| Oga Chidi,
Samuel saw an "implicit cinservative tendency" in your quote; i think i see a cynical disparagement (grammar abi?). We mouth months and phrases as if we aren't aware of what governing Nigeria means; as if we aren't aware of politicspeak; as if we aren't aware that the reality on ground can confound even the noblest of political intentions.
What does "hit the ground running" mean? Does the seeming absence of qualititative change activities mean no such activities are going on? We have bandied the 100 days in office scare tactics. Now we are talking six months in office. What do these temporal challenge achieve when mixed with a good dose of cynicism? Nothing.
I have been thinking...
I am a sceptic. And i am sceptical of almost all Nigerian governments, Buhari's administration included. But i won't cross that boundary into cynicism. Why? Because every government represents a governance possibility. And it seems that such a possibility cannot be reasonably mapped in six months. It can be scrutinised and interrogated and critically watched. This is essentially what Samuel said. Even blancket criticism will not do: What's Buhari even doing sef? He is too slow. Criticism should be systematic; it should confront specific dimensions of government and policies, and it should make critical connections.
Is it possible that Buhari came into government to just fulfill an ambition of returning a second time as a democrat? I doubt this. Does he have a genuine ambition of possibly contributing to the trajectory of change in Nigeria? This is possible. Has he since been fazed by the enormity of the dysfunction that abound since he was last at the helm of affairs? Of course! Is he doing the best he can given the circumstances? Yes!
In my own neck of the Nigerian wood here, i have been hearing the expectant summations of what people percieve for a while now. The first i heard was the energetic talk of a distinct increase in electricity supply. Those i have heard mention it were emphatic. Another perception is the corruption brouhaha and the possible downfall of the "corrupt". Even the very possibility is tantalising for many Nigerians. It was on the news recently about a possible reduction in fuel price. Of course, it is easy to disparage the "ignorance" of the untutored masses. But is blanket cynicism any better?
I am sceptical but i won't throw every effort out as nonsensical.
Jibrin Ibrahim and his democracy centre recently created a Buhari governance meter. We can visit that site regularly and make specific criticism of specific policies. That is not cynical; it is the way democracy goes.
Adeshina Afolayan Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
| From:"Chidi Anthony Opara" <chidi.opara@gmail.com>
Date:Sat, 24 Oct, 2015 at 11:21 PM
Subject:Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Today's Quote
"So the fact that they did not promise change, they do not need to be questioned" (Samuel Zalanga) Samuel, They need to be questioned, but based on what their emergence was anchored on. My problem is not with change, but with the wobbly walk of Buhari's "change" nearly six months after assumption of office, after the promise that; "we will hit the ground running". CAO. On Saturday, 24 October 2015 22:33:30 UTC+1, Samuel Zalanga wrote: There is an implicit conservative tendency or orientation in what you are saying. First let me say that we want constructive criticism for any government in power. And anyone in politics should be prepared for that. But from what you have said, if I do not want to have problem with your analysis and I am a politician, I will not promise anybody any change, because if I do not do that, then you will have no concern about me. You have no concern about others that are in power but they did not promise any change. So the fact that they did not promise change, they do not need to be questioned.
When I was going to Bayero University to start my undergraduate studies as a relatively young person, I had great hope about Nigeria even though I was from a poor family. I thought if I work hard, I will be somewhere. Even though an ethnic, religious minority and from the social margins and periphery of Bauchi State in terms of social class, the system was not as bad as it is today. And it is so with many states across Nigeria today.
Today, many young men and women will not get what I got in spite of my disadvantages and I feel for them. And when I see them, I put myself in their situation. All these mean that whether a politician talked about change or not, "we the people" have to compel him or her to understand our yearnings. If their purpose of acquiring power is not to serve but to enrich themselves or for the sake of satisfying just their ego, we have no time for that, whether it is Buhari or whoever it is.
Moreover, wee are not just interested in change, but we will deploy all that we know about change in the literature to interrogate such a leader. Such can be good or bad, but it is still change. Nigeria is too slow. The world is not going to wait for the country as some people think. The world will move and it has moved on while Nigeria has been left behind in many respects, indeed not just Nigeria bu many African countries.
At least the Enlightenment project that informs Nigeria's constitution is the idea that individuals will prosper as part of nation-states, and so if your nation-state fails, it is like hell without purgatory. See the example in Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo etc. where innocent citizens happen to be maybe at the right place but the wrong time and they suffered the consequences. This is what you see in the film "Timbuktu." Families living peaceful lives and someone in the name of religion comes to interrupt the pursuit of their legitimate aspirations.
So one's humanity is by and large based on how good his or her nation-state competes in the "dog eat dog" world. People may not say this bluntly but this is it, if you dress down everything to the basic. We know there are going to be winners and losers in the competition. At least even you lose, it should not be by a wider margin.
You can be promised all human rights but presumably within the context of a nation-state, the functioning of which is open-ended. I do not care what the ethnic group of a person is from Nigeria if they will run the system well and create a public good that will empower all to pursue their legitimate aspirations effectively. I have lived in the state of Minnesota for U.S. without having anyone from my family or ethnic group being in the government. I am better off that way than thinking I need someone from my place to be in government. We cannot have all our people in government, that is the fact. And that is why we should focused on getting the system functioning well for everyone and having public goods that create an enabling environment for all humans with aspirations to forge their own biography out of the environment.
The main focus should be running the system truly well for the benefit of everyone, and any system that fails this test should be held accountable whether the functionaries of the system are from Sokoto, Maiduguri, Lagos or Akwa Ibom. If the politician is not educated to understand we need change, we should educate him or her not just about change but socially desirable and transformative change, for not all social change is really the type that enhances life.
Let us channel our energy to get the system working for everyone instead of all these ethnic this or ethnic. Nigerians talk a lot about their ethnicity or heritage but after that, t hey are number one in consuming foreign products and they flaunt it to demonstrate their status. That is why I do not take many cultural arguments seriously because if one is so particularistic about his or her culture, they will be restrained from consuming products rooted in or that originated from another culture, where the producer of the product may not even care about them. The producer just cares about a generic human being called "a consumer with effective purchasing power."
In economic anthropology, people who have strong commitment to ancestral their home would not migrate or move to another place even if there are better opportunities for them because doing so will dishonor their ancestors. This means that anyone who is willing to migrate from his or her ancestral homeland, maybe came to realize that there are new ways he or she can be a person from that land by being in another land where there are better opportunities.
Furthermore, anyone who has a strong sense of identity to his or her land / place but they import things from another place, ought to ask himself or herself why his or her culture is not good enough to produce anything he or she wants. If one's culture is ordained by God or whoever it is, but it fails to produce certain things and one joyfully orders from another culture, there is a need for a paradigm shift in thinking. This entails the need to broaden one's perspective.
Nigerian Christians and Muslims for instance no matter how proud or sure they are about the God they worship would have to admit that they do not yet have the wisdom and discipline from him to make Samsung or Nokia phones-- thus they go to countries that they otherwise refer as "pagan" to order such phones and SUVs and flaunt them. They consider these things now as integral parts of their normal lives. This shows that even if they love and are sure of their religion or culture, there are also other cultures or faith traditions that can produce something of value. This should compel a paradigm shift in thinking, away form particularism, where people see their ethnic or religious identity as the center of the universe; and they are so much in love with such an identity that they feel like kissing themselves when they look into the mirror. Without some space and distance for critical judgement, how can we move fast to bring about desirable change? They need a broader sense of identity.
I suggest to anybody who has a puritanical spirit about his or her ethnic group, whatever they want to call it to read about the "Galton Problem" in Anthropology. There is no culture that can survive without borrowing from other cultures. There is no clear cut boundaries for cultures. Charles Tilly made this same point about not seeing the boundaries of nation-states as water-tight.
The cultures or individuals that are most likely to thrive are not those that are just focused on conservation but those that understand that, to refuse to change means you will sooner or later be irrelevant to important questions of the historical moment as you are fixated on the past; on the other hand, if you just decide to change without thinking, then you stand the chance of losing your identity -- this is the position of Peter Berger based on his work on the question of whether one remains a fundamentalist or secularize in order to cope with social change. Any culture that in the name of conservation or being particularistic ignores the outside wholesale, will lose its youth.
The realistic thing to do is somewhere in between the two. People or cultures who learn to selectively adopt and adapt new things and understand that their identities over time will change if they behave so are more likely to survive and thrive in a meaningful way. I can assure you that my consciousness now cannot be accommodated within the context of my village. If I say otherwise I am not telling the truth. Over time, I have evolved from that village boy orientation even though I still respect my village as my starting point and if I have the means, I will like to introduce some things that can move the village forward.
And if I were to do so, they will agree with me, because they have talked about all this culture, religion, this and that, but what is there? Many village communities in Nigeria are not self-sustaining. There is no growth without death. For people to grow, they will have to die somewhat. A seed cannot germinate without dying first. If we want to grow, there are certain things about our past that will have to die. I agree that this is a matter of choice and people have the right to choose to remain ignorant if they choose to but they should also be prepared to suffer the consequences.
In the U.S. some people know t hat there is huge risk in climbing the mountains in Colorado, but they do so out of choice. And when they die becasue of snow avalanche, we say, the die loving what they want to do. This is making a choice and suffering the consequences.
Samuel
On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote: "Your real lament now is that If only Papa Goodluck was at the helm of the national development express train, change would have now been permanently established for the next three and half years."(Cornelius Hamelberg). Mazi Cornelius, You once accused me here of "troubling" the Goodluck Jonathan administration. "How many people have been in power in Nigeria and for how long and how much change did they bring." (Samuel Zalanga) Samuel, Buhari's emergence was anchored on change. CAO. On Saturday, 24 October 2015 09:38:56 UTC+1, Chidi Anthony Opara wrote: It is nearly six months and the Nigerian "change" is still tottering. CAO.
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