The colonial forces Obasanjo, Jonathan, Buhari can never defeat in Nigeria

When they left, the colonialists handed Nigeria a structure primed to self-destruct, and the colonists, an expert says, believe making over the contraption is the solution. Wrong?

Elijah Olusegun

Between the Feb 23 election and March 7, no fewer than 113 people have been killed in Zamfara, north-west of Nigeria. Likewise in Kaduna. At least ABC were killed between Feb 10 and 27 about 150 villagers were killed in Kajuru LGA, Kaduna. Only on March 6, the Nigerian Army claimed it uncovered plots by some people to unleash terror during the March 9 guber and state assembly elections.

It doesn’t just rain, but it pours.

Security watchers say more is coming. “I can tell you it’s going to be worse than it was in the last four years,” said Ladi Thomson, a public analyst and expert on terrorism and conflict resolution.

The government won’t accept that, though. It is relying on foreign observers’ free and fair report of the Feb 23 election. But many believe Aso Rock   is not taking things seriously. And, as a result, something has got to give.

“Nigerians will be frustrated, and they will turn against this government. I give them three months,” Thomson told the National Daily on Thursday.

President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the police and other security agencies to double down on securing the election and the nation. More boots will be on the ground in Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers.

Whatever the government is doing—it’s not enough, critics say.

But Thompson thinks you can’t blame those in government. “Buhari and Osinbajo are full of good intentions,” he said. According to him, there’s nothing they can do—because the problems, old and new, are a result of a flawed system.

“Change of government, APC, PDP, former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Goodluck Jonthan, even Buhari and Atiku—all are good in their own ways,” he said. “But they are all products of the systemic failure. Good men may appear evil when there’s a systemic defect.”

Worse, Thompson said restructuring—that Afenifere, Ohaneze, and other tribal cliques agitate for now—is not even the solution to Nigeria problem. You can make-over a building, touch up the façade, add a beam, a column and all that, he explained. ‘What about the foundation?”

Nigeria’s foundation, he cites an instance, makes it such that its election pattern will always follow what happened on Feb 23. “There’s no way you can win a presidential election in Nigeria without having a northerner contesting—without having a retired soldier and a technocrat—without the support of the north.”

According to INEC’s result announced Feb 27, Buhari hauled in 15.2 million votes to defeat his PDP rival Atiku Abubakar who got over 11 million. More than 9 million of Buhari’s votes came from the northwest and northeast.

That speaks to the problem of the superstructure which, the expert noted, dates back to the colonial days when the founding fathers—whom he calls liberators—were aware of the structure the British put together—a nation programmed to fail.  It’s a problem he said the late Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa called ‘intractable problem of Nigeria”; it’s a problem he quoted the late sage Obafemi Awolowo referred to as ‘forces of disintegration” built into the structure.

Unfortunately, they never came around to dealing with the forces. By 1966, the forces dealt it first blow which, Thompson insisted, was the first terrorist attack in Nigeria, and the colonialists, who programmed it, wanted to split the psyche and leadership of Nigeria. “The first coup was meant to strike terror into Nigeria…the blood, the deaths… everything. And the colonialists succeeded.”

He wondered why the British would bring the best out of the Nigerian soldiers trained in Sandhurst, and then “injected” them with something the Queen’s country will never teach their own soldiers: coup de tat.

“That’s why fine and gentleman soldiers like Yakubu Gowon would seize leadership from well-trained leaders and economic mangers like Awolowo, the late Nnamdi Azikwe, Ahmed Joda, Phillip Asiodu, and others,” he said.

The “dynamic tension” such programming created then still hangs heavy today. “When candidates that have no idea where Chibok is, who live all their lives in Lagos, suddenly jump up to rule a vast country like Nigeria, you see the programming at work.”

And, restructuring, he noted, can’t fix that problem.

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Reprogramming—rewiring of mentality—can.

It’s a concept he fashioned out of his decades-long research in history and civilisations. And he has a wealth of references on that—including the United Arab Emirates’ and, especially, America’s which he said was initially wired for failure the way Nigeria was, until their founding fathers like Benjamin Franklin and 16 others decided to rewrite the programme.

“It will take genuine leaders, not constraint by politics, to sit down and review the present structure which can’t lead us nowhere because we have got to the end of the rail track,” he said.

To reprogramme is never going to be a cinch. Not at all.

He pointed out how the American fathers borrowed copiously from philosophers like John Locke, J.J. Rousseau, Charles Montesquieu, and others. And the outcomes, he explained, was expected: a democratic republic where public office holders swear to an oath of allegiance to the republic; beliefs in equality of men; a pay structure that forbids people of power and influence from using their position to accumulate wealth.

No doubt, Nigeria’s democracy is exposed to ills and excesses that plague the structure. And the fallouts are obvious. The most populous black nation is the 128th most corrupt nation on earth, according to the Transparency International. Its illicit financial outflow hit $8.3bn in 2018, amongst 30 countries with the highest rates of illicit financial flow, a report by the Global Financial Integrity confirms. The Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation in 2016 revealed 2 percent of Nigeria owned 90 percent of bank deposit in bank vaults across the nation. That’s how skewed the distribution is across all development indices in Nigeria.

Maybe it’s bad enough.

But Thompson believes it’s not entirely hopeless. “There are sincere, intelligent, and capable Nigerians have what it takes to reprogramme Nigeria,” he said. And mobilizing them is now his mission. He already has a clan of old patriots—he, pushing 66, is the youngest—who still have their wits about them.

How long is no factor. He is sure Nigeria doesn’t have to spend 29 years like the United Arab Emirate did. Or centuries like America did. “There is something called fractals in programming…replication of standards—everywhere,” he said. “Within four years of this reprogramming, we will begin to see the development that will take Nigeria to the forefront of civilization.”

To skeptics, that’s some starry-eyed look at realities. Maybe because he’s a believer. By his faith, he believes in miracles.

However, by reason of his studies in history of civilization, Thompson may just as well have his feet on the ground.

And he proved it.

“Awolowo already set up the WNTV, the first in Africa, before Germany had a television station,” he said. “The UCH in Ibadan—Saudi Arabians were coming there for medical, remember.”

What Nigeria was then, during its glory days in history, many will argue, is different from what it is now. And the main plank—regionalism—is what many advocates of restructuring are gunning for in their agitation now.

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Here’s Thompson’s counterpunch: the forces at play at that time, more than half a century ago, are outmoded, different, now.

He’s not alone in that position. Authors, development analysts, skeptics and others have argued along this line. “A renewed Western Region will not be an El Dorado,” wrote Anthony Akinola, author of Rotational Presidency, and Party Coalitions in Nigeria—History, Trends and Prospects. “The problems of unemployment and delayed payment of salaries will not disappear simply because states have merged into a region. Neither will the competition or rivalry that are inevitable between the sub-groups-Oyo, Ekiti, Egba, Ijebu, Ondo.”

The author also argued for something related to Thompson’s: constitutional regionalism—that’s closing the lapses in Nigeria’s constitution.

It’s a debate that’s raging now.

More than that, it seems a back-and-forth reprogramming crusaders will have to beat, or skirt, or just admit.