By Nworah M. Nnadozie
Mass revolution against poor leadership, where it is found to be indispensable, should have as its primary goal the immediate take-over of governance by the right leadership. In my book; The Genesis of Nigerian Underdevelopment And the Way Forward, I did say that mass revolution should be seen as a last resort for people who have found it impossible to enthrone good leadership through the democratic process. The first of such revolutions which was the French Revolution lasted for ten years (1789 – 99) and those who have read the history are aware that it was not a smooth process. Even Napoleon Bonaparte, the great military emperor of France (1769 – 1821) did not find the challenges easy.
Those who follow the history of French Revolution will discover that it was under his nephew, Napoleon III who was French Emperor (1852 – 70) that liberal reforms that brought prosperity to France were boldly visible. That was what made Burke to declare that liberty could not be secured by violence, but it is a product of evolution and development.
In 2011, such revolutions were noticed in some African/Arabian countries like Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and Saudi Arabia and political stability is yet to be witnessed in some of them. It is this development that made me write into this article to share my views with literary friends on the challenges of Nigerian instability.
When Julius Nyerere was leading Tanganyika, now Tanzania through political independence, he and his other political leaders accepted the theory that an official opposition was essential to democratic government. However, his people thought otherwise and through the ballot box accepted a one-party system named TANU. The people of Tanzania then practised democracy within the party as opposed to inter-party. The leaders and people of Tanzania in those days embraced political revolution through a one-party system because they believed that where there is one-party and that party is identified with the nation as a whole, the foundations of democracy are firmer than they can ever be where you have two or more parties, each representing only a section of the community.
After all we do have it on very reliable authority that a house divided against itself cannot stand. The Tanzanian case as a national movement was open to all and being identified with the whole nation had nothing to fear from the discontent of any excluded section of society because there was no such section.
Countries like Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Kenya were known to have embraced multi-party democracy in their march towards political autonomy in line with the practice in most European countries especially their colonial masters. If we take a look at Nigeria for instance, the environment for the formation of political parties was not the same as that of Tanzania. In the words of Rupert Emerson and Martin Kilson in their book The Political Awakening of Africa, “Azikiwe was unique among Nigerian nationalist personalities as the first to demonstrate the possibility of establishing a nation-wide political organization.
Though his formal projection of the requirements for an effective nationalist movement in Nigeria was free of tribalistic assumptions, when he finally succeeded in 1944 – 45 in organizing the first territory-wide national party in the form of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons, Azikiwe discovered that the political realities of Nigerian political life, divided as it was among a hundred or more tribal groups necessitated the initial organization of the NCNC among his own tribal kinsmen, the Igbo.
Traditional and modern forms of associations were employed as the core of the structure of political influence and power in the party. A major consequence of this Igbo-centered basis of power in the NCNC was that it stimulated political response by other major tribal groups in Nigeria against the tribal-centered organization. Whereas the tribal element in the nationalist politics of Eastern Nigeria under Azikiwe’s leadership was varied with practical necessity and never rationalized as an ultimate good, the role of Yoruba tribalism in the nationalist politics of Western Nigeria under Awolowo’s leadership was from the start conceived and projected as inherently desirable.
The Yoruba actually conceived of themselves – and thus by implication, other tribes as well-as a definable national group historically worthy of controlling its own nation-state political system”.
The Political Awakening of Africa, acknowledged that “the boundary lines which the imperial powers drew, did cut across the traditional ethnic alignment of Africans in their clans, tribes and indigenous empires”. The launch of the book itself in 1965 was described not only as an event of major importance for Africa and for the world at large but one whose effects will be felt for many generations to come, no less in Africa than elsewhere in the world.
In the introductory statement, Africans were asked ‘to see the European encroachment as only one phase in a long and ancient history which exists in its own right. Good political analysts will appreciate the fact that the territory foisted on Nigeria as one nation is not properly structured even with the creation of regions which made one region bigger than the three other regions put together.
Some political analysts initially thought that our political leaders of those days saw the structural deficiencies and kept quiet but on second thought, it came to light that their prime objective was to secure independence from the colonial masters who left structures that were driven by the economic interests of their home nation rather than political realism. This stand is even confirmed by one of our nationalists, Chief Olafemi Awolowo in 1947 in his publication – Path to Nigerian Freedom.
Nnadozie writes via [email protected]