By
AYO OLUKOTUN
The recession of political leadership is a global affair;
consider as random examples the scandal ridden presidency of Nicolas
Sarkovy of France, the vulnerabilities and fluctuating fortunes of
the once
widely acclaimed President Obama in election year United States, as
well as the sometimes jestful antics of President Jacob Zuma of South
Africa. The Nigerian manifestation of leadership diminution
constitutes however an odyssey of missed opportunities symptomised by
the recycling of inept and visionless political leadership. It was not
surprising therefore and especially in the context of a nation
imploding from several social and political traumas that this year's
Awo Memorial Lecture which was held in Lagos on the 9th of March
attracted an unprecedentedly huge audience which included the most
eminent traditional rulers from across the nation's geo-polity and
notable politicians cutting across opposing camps.
An excited and obviously gratified Dr. Tokunbo Awolowo Dosunmu,
Executive Director of Obafemi Awolowo Foundation (OAF) contemplating
how larger than life her father remains 25years after he passed on
remarked in an emotion laden voice at the occasion "I stand in awe of
the amazingly enduring influence of the simple and useful life that
Chief Awolowo lived". One of the rewards of that event was the almost
incredible scenario of beholding politicians from the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) such as Chief Ebenezer Babatope and Otunba
Gbenga Daniel rubbing shoulders and sometimes warmly embracing
redoubtable political figures from the Action Congress of Nigeria
(ACN) such as Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Chief Segun Osoba and Chief Bisi
Akande signaling, if one takes an optimistic view the possibility of a
handshake across the political barricades in Yorubaland around the
unifying and transcendental stature of Awo.
Awo is of course more venerated than studied; he provides for a
nation in distressed circumstances a delectable myth as well as vivid
reminder of a once glorious past and the hope dim for now of an
eventual renaissance. But veneration and posthumous deification make
no mistake about it have more than therapeutic value, for not long ago
a colleague informed me that an informal survey conducted among some
secondary school students in Awo's home state of Ogun came up with a
troubling result that over half of the students polled knew more about
Obafemi Martins than about the statesman Obafemi Awolowo. What this
suggests therefore is that we have as a nation been tragically remiss
in drumming up the virtues and identities of our heroes past as all
great nations of the world constructively do. Before getting on to an
exegesis of the event of the day, which was the lecture delivered by
world acclaimed Scholar Prof. Toyin Falola of the University of Texas;
Austin, it is interesting to mention that Balarabe Musa who chaired
the occasion raised the ante by enunciating that not only does Nigeria
require another Awolowo but that if Awo's educational policies have
been implemented nationwide we would have been spared the albatross of
a northern region whose educational backwardness in relative terms has
become a veritable threat to the nation's stability. Musa went on to
say that "Awolowo is the most qualitatively outstanding and memorable
legend of Nigerian politics and governance since the 1940s. He is the
one whose role in politics and governance can still be a reliable
guide for any first time president of Nigeria even though Nigeria lost
the opportunity of having Chief Awolowo as his national president".
Awolowo, let us recall in referring to Nigeria of his days as little
more than a cartographic denomination provided part of the reason why
he never made the top job inspite of his meticulous preparation and
outstanding qualification for that position, namely, the divided
reception and perception of greatness in a bifurcated and fractious
public sphere. In such a tumultuously incoherent polity, the strife of
tongues and the tendencies of the nation state to dissolve into its
lowest common denominators of ethnic origins run against the tide of a
pan-Nigeria agenda however visionary. In this light, mediocrity and
the ability to desist from rocking the rickety boat as well as a
pacific comportment have too often sentenced the nation to a
leadership blight exemplified by what I once had occasion to refer to
as the federal character of corruption.
Falola, the author of over a hundred books lived up to his reputation
of outstanding industry by preparing a lecture running into over a
hundred pages as well as discreetly preparing a shorter version which
he read lucidly to the audience. Strikingly titled 'Power Politics or
Welfare Politics?: Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the History of African
Nationalist Political Thought', the lecture situates the statesman
within a framework of Africa intellectual history; in particular those
of Nigerian nationalism and those of colonial and post colonial
African political thought. His portrait of Awolowo was that of an
austere, hardworking, cerebral and perspicacious politician who turned
his personal victory over sometimes excruciating poverty and setbacks
into a metaphor of societal victory over ignorance and want as well as
the imperative of an utopia "of a new and free Nigeria where
individual freedom and more abundant life are guaranteed to all her
citizens". Placing Awolowo's career side by side with the downward
spiral of our national history, Falola laments that: "we once blamed
the woes on the British. The British left but the woes remained. Then
the politicians were replaced by the military, the woes continued.
Then we blamed the military and called for democracy. Greater woes.
Now is the time to call for accountability and visionary leadership of
the type demonstrated by the example of Obafemi Awolowo".
For me, the most rewarding aspect of the lecture was the discussion
in a summary fashion of Awolowo's welfare ideology which in my view
can bear elaboration in the context of Nigeria's search for a
development paradigm in an emerging post-Washington consensus
intellectual milieu. Awolowo as is well known espoused democratic
socialism based on the conceptualization of the human agent as the
centerpiece of development in contrast to neo-liberal currents of
thought which privileges the market as the dynamo of progress. The
point being made here becomes clearer when you factor that Nigeria by
2011 figures is now being touted as the third largest growing economy
in the world after Mongolia and China. Our planners may beat their
chests at this growth miracle but Nigerians know and Human Development
Indices (HDI) confirm that Nigeria continues to be one of the worst
places to live on earth. Unemployment is a roaring monster; workers
are being laid off in droves to compound the situation;
infrastructural decay continues unabated; health and education which
were the pivots of the Awolowo paradigm of development are in tatters
while economic growth although impressive in statistical terms is
wantonly lopsided and concentrated in one or two enclaves without
spinoffs for the rest of the economy.
Juxtapose this bleak-house scenario with the Western Region of the
1950s which devoted 40% of its budget to education, implemented a
minimum wage that was the highest in the country, prioritized
investment in human capital and infrastructure as well as diversified
the economy away from its agricultural base to the point where in the
1970s the Western Region accounted for nearly 65% of all industrial
output and about 65% of all industrial employment in the country and
you will begin to apprehend the vitality of the nationalist and social
welfarist alternatives to neo-liberalism.
In other words, the most enduring and visionary legacies of Awolowo
are perhaps to be found in the theorization and implementation of a
humanizing and socially inclusive model of development which calls for
urgent revisiting in the light of our persisting economic and social
doldrums.
--
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7224
512 475 7222 (fax)
http://www.toyinfalola.com/
www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa
http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs
http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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