History is replete with the fact that development is not a miracle. It has forever remained a rational decision of a people, to make their common interest transcend parochial insularities, as to enable them work together for the attainment of goals common to them, which conduce to their welfare and felicity. Where parochial micro-loyalties, with their baggage of narrowness and insularity are canonized as the only value, tunnel vision is enabled and development is postponed ad infinitum. The war of ‘us’ against ‘them’ flowing from this, will never allow development make landfall or take a foothold. There exists no basis for social co-operation.
The basis for social co-operation is allegiance to a common value; which could be a tribe, a nation, a race, a religion, a value, or an idea. A functional country could comprise many ethnic nationalities; a variety of peoples, ideas, and persuasions; all of which have consented to pay allegiance to one geopolitical entity, bordering on their acquaintance with it to various degrees. The nation requires this allegiance to truly come into existence; and once formed, not only requires the continued patronage of this allegiance to function; but equally serves to reinforce this allegiance owed it by its constituents. But where there is no State, or where the State has lost any semblance of meaning for its constituents, then the dilemma of allegiance, or the conflict of loyalties is enabled. Countries in such instances implode on their weights, dissolving or disassembling into the most basic of primordial acquaintances; which is most times narrow and dangerous. Yugoslavia remains a case in point here.
In Nigeria, this dilemma of allegiance has failed to resolve itself to the advantage of the nation. It has rather thrown its lot repeatedly with the primeval dimension of it, holding sway in Nigeria, which has reduced the country to a conglomeration of federated grievances; and tribalism of the most insular brand. To that end, the Nigeria of today continues to play host to a myriad of micro-totalitarianism in her socio-economic, cultural, religious, and political life. All these coagulate to construct an amorphous totalitarianism of socio-political corruption, postural apathy, gullibility and frozen fatalism of the masses; and ethical relativism, which are all retrogressive and belong only to climes where primitive survival is the only social good.
If we are to invite Arendt’s (1951) understanding, which attributes the rise of totalitarianism to the accumulation of pathologies, which undermined the conditions of possibility for a viable public life that could unite the citizens, while simultaneously preserving their liberty and uniqueness; to our considerations, then no other conclusion recommends itself to us, other than the fact that the totalitarianism of social anomie; Nigeria’s subsisting socio-political malady, is built upon, and sustained by a conglomeration of pathologies. The whole range of petty tyrannies and ideological dictatorships fettering the liberties of the average Nigerian are footnotes to this. The failure of our institutions of state are equally results of this.
Inquiring into what disposed Nigerians to abide these pathologies, as well as their consequences patiently in their individual and collective lives refers us again to Arendt. For Arendt (1951), the amenability of the European populations to totalitarian ideas was the consequence of a series of pathologies that had eroded the public or political realm as a space of liberty and freedom. These pathologies included the expansionism of imperialist capital with its administrative management of colonial suppression, and the usurpation of the state by bourgeoisie as an instrument by which to further its own sectional interest. This in turn led to the delegitimation of political institutions, and the atrophy of the principles of citizenship and deliberative consensus that has been the heart of the democratic political enterprise.
Arendt’s insight, which was a response to the devastating events of her own time, save for infinitesimal modifications fully holds and applies not only in the Nigerian context, but across much of Africa as well. A cursory look at Nigeria from the British amalgamation of 1914 till date confronts one with a striking ontological similarity to the insights Arendt derived from the European quagmire of her times. Imperialist colonialism constructed vassal states out of Africa to fund their greed. It destroyed African culture and bequeathed Africans a legacy of inferiority complex, from which Africa is yet to escape. After mangling the continent for good measure, handed over the reins of governance to an emergent bourgeoisie of their former houseboys, porters and translators. These elite hijacked the state for its own sectional interests mimicking their erstwhile masters’ divide-and-rule conquests; funding disparate allegiances that destroyed unity and faith in the nation; thereby unleashing an avalanche of social pathologies, which impoverished the people and saw to the rise of micro-empires of primitive allegiance.
These elitist leeches’ success was predicated on the postural unconcern and collective apathy of the people. This apathy may have been commissioned or induced by a lot of factors. According to Arendt, ‘the capacity of totalitarian ideologies to mobilize populations to do their bidding rested upon devastation of ordered and stable contexts in which people once lived.’ In Europe of those times, the impact of the First World War, and the Great Depression, and the spread of revolutionary unrest, left people open to the promulgation of a single, clear, and unambiguous idea that would allocate responsibility for woes, and indicate a clear path that would secure the future against insecurity and danger. And for her, totalitarian ideologies offer such answers, alleging to have discovered a ‘key to history’ with which events of the past and present could be explained, and the future secured by doing history’s or nature’s bidding. Over and above this dislocation of ordered contexts, fingered by Arendt as the causal factor that explains the amenability to abide totalitarianism, or what I prefer to call the infinite propensity to endure evil, cognitive scientists confirm that the repetition of words and images strengthen the synapse connecting the neurons in the neural circuits that compute, in our heads, the meaning of those words and images. And with time, these mental associations become electro-chemically hardwired, and constitute our reality. The same could be said of experiences that are repeatedly thrown at a people. A time comes when they start viewing that as their only reality or destiny. This I believe is the case with Nigeria. Nigerians have been repeatedly abused by their governments to the extent that they have come to see the abuse of power as a norm. This is to the extent that politicians are unconsciously expected to steal from their charges, while the people look on. A further mining of Arendt’s explanation holds promise for the Nigerian situation. The ordered and stable contexts in which Nigerians once lived have suffered a heritage of dislocations. Colonialism destroyed our traditional world and stuck us in a dynamic that is yet to resolve itself even five decades after independence. It destroyed the stable contexts in which our people lived, without replacing it with any credible alternative. Today, Nigeria is neither a traditional society nor a modern one. She is lost at the crossroads, without clear roadmaps. The pre and post-independence intrigues that eschewed the construction of a national identity, with its brazen elevation of tribal allegiances as the basis of national transactions, all worked to destroy every hope of forging a nation out of the crooked timbres of the federating ethnic nationalities. The coups and counter-coups; with the baggage of deep mutual distrust it engendered all militated against development of a national identity. These enthroned and subsisting disorder paved way for the rise of anomie across much of our history, which reached its apogee in the popular appeal nay, postural unconcern of the people to corrupt governance.
This absence of a national identity guarantees that every attempt at getting Nigeria on its feet is interpreted through primordial ethnic and tribalistic lenses. It has ensured that our nation has no spirit uniting all the various constituents. And since no national identity exists, our institutions were ripped asunder; always divided along such primordial lines, and our allegiance paid to various petty and mercenary considerations. To this end, Nigerian public servants among who are the officers and men of the security forces can never transcend their society. They will always owe allegiance to mercenary interests since the whole social structure lack institutional integrity. Our country does not run on institutions. It runs on primordial loyalties, which elitist cabals exploit to enslave our aspirations to their avaricious interests. This explains why Nigeria’s attempts at democracy will always flounder and run aground on the sandbanks of electoral deceit. Nigerians can never elect the ‘good man’ or a qualified one to rule as long as these pathologies exist. They will always elect the man nearest to their primordial acquaintance, even if he is the summary of grotesque incompetence.
It is our contention that once a nation is sculpted out of the various, amorphous loyalties in Nigeria, and once state institutions are present, and made to function, the questions of allegiance would resolve themselves. This country could function, if it is worked at. But attempts at progress are defeated ab initio by the crude politicization of the inbuilt fault-lines, at the least opportunity. The failure of State institution has seen not only to the rise of vigilante groups as the bodies maintaining law and order across Nigeria; but has contributed to the loss of confidence in the Nigeria nation. Nigeria has become a social jungle. Nigeria does not exist as a state in the true sense of the word. Why this has remained this way is a puzzle: may be Nigeria was never designed to function.
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