By Jimi Bickersteth
A Buddha once said there are two mistakes one can eternally make along the road to truth; not going in the way, and not starting.
Prologue:
Today, the moods and feelings in the nation-state was in a barrel of odds and ends. It is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and things go fairly better, sometimes worse. Here, at kwatakarshie – Zamfara, time stood still at about 1910 hours. I felt lonesome. The stars were shining this early dusk. The leaves rustled in the Savannah ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, a way off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, in fact, about death, violent deaths and the North’s present ‘hemorrhagic existence’, and a whip-powill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn’t make out what it was, and so it made the shivers run over me.
Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving. I got so down-hearted and scared. Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I could budge it was all shrivelled up. At this point, I could just barely hear a boom-boom of a mounted-gun on a truck and a guitar-like sound of riot rifles. The populace have grown used to those incessant sounds. As usual, I scrambled downstairs and went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees toward the end of the poorly cultured garden, stooping down so as the wildly grown branches wouldn’t scrape my head.
When I was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a hmpf! noise. I crouched down and laid still. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there wasn’t a sound. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I dare not scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoulders, it seemed like I’d die if I didn’t scratch. The miserableness on my hands and knees went on as much as ten to fifteen minutes; but it seemed a sight longer than that. By which time I had grown dog-tired. The cross I often wore to ward off the devil – a faceless, colourless enemy was making its presence felt dangling on my neck. There was calm – and then I was pretty soon comfortable again. My goodness! Just how did the nation get to this sordid pass.
As a preamble, one must state ‘without prejudice’ from the onset that this is not an attempt to launch into polemic against government’s attitudes, policies, perceived neglect and years of misrule, (though, desirable) but otherwise, a simple assessment of a recurring problems of insecurity that seems to be defying logic and currently assuming a worrisome proportion. The aim of this treatise in this limited space therefore, is not to examined the step by step procedure in dealing with the problems generated by representations and the national question, a charter on the necessary reforms and the constitution should do that, but rather the focus is on what the dispositions should be.
The effects of the seeds planted at the 1914 amalgamation, and the several constitutional conferences and drafting undertakings which at fruition has birthed anguish, recession, and the frustration of national retrogression, corruption and mindless fleece and ills whose effects were threatening to blow the nation apart. A Federation that has existed for so long, yet, today has never really been one homogeneous country, and, for its widely diverse and differing peoples and tribes from the look of things, were, yet, to find any basis for true unity.
This obvious fact notwithstanding, the nation is constrained to stick together as one, and relying on an unreliable cliché – ‘indivisible entity’ as it strives to bring the various peoples closer together and provide a firm basis for the establishing closer cultural, social, religious and linguistic ties. The prevailing circumstances were far from normal. Given the complexity, diversity and uneven nature of the nation, the icy silence or outright gloss over by the 1999 Constitution, there can never be a true national development without solving the problems engendered by the power equation, power distribution and the ensuing power tussles.
Assuming and granted that for democracy, peace, progress and unity to thrive, a free press, a free and unfettered judiciary, inviolate electoral rights and making the peoples votes count were fait accompli; power devolution is also an integral primafacie prerequisite in the politics and dynamics of national development, further absence or lack of which could lead to or threaten a total disintegration of the republic, if a generally acceptable and practical solution is not found soon, however difficult it may seem.
The issue of power struggle in the federation is as old as the republic, some of which were partly resolved at the various constitutional conferences without a lasting solution. It was the deep scars left by the unresolved issues that were basically the course(s) of the constitutional and political crises experienced and following on the heels of the cameo of the PDP and APC’s struggles on who controls what and which region gets what, all of which simply put, were aimed at attempts to control the nation’s jugulars. The resultant effect was more of stirring the nation from centre to circumference.
The cries of marginalisation is as strident today as it was way back in the 60’s and have become something like a recurring decimal. The present six geopolitical zones, an inchoate, and an arrantly deceitful arrangement, that had not only proved inimical, but also, antithetical to the principles of a truly Republican nation in a true federalism. It has consequently, became a lie and a recurrent set-up verging on the farcical. Albeit, in all fairness, started as the closest palliative to douse the national fears of domination and marginalisation.
The six geopolitical zones contraption, a carryover and an hangover of the military’s incursions into the nation’s body politick and its attendant treacherous schemes was designed with shoes in a cockeyed position. The military saw the words and the nation upside down, and, before Nigerians could argue the physics of the matter plunged down the hill, the nation with them. Its creation betrayed a staggering contempt for the truth. The best the artificial political insemination had achieved was its increasing and consistent fanning of the flames of the peoples ego, chasms, jealousies and chauvinistic attitudes. The arrangement deepened and promoted mutual suspicion and also had a pernicious influence on society.
Either by error of omission or commission and or in its haste under the pressure of the civil society and the campaign for democracy, the military could not install it in their hurriedly assembled 1999 Constitution. It gave a picture of a circle with its sides pressed inwards, an ellipse, you’ll say, and it had surreptitiously heightened tension in the land and further endangered the hitherto fragile unity. The ensuing power struggle in the polity had brought to the fore the fact that the nation’s current pattern of power devolution was a better fit for a unitary form of government. It silences the people and encouraged the people to settle for mediocrity and mere crumbs in a ‘marriage of convenience’ that was consummated in fear and tension, and has become so stifling and useless as bath water.
Jimi Bickersteth is a blogger and writer and can be reached at jimibickersteth8@gmail.com
