the Sokoto Jihad, there was nothing like the Sokoto caliphate.

The man from Kano regard himself as bakane. The man from Zaria was bazazzage. The man from Katsina was bakatsine. The kingdoms were at war with each other. They were Hausas, they were Muslims, they were killing each other.

“The Yoruba were Ijebu, Owo, Ijesha, Akoko, Egba. When did they become one? When did the North become one? You have the Sokoto Caliphate that brought every person from Adamawa to Sokoto and said it is one kingdom. They now said it was a Muslim North.

“The Colonialists came, put that together and said it is now called the Northern Nigeria. Do you know what happened? Our grand fathers were able to transform to being Northerners. We have not been able to transform to being Nigerians. The fault is ours".

The challenge is how do we evolve a new nation or transform to being Nigerians.

 Part 2 – Why They Do Not Want us to Transform

In an interview in Thisday newspaper of 21/3/10 Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the Departments of Anthropology and Political Science, of Columbia University, United States, addressed the need for Nigeria to have an effective center based on national citizenship.

Mamdani concedes that it is very reasonable that key institutions in the Nigerian federation should reflect the federal character of Nigeria meaning that every part of the Nigerian federation, every state must have representation within our national institutions.

He went on to add that while every state should have representation within key institutions such as the Army, the Civil Service, Federal Universities, the challenge was in restricting the right to compete for these representation rights to only those indigenous to that state.

Since an indigene of a state is defined as anybody who was born there or of a father who was born there, he believed that this creates political dynamite as the political system penalizes those who move within Nigeria even though they are all indigenous to Nigeria.

Mamdani called for the creation of an effective center based on national citizenship as opposed to a system that treats those who move as not indigenous because they move across these hard and fast administrative and political boundaries established during the colonial period.

He also called for a system that allows anybody who lives in that state to be able to compete for that representation, not just indigenes as residence was the best way to define rights since residence was a better indication of a person's loyalty than where they are coming from.

But if one may ask, why have successive governments in Nigeria since 1960 retained these hard and fast administrative and political boundaries as a basis to determine representation in federal institutions thereby penalizing those who move?

Why is it, to use the words of Prof. Mamdani that those who move inside Nigeria are treated as not indigenous to the states where they reside even though they are indigenous to Nigeria, thus playing up a sharp contradiction between our economic and political systems?

Nigeria is one of the few countries in the world that shares revenues earned from natural resources among its three tiers of government, that is the federal, states and local governments, and with proceeds earned from sale of oil and gas reaching 85% of total revenues this runs into trillions of Naira annually.

The sharing of revenues amongst the three tiers of government has constitutional backing while there is also a law outlining a sharing formula that requires revenues earned monthly to be shared by the 26th of the succeeding month ensuring that the accounts of government are well funded.

These hard and fast administrative and political boundaries therefore allow only those who are granted access through the indigene system to have a share of revenue of a particular state as determined by the Revenue Mobilization and Fiscal Resource Commission using the agreed sharing formula.

At refined levels, the indigene system plays out in the North and South divide as a basis for having access to the resources allocated to the Federal Government and to the use of geopolitical zones as a basis for having access to the main political institutions also at the Federal level of government.

At the State and Local Government levels are variants of the same system that allows for restricted access to revenues allocated to these two tiers of government thereby ensuring that allegiance to one's indigenous ties are more important to one's national ties.

This is why successive governments at the three tiers of government always allocate a substantial part of yearly budgets and revenues to their upkeep through recurrent expenditures while members of their indigenous communities rejoice at the prospects of their sons and daughters turn to partake of these funds.

Foot soldiers are often recruited from these communities by those who feel they have been denied access or who want to bulldoze their way to these revenues to protest or fight on their behalf thereby turning Nigeria into perennial conflict zones and a land flowing with blood instead of milk and honey.

The love of money is the root of all evil and is the reason why those who profit from the status quo or the present state of affairs do not want us to evolve into a nation or transform to being Nigerians or to have an effective center based on creating a national citizenship.

In times past we have been content to play the ostrich regarding the increasing loss of human lives and the destruction resulting from conflicts associated with maintaining the present indigene system as a basis for accessing political rights.

However, the recent round of bloodletting over who gets to produce Nigeria’s president between the former North and South has to serve as a wakeup call because both those who perpetrated the mayhem and those mostly affected by the mayhem came from the youth segment that represents the future of Nigeria.

Moreover, the increasing state of conflict and blood 

Letting as settler populations who are indigenous to Nigeria but are regarded as outsiders in their new places of abode because they have moved in search of the proverbial Golden Fleece, is pushing the nation to crisis point. 

The good news as Dr. Noel Woodroffe stated at the Nations Development Seminar in Monrovia, Liberia is that West African nations including Nigeria can evolve a new nation or create a national citizenship as Mahmood Mandami prefers to call or, or transform to being Nigerians as Sanusi Lamido puts it.

Part 3 – The Technology of Transformation

For our purposes we will adopt Dr. Noel Woodroffe’s unique definition of the word ‘technology’ which means internal principles and laws that make external manifestation predictable and stable, while the word ‘transform’ means to change something into a different thing.

The transformation or different thing that we are after is the emergence of a national citizenship out of the over 250 ethnic groups existing in Nigeria or put in another way, how to transform from being Northerners and Southerners into being Nigerians.

The reason why we can control a television set simply by pointing a remote control at it and pressing some buttons which the television set responds to is because of technology in both the remote control and the television that is not visible to the human eye but that works all the same.

Technology ensures that when we press the buttons on the remote control, we get predictable and stable responses from the television set which certainly makes life much easier especially with the hundreds of channels now available for viewing on satellite television.

What if there was technology that could transform the mix of over 250 ethnic groups into a national citizenship or eliminate all the sectional and religious divides that have hindered the emergence of true Nigerians whose loyalties are to the nation.

What if there was technology that eliminated indigeneship based on tribal affiliations and that made all of us indigenous to Nigeria, making it possible for us to access political rights based on our places of residence and not based on where we were born or where our fathers were born?

What if the Nigerian became as distinct and as recognizable as an American both locally and internationally, and it no longer mattered whether one was Ibo, Yourba, Hausa, Fulani, Ijaw, Edo, Efik, Ishan, Ibibio, Anang, Selwa, Kanuri, Jukun, Tiv, Idoma, in accessing political rights?

If such a technology exists, and it was revealed and taught to us and we refused to apply it, then one would have to conclude that we deserve what we are getting and what is certain to come because insanity is doing the same thing the same way all the time and expecting a different result.

Now while technology that has been fully installed is easy to use as we find in the example of the remote control and the television set, installing the technology is a process and until that is completed, getting the predictable and stable results that make lfe so plesurable is not guaranteed.

At the 2005 Nation's Development, Dr. Woodroffe used Liberia, which is West Africa's oldest independent nation as a test case for demonstrating how a new nation can be evolved, although I cannot vouch for whether the peoples of Liberia have gone on to apply these nation evolving principles to their situation.

What I do know is that once these internal principles and laws for elvolving a nation or transforming a people have been downloaded, we do not have to reinvent the wheel in adopting and applying the technology just as we can enjoy our televisions using the remote controls even though they are manufactured in Japan.

It was fitting that the Nations Development Seminar was held in Liberia which happens to be the oldest independent country in West Africa if not in Africa having gained its independence from the United States of America close to 150 years ago.

But that is where the good news ends because notwithstanding Liberia's one century and a half or fifteen decades of independence, it is one of the most undeveloped and poorest nation in the world, with the least capital city in Nigeria more advanced and developed than Monrovia.

Outside of its capital city of Monrovia, the rest of Liberia is like one big village setting and at the core of its backwardness is the inability or failings of generations of Liberians to evolve into a nation or transform into being Liberians or have a strong center created around a national citizenship.

Liberia is actually two peoples in one, on the onehand are the generations of settlers of freed slaves who were repatriated and settled there by the Americans and on the other hand are the generations of the various native peoples who were residing there before the Americans came to resettle the freed slaves.

Following the granting of independence, these two peoples have slugged it out for the control of political power in Liberia, with the settler generation having the upper hand and ensuring that access to political rights were reserved for only their people and those indigenous people who marry into their group.

Master Sgt. Doe was the first ruler from the indigenous peoples of Liberia to govern the nation and that had to be done through the barrel of the gun, and the response of the settler generation was the guerrilla warfare of Charles Taylor that resulted in the death of millions and his eventual dictatorial rule.

Even the last elections in Liberia contested between George Weah and Sirleaf Johnson was a viled clash between the two peoples of Liberia and as long as that division exists then that nation will always be on the precipe awaiting the next igniter before going up in flames and destruction.

While Nigeria may not be as old as Liberia, it has been amalgamated, ie North and South,  now for close to 100 years and been independent for 50, and worse is actually 250 peoples in one in tribal terms and between 2 and 6 peoples in one from regional and geopolitical terms.

We have already fought a civil war that resulted in millions of deaths and that trumatized a whole generation of Nigerians, and in the last 5o years have witnessed almost on a yearly basis the loss of lives, destruction of properties, dislocations of whole communities, displacement of persons and more because we have not transformed into being Nigerians.  

We want to dedicate the next 50 years to evolving into a nation, establishing a strong center by creating a national identity and transforming into Nigerians, and all this will be in honor of the millions of Nigerians whose blood have been shed for the cause of this nation, especially the members of the NYSC who were killed after the April 16 presidential eection.

Part 4 – Defining Key Words

Before we examine some principles of technology for transformation or evolving a new nation or creating a national citizenship, let us spend some time drilling down into the key words in our opening statement in part one from Dr. Noel Woodroffe that, "Sharp conflicts have always indicated transformation points to the consciousness of the world and provide pivots to a new design of human action"

As usual, our dictionary definitions will be taken from Webster's New Encyclopedic Dictionary and the key words we will be looking up are 'Sharp, Conflicts, Transformation, World, Consciousness, Pivots, New, Design and Action', which will be followed by statements and questions linking back to the Nigerian situation to firmly settle the need for us to take a plunge into the transformation process.

The words 'Sharp' and 'Conflict' respectively mean causing intense mental or physical distress and a hostile encounter; fight, battle: a clashing or sharp disagreement (as between ideas, interests, or purposes), things we agree have been prevalent in Nigeria since the amalgamation of North and South Nigeria in 1914 by the British colonial government to form the country Nigeria.

While the amalgamation by the British colonial government was motivated by financial and administrative convenience, the reality was that over 250 ethnic groups and two regions that had been administered differently by the British, i.e. the North indirectly and the South directly, were brought into a union which was granted independence in 1960 and became a federation in 1963.

That we have had intense and physically distressing hostile encounters, fights, clashes, disagreements over ideas, interests and purposes of what is right for Nigeria and it peoples, since 1960 with its antecedent implications on loss of human lives, properties, disruptions to civil life, dislocation to the economy, and trumatization of whole generations is beyond dispute as our history shows.

The word 'Indicate' which means to point out or point to; to be a sign, symptom, or index of; to proclaim, and the word 'Transformation' meaning an act, process, or instance of transforming or being transformed; to change in composition, structure, or character: Convert; to change something into a different thing; a change in form, nature, or function, are very important.

Yes we are a country characterized by sharp conflicts, we have just had another intense, physically distressing and hostile encounters in some states after the April 16 presidential election during which we were almost polarized along the 1914 North and South amalgamation lines, places like Jos in Plateau State seem to be perpetually in conflict, yet these are signs and indicative of the need for our transformation.

Now, many believe that the transformation will occur by our holding a Sovereign National Conference to trash out the basis of the Nigerian state or by Nigeria reverting to the tenets of true federalism or worse splitting up into smaller independent units but what these sharp conflicts indicate are transformation points to the consciousness of the Nigerian people.

The word 'Consciousness' means awareness of something; the condition of having ability to feel, think, and react: Mind; the part of mental life that is characterized by conscious thought and awareness, so another way of putting it is that the sharp conflicts we have been experiencing in Nigeria in the last 50 years present opportunities to reshape the consciousness, mind sets, and awareness of Nigerians.

As the peoples of a nation think in their hearts so they will become, so we have a situation where as we continually reflect and grieve upon the outcomes of our actions such as the killing of members of the National Youth Service Corps after the April 16 election, there is actually an opportunity to change the way we think so as to end up with actions different from those which bring grief and pain.

Thus, that which brings collective grief, sorrow and pain can actually be used as a 'Pivot', that is something upon which something else turns or depends, to launch into a 'New' reality or what has not been known before, what is freshly made and unused, or having recently come into existence, what has not been experienced before or not the same as before or the former and taking the place of that which came before.

In essence, we can 'Design', meaning to conceive and plan out in the mind; to have as a purpose or destiny: Intend; a planned purpose or intention; to conceive and draw the plans for; a project or scheme in which the means to an end are laid down; goal-directed planning, the 'Actions' behaviour and conducts of peoples of Nigeria and evolve a new nation, a national citizenship and transformation into

Nigerians.

"Sharp conflicts have always indicated transformation points to the consciousness of the world and provide pivots to a new design of human action"

 Part 5 - Framework for Transformation

Certain key frameworks were identified by Dr. Noel Woodroofe for the application of the Technology of Transformation processes by West African nations in their bid to evolve into new nations or establish national citizenships, and we will examine them in this part in order to lay a proper foundation for considering the core principles of the process.

The first is in recognizing that the starting point of a nation development is the internal architecture of the people and that the people are the major resources for national reformation and national development, not the Army, or natural resources or economy, but a people that believes in themselves and their moral rectitude, sacrifice and love for their nation.

Charles Dawson in his book, You Can Get Anything You Want, says that people are the only agents of change in the world and a field with horses grazing in it will remain a field but once you put human beings on that field there is no telling what they are going to do with the field, as we can see from accounts of American history.

The second is that imperatives of tradition can be changed, and the best way I can explain it is that human beings are like computers that have dominant operating software like Microsoft Window and Lotus on which various applications are run, and just as the operating software of computers can be upgraded, replaced with a newer version or different type, so also can human mindsets.

Whereas the process of upgrading the operating software of a computer entails deletion and installation, the process of evolving a new nation, creating a national citizenship or transforming into Nigerias is very possible but not as easy simply because people unlike computers have the option of accepting or rejecting the upgrade or substitution.

The third is that the 21st century context for nations is a war of knowledge and not material weapons, and that creativity, skills and much more have become the major issues that determines positioning hence the need to produce people, education systems and communities filled with people who are able to compete with others in areas of excellence, wisdom, competence and much more.

This makes sense as we had earlier identified people as the major resources for national reformation and national development it therefore follows that just as we pump billions of US Dollars into the process of surveying, exploring and production of natural resources such as oil and gas, equipping people who will be able to compete with others in the international arena is now a priority.

The fourth one is that the dynamics for future development and the defining vision that would drive that dynamics will not come - and should not come - from outside our borders, meaning that we are the designers of our own destiny seeing that those who shared out Africa at the Berlin Conference and who are still the major beneficiaries of our fractious set up will not do it for us.

The rules of dealings among nations of the earth are not fair and balanced otherwise the United Nations General Assembly should be its most powerful organ and not its Security Council, where France, Britain, China, Russia and the United States have veto powers, so leaving those outside your borders to design your destiny for you is asking to be enslaved.

The fifth and final framework is that moving forward requires us to abandon the position that explains non-productivity and lack of responsibility for our destiny on the residual impact of our past experience, which Dr. Woodroffe has identified as a core principle for new vision building in the West African region and in nations such as Nigeria.

Nations that are defined by their past are crippled in their capacity to dream, to envision, to create a new future, so the solution is a complete disentanglement from the residual negative impact of their historical past which in the case of Nigeria are centered around the 1914 amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria.