By Sunny Awhefeada
The interrogative title of today’s intervention is directed at the President of the Nigerian Senate and Chairman of the National Assembly, Senator Godswill Obot Akpabio. In the wake of America’s President Donald Trump’s christening of Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” (CPC), with intimations of a likely military intervention if the Nigerian government did nothing to stop what he called “Christian genocide” Nigerian government people spoke in a measured and supplicatory tone. The responses were most cautious and courteous in a manner with which they have never been associated. The usual braggadocio and caustic response with which criticism of government was met was absent in the tame responses. The usual “fire for fire” approach was substituted with a meek appeal for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to run to the White House and explain the true situation of things to Trump the intending neo-colonizer. Trump did not say he was invading Nigeria in the manner that it happened in Iraq and Libya. But Abuja and those who hold the reins of power immediately saw themselves losing everything. The import of his deposition was a military intervention to secure the lives of Nigerians that our own government has failed to secure. Yes, while Trump’s expressed intention, if carried out, would be a violation of Nigeria’s territorial integrity he was merely telling the world that Nigeria has failed and that she needed help badly. It further accentuated the long held fear that Nigeria has become a failed state despite the trenchant denials by those who are now panicking and seeking ways to appease Trump.
A few days after Trumps designation of Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” Senator Akpabio became the lead, if not solo, actor in a short video that made the rounds in the social media saying “Do not put me in trouble who am I to fight Trump”? With Akpabio it is difficult to draw the line between jest and seriousness. Nigerians still recoil in mortification when they remember Akpabio sending “prayers” to the “mail boxes” of fellow senators to enable them enjoy their holiday or the incident of “this money is too much for me ooo” when he could not pronounce monetary figures while presiding over the senate and beamed on live television. Akpabio has become known as an embodiment of gaffes. The most recent being his interrogative quip “who am I to fight Trump?” Whether he said it in jest or in earnest, that utterance speaks to the recurring self-denigration of Nigerian politicians when they relate with the West in the last forty or so years. Akpabio the leader of the legislative arm of a nation of over two hundred million people is unable to face Trump and tell him to go to hell or in a feeble manner to face his business. Rather, he chose to “see no evil and hear no evil” and fled from a fight that would have only been verbal and ideological. Trump is really not Natasha! Akpabio could not defend the honour of Nigeria, his fatherland. In fleeing even without Trump stepping into the ring, our senator has unwittingly allowed the former to dance on the graves of Nigeria’s founding fathers; Azikiwe, Awolowo, Bello, Balewa, Ekpo and others who fought to make sure that colonialism was routed in 1960.
What played out in that utterance has plural significations that inhere in ideology, nationalism, patriotism, selfish interest and other indices that students of politics, culture and linguistics will have to interrogate. Nigerian politics at the moment is bereft of any ideological anchor. So the players pander to base instincts and are no longer inspired by ideological consciousness. It was for this reason that the responses to Trump’s threat have largely been tame and conciliatory. The credo of nationalism which defined Nigeria and the essence of its manifest destiny of greatness have suffered negation from the 1980s when rogue soldiers took turns to ravage the nation. When the soldiers of fortune left the scene in 1999 they handed the baton of recurring denigration to the comprador class. Can there be patriotism if there was no nationalism? Certainly not! Patriotism has long been jettisoned. Personality cult subverted patriotism a long time ago. National interest has been undone by personal interest. These glaring contradictions that are antithetical to national development constitute the core of the cancerous consciousness of the ruling elite.
The inability of the ruling class to appropriately respond to Trump’s threat derives from the strong awareness of what they stand to lose were they to look the bully in the face. American healthcare, American education for their children, loots hidden in American banks, expensive houses tucked away in American elite neighborhoods, expensive trips and vacations in America stand among what the leading lights of Abuja stand to lose. America offers them a romantic alternative to the hell into which they turned Nigeria. So they would gulp Trump’s phlegm and smile at him and ask for more. A kind of modern day Uncle Tomism! To the ruling class Nigeria is no longer an option for reclamation. They have given up on the nation. One does not need to think too hard to see that apart from politicking and making money in Nigeria all other aspects of their lives are anchored on the West.
Yet, this was the same Nigeria whose patriotic students halted an Anglo-defence pact in 1962. The Nigeria of Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa whose visit to the United States made global headlines. The Nigeria of Matthew Mbu, Okoi Arikpo, Joe Garba and Bolaji Akinyemi, all foreign affairs ministers who made our country to stand tall in the comity of nations. Mbu announced the nation’s emergence as an independent entity on the global stage. Arikpo engaged the world for Nigeria throughout the civil war years and beyond. Joe Garba tackled Henry Kissinger and ensured that Nigeria had her way with the liberation struggles in southern Africa and one by one the peoples of Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and later Namibia and South Africa breathed the air of freedom. It was the Nigeria whose head of state General Murtala Ramat Mohammed made the “Africa has come of age” speech that rattled colonialists all over the world. It was the Nigeria that nationalized British Petroleum (BP) and renamed it African Petroleum (AP). Nearly a decade later, Bolaji Akinyemi devised the concept of the “concert of medium powers” with Nigeria as a leading member. Bad as things were in those days, Nigeria restored peace to Liberia and Sierra Leone and had earlier enforced peace in Congo and Lebanon and returned home bedecked with medals. It is the same Nigeria that has become a basket case.
The Nigeria of my parents’ earlier days was an emergent global power with a strong economic base. Foreigners sought economic refuge here as workers. Nigerians who went to study overseas rushed home soon after graduation. The leaders of that time, albeit not perfect, envisioned a great destiny for the nation and devised a federal identity for her. She was not only named as a republic, they felt that the presidential system which worked so well in America would enable Nigeria flourish and so embraced it. In truth they did imagine Nigeria as Africa’s equivalent of the United States! And it was not a misplaced anticipation. Nigeria fits the bill. Leadership is what diminished us. Nigeria’s soft power embedded in culture, literature, sports, intellectual engagements far exceed that of many advanced nations of the world, America inclusive. Are there Americans who surpass Achebe, Soyinka, Emeagwali, Echeruo, and even the much younger Mathias Orhero and Prosper Ifeanyi in terms of cerebral contestations? I doubt. But our leaders have denigrated us and made us small. That is why we must, as a people, re-think our country and envision new pathways that will lead us out of the present cul-de-sac so that no future Trump will rinse his mouth on us. Beyond Trump, do we still remember that a young British Prime Minister did describe Nigeria as a “fantastically corrupt country” to the hearing of the world? We have had enough!
