WHEN SILENCE IS NOT GOLDEN

It was at the launching of a book on Africa three years ago in Kaduna that a scholar observed that "the primary concern of African leaders has never been the interest of their people, but the elusive game of self-perpetuation which is pursued vigorously and recklessly until the expiry of either the leader or the state that he heads. "This inordinate ambition to stay in power at all costs", the speaker added, "ensures, quite inescapably, a massive wave of institutional corruption and the plunder of public resources leaving the rest of society to wallow in neglect and despair." One cannot agree more. This is easily the greatest single menace in Africa, the major obstacle to our progress and development. Certainly in Nigeria, this ‘childish wish to live for ever’, as Du Bois called it, has been our greatest plague for the last dozen years. Someone who has been essentially trained to kill shoots his way to State House under the pretext of saving the rest of us from some imaginary calamity and we discover, in time, that he really wanted to save himself and the rest of us can go to blazes. We have indeed gone through quite a few blazes, each hotter than the previous one, and one is beginning to think that the imaginary calamity that has provided the excuse may not be any worse after all. We are constantly told tales of what may happen to us if we don’t allow those in power to continue, as if we are a nation of children who are expected to be cowered by tales. As Francis Bacon would say "Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other." There is death but there are also deaths. National Electric Power Authority's (NEPA) epileptic service not only deprives one electric power whimsically but often blows up one’s gadgets any time NEPA decides to bring it back. Nigeria Telecommunications (NITEL) may not blow up one's appliance because it doesn’t have the means to, but they will blow up one’s head with a horrendous bill for services never rendered and who is one to argue, a bloody customer! Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has finally succumbed to the plague, despite four big refineries and only God knows how many barrels of crude in the ground, yet there is no fuel and we had to resort to importation. No explanation, because, to be fair, there cannot be any, so ministers exchange abuses, subordinates give conflicting orders and the commander in chief gives ultimatums that no one honours and the rest of us wait endlessly. The cost in human lives, human misery, public confidence and national esteem is inestimable. Hospitals, which used to be consulting clinics are now mortuaries, not only because all consultants who could leave have left, but relatives bring patients only as emergencies and abandon them to look for money, by the time they return the patients have died and all they need do is collect their dead from the mortuary, for a bribe. One hears otherwise unbelievable tales of how surgeons often finish operation with a torch-light hurriedly borrowed from the night-watch, when NEPA fails. How one wished that this was an exaggeration! The nation’s educational system has collapsed in all but name. Admittedly that is no news, what may be news, however, is that what we call schools are now breeding grounds for a brand of counter culture that has not quite made its debut. The cultism and drugs that we seem quite occupied with, though unable to address squarely, are only the tip of the iceberg of a sophisticated and ferocious counter culture of vandalism, crime and anarchy that is already feeding fat on unemployment, frustration and the crisis of values. Can we today point to one thing that works in this country? Except perhaps corruption? If a country in which nothing works and in which its young have nothing to look up to, is still alive, then what would it be when it is dead? What is the future of society which has wasted (or is it destroyed) its youth? From whence is the peace and stability, economic progress and development that we have repeatedly been promised going to come? In these last dozen years the wider society, has literally, if gradually, been decimated. The level of deprivation reveals itself not only in the long faces people wear but also in the tatters they don and the dilapidated houses they dwell in. If one had been away all these years he would not help thinking that there was some civil war in his absence. And he may not be too wrong, for one does not need to read John Pilgers War by Other Means to appreciate the war that had been raging on. The level of desperation is breeding a new morality: otherwise responsible bread winners now lie in ambush for small children carrying corn to or from local mills, snatching them to run home and feed their wife and children, who may not have had any meal for a day or two. The Radio Kaduna Hausa programme Jakar magori is now replete with such stories. Those that can’t reconcile their minds to this certainly tormenting ordeal chose to simply abscond. At Bukur on the outskirts of Jos, they can no longer count breadwinners who have absconded, on their finger tips for the number continues to swell. Every Friday women in tears with children in hand come to the Imam to say that they have not seen their husbands for weeks and they have sold everything they have, to feed these kids until they have nothing more to sell. These may sound like the stories we read in religious books about the day of judgement when husbands will flee from their loved ones, fathers from their children, perhaps the end is nigh. Indeed the rate of death has multiplied many fold, don’t look at the hospitals for people don’t go there, look at the grave yards which get filled up three or four times earlier than was usual. Those who remain alive and have food to eat must be losing a lot of sleep not only at filling stations but also at home as they contend with growing insecurity. They may also have to contend with food security as subsidy on agriculture is withdrawn. Where are our leaders taking us to? Are they themselves sure of where they are going? Are those in power enjoying all this mess or are the concentric circles of sadists, sycophancy and charlatans that they have built around themselves shielding them from the uncomfortable truth? The Umaru Dikkos of this regime will expectedly be at hand to dismiss these as tales of the opposition. What else would one expect? It is difficult to understand what the present administration really wants. It is not difficult, however, to know what it does not want. Education is certainly one such thing. From the appointment of the minister through the handling of the ASUU crisis to the wanton abandon which has greeted the exodus of the academic staff and the decay of the structures of the universities, one is left in no doubt about governments position. As if to dispel any doubt, the exodus and decay was being celebrated in the corridors of power with profound elation and a sense of achievement, the kind a victorious army relishes as it watches the vanquished removing its casualty and burying its dead. What do we need universities for? Why should we waste money on radicals and trouble makers who are busy causing sedition and disaffection instead of teaching what they are paid to teach? Of what use are these academics after all? Socrates, the Greek philosopher, was once asked: of what use are philosophers? None, was his reply. He then added that they are of no use because people don’t know how to make use of them. In the words of Thomas Gray, two millennium later, "where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise". Enemies are another. But who likes enemies? Not even Voltaire.[1] But this is one regime [of General Sani Abacha ] which has made the pursuit of enemies so central that many thought that if there was going to be a new ministry it will be for enemies. Since its inception it has been chasing one enemy after the other and did not appear to have had the time to come to grips with the issues of governance. As Edmund Burke would say " a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered". Under this regime even the morphology of enemy has undergone substantial transformation. For ordinary citizens there is no greater enemy than unemployment, poor pay, poverty, scarcities, insecurity, and poor utilities, health and educational services. For most of them NADECO is the least of their worry! Many may not even listen to NADECO, much less believe them, unsophisticated as the ordinary citizens may appear, they know the politics of this country well enough to know who to believe in. The more important question is, can they believe a government which has been keen in collecting tax, hiking fuel prices, withdrawing subsidy on fertiliser and feeding them with rhetoric, without as much as removing refuse from the streets? By all means, let the government pursue its enemies both real and imagined, but as we should have no difficulty is realising, human enemies are the easiest to handle, the real enemy to worry about is time, for it is one thing that cannot be detained or contained, it ceaselessly marches on consuming ravishingly what little respite we have on this temporary abode. The greatest promise of the modern nation state like Nigeria is economic progress and perhaps the peace and stability to enjoy it. It has never pretended to take its citizens to heaven, that hopefully is left in the hands of ‘to whom it may concern’. The economic index being the main yard-stick by which regimes are rated, this regime, or better still the minister of finance, has been keen to show that government has faired very well. But his exotic figures and strange surpluses, in billions, are hardly explicable. Admittedly many of us are neither accountants nor economists so it is difficult to understand how the government can have surpluses when it had not paid its debt to its contractors?; Or when such vital institutions as the police remain ill-equipped and spend months without salary?; Or when some federal institution are closed down for lack of such basic things as water?. Granted you still can have surpluses, can we ask: for whom are these surpluses reserved? Is economy made for man or man for the economy? In any case can we say the economy is improving when half of our industries are closed down and those that are open are operating at below 30% capacity? Or when graduate unemployment has been rising, with people who have graduated over five years still roaming the streets looking for jobs? Admittedly the government has descended decisively on the banking delinquency which had brought a lot of havoc to the economy in a way no regime had done before. But how many of the ordinary citizens are benefiting from this sanitization of the banks? Until the quality of life of the ordinary man begins to improve, which should not be difficult to discern, the minister should keep his figures to his fellow accountants who may make sense of them and kindly keep his mouth shut. As if the exotic figures of the minister of finance are not tantalising enough, the public are now offered the so-called Family Support Programme and its sister Family Economic Advancement Programme. One would have thought that we have learnt enough lessons from the bogus ‘better (some would say bitter) life programme’ of yesteryears. For how long shall the whole nation succumb to the ego of some women who by some accident of fate found themselves in State Houses and who seem to be itching to show that they have arrived? With the kind of things that this phenomenon had already triggered, demeanours that a few years ago would have been inconceivable, what should we be expecting in a few years time? Have we all lost our sense of decency? If the funds of the FSP and FEAP are public funds why cant they be channelled through existing government agencies for the achievement of the same objective? Why do we need to create parallel institutions under the control of some excellencies after seeing how these same parallel institutions, like DFRRI, failed and left us high and dry. Does this administration also wish to create parallel institutions for the distribution of largess to clients and coteries of hangers-on? The poor will be watching and our psyche will continue to be irritated by its expensive jamborees, chains of sycophants and venal journalist who keep reporting all manners of falsehood. When is all this likely to end? The answer should be found in the transition programme. But are we really transiting? If we are, from what to what exactly? This question has become more compelling as the transition programme unfolds. It is increasingly resembling the previous ill-fated one, the effect of which we have not quite recovered from. It resembles it in format, style and perhaps in its motive. It is only distinguishable from the previous one in its lack of savoir faire and sophistication. From the onset the major political players, (venal as some of them may be) were elbowed out, mediocre and peripheral groups were brought in to take their place. Then came the change of horses half-stream and the shifting of goal posts. This is crowned by the ABN type propaganda, this time by immature and far less ingenious groups. They seem completely oblivious of the fact that they are copying verbatim what has now become all too familiar a trick? The whole ruse is all too glaring with NECON demonstrating its lack of independence in a manner reminiscent of the old NEC, as the LG elections in Abuja amply demonstrate. What is most worrying is not so much this desperate bid for power in which nothing appears to be inexpendable, like the silence with which many have greeted this rather dangerous trend. It is true that silence does not necessarily mean acquiescence. In fact silence may even be golden. But certainly not when people are suffering at a level unprecedented with no ray of hope in sight; certainly not when sycophancy has become the norm making it impossible for leaders to hear dissenting voices; certainly not when some sadist and opportunists are busy scheming to extend this suffering indefinitely. As Ali b. Abi-Talib, the fourth Caliph of Islam, would say, "to see injustice and to pass without as much as a word, is itself injustice". His mentor and the Prophet of Islam went a little further when he said, "There will come a time when you will have leaders who will grab and corner all your wealth, they will tell you lies and you will not be deemed loyal and patriotic until you accept these lies for truth. They will also bring about a lot of evil and corruption and you will not be deemed loyal and patriotic until you accept these for virtues. [when such times come] tell them the truth even if this leads to fighting, should any of you be killed in the process he would have died a martyr."[2] UB: 25/9/97 Reference: [1] Voltaire (1694 - 1778), led a fairly belligerent life and did not seem to care what enemies he made, not even the Holy Roman Empire which he dismissed as neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire! But on his death bed when he was asked to renounced the devil, he retorted: "This is not time for making new enemies". [2] See Jalaluddin al-Suyuti, Jami’ al-Saghir, vol. 2.