Why most third world countries, including Nigeria, fail is that a preponderant number of their national leaders come to their tasks all wrongheaded. They mix up and mistake development for civilisation. The two are twin beings but are not one thing. The relationship is like that between mines and gold ingots or, perhaps, oil blocks and petrol. Just as with petrol or gold on one hand and mines and oil blocks on the other, one thing is certain. It is that development can never happen except one is in pursuit of civilisation. In technical terms, sustainable development is a fractional distillation of the pursuit of civilisation. That is, development cannot happen outside civilisation. Civilisation is the mine, development the gold ingot.
However, the history of coups, impatient and thus ignorant governances throughout the Third World, not excluding Nigeria, has shown that the greed to jump the queue and make development without being civilised is what accounts for our underdevelopment.
Now, records reveal that since the British left, all the development indices have successively become worse in Nigeria. It is not that our leaders have not been dedicated to the pursuit of development. What explains our failures is that our leaders are kpako and suweje, as Fela Anikulapo would have said. They are like the man wey carry him cloths go give carpenter. Na kpako. Na suweje.
Nothing in modern experience exemplifies this anti-civilisational drive of Third World leadership than the invasion of private residences of several justices and judges by the DSS. And this was apparently with the approval and seal of the Presidency, which is suddenly defending the recourse to the tools of Gestapo, the devilishly notorious Nazi-German police.
It is instructive that it is the Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, who collectively tarred the ways of the DSS as Gestapo-like. Already, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Mahmud Mohammed, has condemned in no uncertain terms the abominable raid. In his words, the raids were very saddening, deeply regrettable, distressing and unfortunate.
The point is not whether the judges are thieves and the DSS and the Presidency are saints. The point is that we are running a democracy. And a democracy as founded by the ancient Greeks and brought to its present day evolution, is a tool of civilisation. That is, outside serving as a tool of civilisation, democracy is worthless and, therefore, cannot deliver development. Only democracies develop nations. Undemocratic nations develop in spite of and not because of their dictatorships. This fact of it is made clear by the thesis of multiplicative as against the logic of additive systems, as the South Korean and other experiences reveal.
Thus it is absolutely laughable that this present regime or its apologists can in spite of approving Gestapo tactics by the DSS, claim they are in pursuit of development. The point is, with the way and manner they are going, it is evident they will, perhaps, plunge Nigeria into Nazism. Yes, all Nazism begins as Gestapo propositions ala DSS and the Presidency, which approves of the DSS’ pre-civilisational activisms. And Nazism is not a tool of development; Nazism is a tool and a route to collective national destruction. It may not be belated to recall that Hitler wanted to serve and save Germany as the DSS and the Presidency are today claiming they want to save and serve Nigeria. But deterministically, Nazism ended up ruining Germany and much of the world. The question must now be posed to the APC: Will Nigeria under their watch be a Nazi-German outpost in black Africa… consequences and all?
The nation needs to be warned. Immediately the citizenry allows any government agencies to morph into a Gestapo squad, then all is lost. It means that the nation has welcome the suspension of civilisation and thus allowed the imposition of the rule of a monster. And we can assure that like Hitler’s regime it will all end up in national ruins. Nazism, which is matured ‘‘Gestapoism’’, is just like coups, ambushes or thuggeries taken as national policy. It is not sustainable, both as logic and as programme.
However, in all these shenanigans by the ruling party and the Presidency, one man shines out as a beacon of our possible redemption. One man shines out with a promise that the looming night of darkness may be driven away with the bright rays of courage. That man is Nyesom Wike. When it mattered most, when the ultimate risks were on him, when he had everything to lose, including his life, he intervened to save another, not himself from the hands of the Gestapo-like DSS. That other was a judge. But he is not a judge per se. He is a judge, but more importantly a representative of our sanity and our right to the pursuit of civilisation and modernity.
In doing this, Wike reminds us of two great dudes we adore. The first is David Hilbert, arguably the most eminent mathematician of the 19th century. After Georg Cantor had discovered a new and magical cultural tool, the set theory, certain fellows in their most terrible and despicable seizures pounced on the great Cantor in the mode of Gestapo-like DSS on the judges, and desecrated our search for civilisation. But Hilbert came out like Wike, putting his skin at risk, declaring harshly: ‘‘No man shall expel us from the paradise Cantor has founded for us.’’ One can almost hear Wike utter: No man shall expel us from this paradise, this democracy we have paid for with our blood, our sweat and vision.
The other is Elbert Hubbard. In his great piece: ‘‘A message to Garcia’’, Hubbard writes of his hero in a manner that fits Wike like his skin, which he put at risks for the sake of our democracy. For Hubbard: ‘‘Civilisation is one long, anxious search for such individual. Anything such a man asks shall be granted. He is wanted in every city, town and village… The world cries out for such: He is needed and needed badly – the man who can ‘Carry a Message to Garcia.’
By that act of singular courage and sense of personal risk to save the rest of us, Wike has qualified as the man whom civilisation is in one long search for, as the man who can Carry a Message to Garcia. Wike is telling us by a skin in the game devotedness that: It is better to die fighting for the paradise of democracy than to live and prosper in hell of APC or Gestapo-like DSS. The point is clear. We need more and more of the Wikes and less and less of the Gestapo-like DSS if our country is to survive at all.
