By Godwin Ndubuisi Aleke
Aleke writes from Lagos
Majority of us agree that things are not working well in our country. We are not just realizing this; we know it and have been singing it.
We can only disagree on its origin and its causes. I make bold to say that the cause of our problem is the lack of "intellectuals" at the topmost echelon of our leadership. Even this, so many of us will disagree on.
The notion "intellectual" on its own is confusing. Intelligence lacks absolutism - implying, that while we can compare the intelligence level of two individuals and assess one of being higher than the other; to call a single entity of being intelligent amounts to saying little.
In absolute sense, the only intelligent being, is one who understands the whole of creation, whom we have learned to call the creator, the almighty, Allah, God, etc., depending on our faith.
All others can only be assessed in comparison to their closeness to absolute intelligence; also our well-off elites will never agree that the deprived is of more intelligence. Said in a better way: our present problem as a nation exists in its magnitude, because Nigeria has evolved beyond its present leaders.
By this, I mean those who are presently in control of the instruments of power in all its manifestations) and the system they imposed on us. Discussing this leadership and their system will make volumes.
Needless to say, that the present system is an evolution of colonialism, where government exists purely as a "masquerade" for controlling the masses who are supposed to be largely un-informed.
In this system, the tools for controlling the state (the police and armed forces) are organized as private enterprises of Colonialist/President/Governor etc.
As such, the state apparatuses are organised, to the extent that government responsibilities are dispensed like kings' patronages, where the King's does favour to whom he desires.
The largely ignorant masses have no option than to worship and desire favours from the Master - Colonialist/President/Governor. This system worked well with ignorant masses who hardly understand the workings of government. It worked well for a master dictating to his conquered servants.
The system basically exists by extending undeserved favours to the enlightened that have the capacity to challenge it; and when the enlightened were in minority, the resources of the state (in terms of positions and finance) would go round, giving fewer grounds for squabbles and disagreements.
In this system, the elites basically share the resources of the state in neglect of the people; and this is the foundation of corruption. Unfortunately, ours today, is a world of global village; where a boy in the remotest village can gain access to the BBC, Aljazeera, CNN and VOA networks and the vast array of information on the web. It is a world, where that little boy is aware of what is happening in the most civilized part of the globe.
Also, as is inherent in human nature, the curiosity in us has enabled all of us to want to be like the elites. With this urge, a great percentage of Nigerians have thrown away our naivety and want to "enjoy" in the manners the elites do.
These caused the escalation of corruption and irresponsibility down to the tiniest unit of our nation. We are all in a race to secure "life enjoyment" through cutting corners; a norm adopted from our lording elites. Firstly, it was an elite thing. But you cannot fool the people forever. We have read in-between the lines of the "elites' thing".
Now that we have all learnt how to be "smart", the centre cannot hold. So, for us to co-exist peacefully as a nation, a different system must evolve; a system that can satisfy enough of our people, to reduce the tension in the land arising from the squabble for power as a means for better life. Such system must neutralize all our acquired "smartness".
It is either we do this consciously, or we allow nature to do that for us, in its crude ways. There are no shortcuts; and there must be no fooling around.
It is great self-deception when stinkingly corrupt and dirty elites preach otherwise to the masses, pretending to be fixing a failing nation. Students of history are familiar with this: Our world is in a continuous evolution.
There are times when accidents of history drive humanity backward on the interim; but man's and nature's evolution is largely progressive. Backward systems always give way to better systems. That was how man overcame anarchy, subsistence living, slavery, trade by batter, etc. Karl Marx, after investing all his life in the study of this came up with "Socialism" or "Communism" as the end of our socio-economic evolution.
I may not be informed enough to make a good criticism, either in support or against Marx theorem, but my take is that better systems evolve to replace old system, whenever the old system can no more guarantee the peace and well being of the people. History abounds where these nature's transformation were helped by men who can read the signs of the future. Same also abound where men refused to accept the fate of nature until they were compelled to.
The compulsion and its concomitant effects is never a sweet tale. It comes in sweat and blood. No one can stop it; it is difficult to control once allowed to take off, in its crudest of form. Like I have said, a study of our largely forgotten history (a history the Europeans has rewritten to suite their taste in an attempt to stamp our inferiority and enshrine our servitude), the history of all other nations of the earth, have proved that the transformation from one system to another, if not well managed, comes at great cost to life and properties. And like every force of nature, these transformations can only be delayed but can never be stopped. Our present system with its elites is a product of past historic transformation. A large percentage of the present day elites emerged from the slaves, outcaste and "never do wells" of yesteryears.
A study of the emergence of these elites, especially among the Igbos and the minorities of both south and north, will reveal the above. I know the elites will want us never to believe this. We have heard stories of how their grandfathers and great-grand-fathers were men of extra human behavior who were gifted better than their peers. But we know better as students of history; as people that have had ears close to the ground, and as those that heard the authentic stories from our grannies (I gave kudos to Chinua Achebe as a good disciple of learning from grannies). The elites of the old, lost it because of comfort and its inherent evil, as same history have proved to us. I do not intend to illustrate how comfort and denials have played great roles in the evolution of races, nations, societies and the power equations between their members. But I am convinced that the denials of the old produced the elites of today. I am therefore confident that the comforts of today and the denials of today will give rise to our elites of tomorrow. Needless to say, that our world is an interesting one. Back in the 1960s, we had a civil war borne out of the struggle for power by the then emerging elites, in an unfair system of government built by a departing colonial master. This followed by relative peace and development because the resources were enough to satisfy the immediate greed of the few elites; in particular with the relative educational backwardness of the North, who captured power after the war. The massive emancipation of the people, thanks to missionary schools and the effects of a global village world; the gradual assimilation of the rebelling elites from the East, the large numbers of university graduates coming from the West, East and the minorities; means exploding number of elites squaring to share limited resources.
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