IS REVOLUTION A GUARANTEE FOR NIGERIA'S DEVELOPMENT?
Nigeria shuffles between two faces; On the radiant but anxious face, you can read quite clearly that the various peoples of Nigeria can and do want to stay together in unity, peace and progress if they are allowed to take decisions about their future calmly; the other face is squirming frantically, and the bloodshot eyes which stare so fearfully from that face seem to say that those eyes would rather bleak and scatter the peoples of Nigeria than allow them to decide their own future.”
-Bola Ige, SAN
For the sake of clarity, development has been defined by Professor Dudley Seers as the elimination of poverty, unemployment and inequality. Nigeria is presently ranked as the 13th most fragile state in the world by the U.S. Think Thank Fund for Peace. She grapples with an unemployment rate of 33.10 % and inhabits 90.8 million poor citizens (about half of the populace, earning her a golden award as the world’s poverty capital.) On the flip side, Nigerian senators have become like a gulley that must be constantly watered with ₦171 million every year as basic salary and allowances per head while the picture, for decades, appears to be governments by big men, permitting big fraud which leads to big trouble. The one million dollar question however, is not whether a revolution is justified, for arguably it is. The focal question is whether a revolution will bring development. The answer to this is a no in bold letters.
It is needful to learn from history for those who fail to take heed to its lessons are doomed to repeat it. The 2013 revolution (which led to the burial of 400, 000 heads) and the 2017 revolution (during which six million people in the Equatorial region suffered starvation) both in South Sudan teaches us that a revolution hardly eliminates unemployment and poverty. In fact, the latter prompted the United Nations to declare a famine in February; the first declaration of famine in the world in six years. Not only that, the prices of basic commodities like sorghum and bread had increased by 400% and 300% respectively while the government was neck-deep in $1.1 billion debt. A more familiar experience is the Nigerian Civil war (from 1967 up till 1970) where starvation in the besieged South Eastern region constituted a greater portion of the two million deaths. No doubt, this had an indelible imprint on the Nigerian state even fifty years after.
Furthermore, that revolutions guarantee equality would be a revolution against the truth. Revolution breeds new micro-identities in the separated ethnic enclaves which fuels a vicious cycle of power-tussling rather than a virtuous cycle of development. For instance, it was not long after Egypt had a revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak from power on January 25, 2011 that she staged a revolution against her new leader, Mohammed Morsi in July 2013 that further led to the more authoritarian administration of Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi. Since power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, revolution, which aims to transfer power, becomes a self-defeating exercise in irrelevance.
The remarkable historian, Arnold Toynbee propounded the Law of Challenge and Response which states that if a civilization faced its challenges head on and survived, the energies released by that mighty effort carried it to newer heights of culture. Similarly, if Nigeria is to move to its next phase of glory, she must reverse her story through restructuring and not a revolution. The late political economist, Professor Claude Ake asserted that at present, there is overconcentration of authority in the central government –a legacy foisted by military rule in Nigeria – which has greatly hampered development. In line with the views of Professor Kenneth Collins Wheare (the father of federalism), deconcentration of powers to the constituent states and local governments (who must be able to control key sectors like health, economy and education within a framework of national unity) will ensure unity in diversity.
With restructuring, Nigeria will not break down but break records. She will be turned into a safe haven when she learns from history and particularly how the failure to embrace restructuring led partly to the Rwandan genocide where the Hutu majority decimated half a million members of the Tutsi minority or how Slobodan Milosevic’s advocacy for Serb hegemony led to the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991. Restructuring, no doubt, is a proper evolution, not a revolution in Nigeria’s political system.
Political restructuring must be accompanied by a turn around in the mind – values, intellect and the self- of every Nigerian. The youth in Oyo state may blame declining agricultural productivity on the government while failing to recognize that the average age of the farmer in Oke – Ogun, comprising a massive sixty percent of arable lands in the state, is sixty years while some youths refuse to farm in order to ensure increase. Clearly, development is ensured not through a revolution, but a revelation; a revelation that development is not just solely in the hands of the rulers but in the hearts of the ruled. Lastly, clamouring for revolution when a mere 35 percent of just 84 million citizens came out to vote in the 2019 Presidential Elections, is akin to behaving like a child, who after refusing sweet from his mother, goes ahead to castigate his father for not giving sweets. In order to ensure true development, we must utilize the ballot, not the bullet.
In conclusion, Vladimir Lenin, a key figure in the 1917 Russian revolution conceded that: “A violent revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation, however, not every revolutionary situation should lead to a revolution.” With restructuring (political and mental) Nigeria will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With it, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. The devotion which Nigeria brings to mental and political restructuring, instead of a revolution, will light the nation and all who serve it — and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
Nigeria shuffles between two faces; On the radiant but anxious face, you can read quite clearly that the various peoples of Nigeria can and do want to stay together in unity, peace and progress if they are allowed to take decisions about their future calmly; the other face is squirming frantically, and the bloodshot eyes which stare so fearfully from that face seem to say that those eyes would rather bleak and scatter the peoples of Nigeria than allow them to decide their own future.”
-Bola Ige, SAN
For the sake of clarity, development has been defined by Professor Dudley Seers as the elimination of poverty, unemployment and inequality. Nigeria is presently ranked as the 13th most fragile state in the world by the U.S. Think Thank Fund for Peace. She grapples with an unemployment rate of 33.10 % and inhabits 90.8 million poor citizens (about half of the populace, earning her a golden award as the world’s poverty capital.) On the flip side, Nigerian senators have become like a gulley that must be constantly watered with ₦171 million every year as basic salary and allowances per head while the picture, for decades, appears to be governments by big men, permitting big fraud which leads to big trouble. The one million dollar question however, is not whether a revolution is justified, for arguably it is. The focal question is whether a revolution will bring development. The answer to this is a no in bold letters.
It is needful to learn from history for those who fail to take heed to its lessons are doomed to repeat it. The 2013 revolution (which led to the burial of 400, 000 heads) and the 2017 revolution (during which six million people in the Equatorial region suffered starvation) both in South Sudan teaches us that a revolution hardly eliminates unemployment and poverty. In fact, the latter prompted the United Nations to declare a famine in February; the first declaration of famine in the world in six years. Not only that, the prices of basic commodities like sorghum and bread had increased by 400% and 300% respectively while the government was neck-deep in $1.1 billion debt. A more familiar experience is the Nigerian Civil war (from 1967 up till 1970) where starvation in the besieged South Eastern region constituted a greater portion of the two million deaths. No doubt, this had an indelible imprint on the Nigerian state even fifty years after.
Furthermore, that revolutions guarantee equality would be a revolution against the truth. Revolution breeds new micro-identities in the separated ethnic enclaves which fuels a vicious cycle of power-tussling rather than a virtuous cycle of development. For instance, it was not long after Egypt had a revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak from power on January 25, 2011 that she staged a revolution against her new leader, Mohammed Morsi in July 2013 that further led to the more authoritarian administration of Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi. Since power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, revolution, which aims to transfer power, becomes a self-defeating exercise in irrelevance.
The remarkable historian, Arnold Toynbee propounded the Law of Challenge and Response which states that if a civilization faced its challenges head on and survived, the energies released by that mighty effort carried it to newer heights of culture. Similarly, if Nigeria is to move to its next phase of glory, she must reverse her story through restructuring and not a revolution. The late political economist, Professor Claude Ake asserted that at present, there is overconcentration of authority in the central government –a legacy foisted by military rule in Nigeria – which has greatly hampered development. In line with the views of Professor Kenneth Collins Wheare (the father of federalism), deconcentration of powers to the constituent states and local governments (who must be able to control key sectors like health, economy and education within a framework of national unity) will ensure unity in diversity.
With restructuring, Nigeria will not break down but break records. She will be turned into a safe haven when she learns from history and particularly how the failure to embrace restructuring led partly to the Rwandan genocide where the Hutu majority decimated half a million members of the Tutsi minority or how Slobodan Milosevic’s advocacy for Serb hegemony led to the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991. Restructuring, no doubt, is a proper evolution, not a revolution in Nigeria’s political system.
Political restructuring must be accompanied by a turn around in the mind – values, intellect and the self- of every Nigerian. The youth in Oyo state may blame declining agricultural productivity on the government while failing to recognize that the average age of the farmer in Oke – Ogun, comprising a massive sixty percent of arable lands in the state, is sixty years while some youths refuse to farm in order to ensure increase. Clearly, development is ensured not through a revolution, but a revelation; a revelation that development is not just solely in the hands of the rulers but in the hearts of the ruled. Lastly, clamouring for revolution when a mere 35 percent of just 84 million citizens came out to vote in the 2019 Presidential Elections, is akin to behaving like a child, who after refusing sweet from his mother, goes ahead to castigate his father for not giving sweets. In order to ensure true development, we must utilize the ballot, not the bullet.
In conclusion, Vladimir Lenin, a key figure in the 1917 Russian revolution conceded that: “A violent revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation, however, not every revolutionary situation should lead to a revolution.” With restructuring (political and mental) Nigeria will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With it, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. The devotion which Nigeria brings to mental and political restructuring, instead of a revolution, will light the nation and all who serve it — and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
On the submission that revolution doesn't guarantee development, you need to dig deep into literature and see the outcome of revolutions in France, China, Cuba, Russia and other places. Beyond that, the first challenge is to understand what revolution is... It is a fundamental change in the sociopolitical and socioeconomic nature of a society. What happened around the Middle East uprising fails to meet the benchmark of the meaning of revolution.
ReplyDeleteThe arguments for restructuring in Nigeria is largely conceived in structural form in terms of the country reverting its political structure to the federal ideals as witnessed in the early years of independence prior to military intrusion. This restructuring as popularly conceived is not a guarantee panacea to the crisis of prebendalism and patrimonialism which is at the core of the country's development crisis.