Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

A major concern that I have is what Hamza Alavi calls "The overdeveloped postcolonial state." I am amaze at the level of uneven development in Nigeria. across communities and social groups. If anyone interacts with people at the grassroots level, one conclusion one will arrive at is we have the form of the modern state, but we have not truly cultivated the ethos and the cultural orientation and processes that are supposed to back it up. Modern institutions do not exist in vacuum. Of course it is the choice of Nigerians whether they want modern institutions. 

For instance, the average Nigeria on the street knows that Nigeria has a constitution and that maybe knows that he or she has fundamental human rights or rights as a citizen, but this is not deeply rooted in his or her consciousness. Indeed many state elites only feel constrained by the constitution on special occasions but otherwise they behave has members of the nobility. One cannot based on my travel by road across Nigeria say that the police officer on the road is immediately or consciously restrained by the sense of constitutional and citizenship rights. On our way to Olabisi Onabanjo University last week where Professor Falola was conferred an honorary doctorate degree, the police officer told our drive that he should be careful otherwise he will do him "Shege" on the sport. Shege is a Hausa word meaning bastard but he meant just showing the guy that he has power in my view.

If African countries decide to have the modern state, they can probably craft their own modern state or decide to adopt any western modern with some adaptation. I am pragmatic about this. But as Charles Tilly makes it clear in "Coercion, State and Capital" we need to be careful about the historical process through which the modern state came into existence in the West, shaping the nature and functioning of the institution, and not just import the form and ignore what made the state work in the West in spite of still existing problems. This reminds me about the Melian Dialogue in Thucydides' "Justice and Power." Power mediate the construction and functioning of institutions. How this works in practice is an open -ended question.

Finally, in whatever discussion about restructuring Nigeria, I would want to see justice included as a central part of that discussion. Nigerians rarely talk about justice openly. Decentralization from historical experience is not an automatic solution for uplifting the common person's life without justice. In development studies, there are many cases where local elites are dubious and oppressive and on the surface they may request for decentralization because it allows them have their fiefdom. One sees this in the implementation of New Deal policies in the United States, where because the implementation is in the hands of local authorities, racist county officials in the South made sure that it was implemented in such a way as to marginalized Blacks even though the wording of the New Deal was race neutral. 

After reading "When Affirmative Action Was White" I became skeptical about assuming the automatic working of decentralized institutions for the benefit of ordinary people. I do not see any reason to assume that looking at local institutions in Nigeria whether at the state or local government levels, the elites are passionate about justice for the common person. Tradition alone not seriously interrogated can be a basis of shutting up a segment of people at the local level. 

Thus I conclude if Nigerians do not confront the justice question, difficult and complex and it is, they can restructure the country anyway they want and still have a situation where the common human being is ignored.  And this will be so even if every family has a state of its own, if the justice question is not addressed. I remember John Mero producing a documentary about curriculums that work in American public schools. At the end he found out that you can have an excellent curriculum but if the teachers are not committed, it will fail. On the other hand, you can have a curriculum that is poorly designed but because of the commitment and determination of the teachers, they will make it work better than the school that has an excellently designed curriculum. 

One of the reasons why neoliberal reforms in Malaysia worked better than in Nigeria is because then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad concluded that economic reforms will not work without appropriate changes in socio-cultural values and ways of thinking. His scolding of his people would sound for some as racist but he was firm that one cannot adopt western type institutions and technology without making appropriate socio-cultural adjustments. This is a very sensitive issue but westerners too did not find it easy to make the transition from medieval culture to modern society if one reads their history carefully. I must note also that in spite of saying that, Prime Minister Mohamad is a proud leader of the developing world, affirming what he thought was useful from non-Western heritage, eg, learning from East Asia. He was pragmatic.  Interestingly Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India made this interesting observation very early in India's post independence struggle for development. He argues that what developing countries need is cultivating: 

"a scientific and technological society."

He adds, what such a society needs to understand is that when: " It employs new techniques whether it is in the farm, in the factory or in transport. Modern technique is not a matter of just getting a tool and using it. Modern technique follows modern thinking. You can't get hold of a modern tool and have an ancient mindset"

Institutions too are like techniques or processes for mediating human affairs to increase efficiency and depending on the complexity and level of development of a society, new institutions may be needed. Whether African countries in the name of nationalism return to their precolonial roots or culture or adopt modern institutions pragmatically, in my assessment, the challenge is not easy either way. There are no short cuts to progress according to one scholar.

For Tilly, institutions are shaped by balance of power and not necessarily the whims of a political messiah, which is consistent with an earlier analysis or point someone made in this thread. But building state institutions from the bottom-up is not easy and time consuming. We need political education such as the type late Professor  Wangari Mathai started in Kenya which made the government felt threatened. The political education classes she initiated really started making an impact on ordinary people and while she did not claim to be Freireian in terms of using the "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" as an educational method, there are elements of such an approach as one can see that the people through dialog figured out the truth about their social reality instead of being just lectured about important issues. There is a PBS documentary film on this.

Samuel

Samuel Zalanga, Ph.D.

Bethel University

Department of Anthropology, Sociology and Reconciliation Studies,

Bethel University, 3900 Bethel Drive, #24, Saint Paul, MN 55112.

Office Phone: 651-638-6023

On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 4:16 AM, Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:

Well said.  I find the proposed method of electing governors quite novel and more accountable to the people and the system architectonically more integrated

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Mobolaji Aluko <alukome@gmail.com>

Date: 02/02/2018 06:22 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer  of the Third Force

Olayinka Agbetuyi:

Yes, intentional collective leadership, not the magical emergence of a Messiahnic leader from a revolutionary vanguard movement is what we need in Nigeria.  It is indeed the best we can hope for, otherwise we will continue unhappily for a long time along this rickety bridge to erwhon. 

Nigeria has to be restructured along federal geopolitical state-grouped  zones with equal status relative to a strategically - devolved center -  if we are to escape from our present morass. 

A unicameral Parliamentary system at all levels, with a Prime Minister at the Federal level, Premiers at the zonal levels, Governors at the state level and Chairmen at the LG levels should be considered.  At the Center, a National  Presidium should be considered working alongside the partisan Prime Minister.  The Presidium should be  composed of one person per zone, elected from among the  elected Governors of each zone.  Each person so elected to the Presidium shall then renounce partisan politics immediately, and be replaced by his or her deputy at the state level.   The Parliament shall always act in consultation with the Presidium. 

The Federal Government should be vested with no more than 10% outright ownership (eminent domain) of land on each state, with states owning the rest.  The federal and state levels should be fully empowered to fully exploit the land, sea and water properly designated under their control. The Federal Government should have taxation rights and redistributive responsibilities  on the Zones only, and the Zones  similar rights and responsibilities on the states and local governments. 

To elevate local government input and reduce cost of governsnce, the state executives should be composed only of local council elected officials.  The Governor may be obtained through a second election among those who won local council Chairmanship elections, for example. 

Reduction of cost of governance,  local control of resources and governance as close as possible to the People should be constant watchword. 

Systems development, collective leadership and timely accountability in governance,  not Messiahs, are what will guarantee national development in Nigeria. 

And there you have it. 

Bolaji Aluko

On Thursday, February 1, 2018, Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:

The idea of leadership by consillient force is ok in theory on paper but leadership to undertake collective projects(which essentially is what a nation is about) entails division of labour into camps and someone has to take responsibility for the work of each camp and answer for its successes and failures.  The nearest I got to the collective leadership in a pluralistic polity is my suggestion of collective presidency of geo-political interests in which there is a rotational transient coordinating figure.  As sioon as the term of office of this group expires another group succeeds them

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu>

Date: 31/01/2018 16:08 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should betheStandard-bearer  of the Third Force

Hi obi

Are you sure about what you are saying? Vanguardism was contested from the start in the arguments against bolshevism. I don't want to pour over the literature. I started one quick search, and immediately got this. 3CLR James rejection of the vanguard is addressed here http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9781137284761_8#page-1

I bet you could come up with a broad list. I will simply say I am happier with anarchism, a la camus and the 1930s anarchists. I certainly endorse a socialist model, and take Hannah arendt as an ideal, especially in her critique of soviet totalitarianism in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Don't you agree with her politics there?

And more recently mouffe and laclau also express political views I agree with.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexmarinus@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 21:56
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Reformists will need a "talented tenth," and the revolutionary alternative will depend on a "revolutionary vanguard." Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, C.L.R. James - all the theorists of power and society were clear about it. The "single leader" was the Stalinist heresy that created the profound contradiction of the Russian revolution, and what Stalin did was to embark on a murderous terror campaign that destroyed the vanguard and moved for the kind of power that  concentrated authority on "the leader." CLR James in fact demonstrates the same contradiction in the Black Jacobins, in pointing out that the Haitian revolution was compromised with the rise of Toussaint as the single iconic, and symbolic leader, and subsequently, when the council of Generals chose Dessalines as "the leader." Leadership that regenerates the moral purpose of a society is driven by consillient force, not by "A  GOOD LEADER."

Obi Nwakanma

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2018 11:20 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Even when I used to be a doctrinaire Marxist, I also struggled with the praxis and moral propriety of vanguardism. As you said, a select elite few can't possibly embody and give expression to the aspirations of the masses of the people. Nevertheless, the masses, who are often diffident and fatalistic, need to be prodded to shake up the system. And there lies the tension in Marxian epistemology: the notion of an inexorable, deterministic imperative that will propel the masses to take their destiny into their own hands and the reality that the masses need a vanguard to raise their consciousness and to help them extirpate an oppressive system. This tensile epistemological stress is at the core of Laclau and Mouffe's notion of the "double void" in Marxist thought.

 

But wherever one stands in this debate, it would be escapist to imagine that a leaderless, self-propelled change is possible.

 

Farooq 

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperog

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

 

On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 4:37 PM, Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

Well, vanguardism is one approach—lenin over Trotsky, or over the socialists. Me, I favour socialists, or better still the anarchists of the 30s.

I always took it that the vanguardism of the communists was their worst mistake.

Mistake under stalin

mistake under mao

mistake corrected over and over by Gramsci, by Raymond Williams, by some other notion of consciousness besides that of the elite few who claim to know what the masses don't know

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

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