We need to emulate the Japanese when they adopted their own national religion as a counterweight to foreign religions which are undermining our confidence both Islam and Christianity are undermining our national identity. We have facts that shows both Islam and Christianity are derived from Ancient Egyptian Religion which is an extension of our traditional religion yet we appreciate carbon copies religion instead of the original. The basis of cultural unity of Nigeria is History, Languages, and Psychological factors.
--Dear All,Herewith a piece which appeared in my BusinessDay Monday Column a fortnight ago.OM
TOWARDS THE PURPOSE-DRIVEN NATION
- By Obadiah Mailafia
Nations, like individuals, must have a vocation or they will be nothing at all. It is an open fact, universally acknowledged, that Nigeria is among those countries in the world whose performances in all the indices of development are grossly below their actual potentials and promise. Without vision the people perish. So said the ancient Hebraic sages. To transcend its proverbial mediocrity, it is vital that our country recovers its sense of national purpose and destiny.
Mallam Ayuba Kadzai was one of the most brilliant Nigerians of his generation. In 1976 he gave a famous lecture at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, which was later published with the title, "Nigeria's Global Strategy". This article is inspired by that lecture. Ayuba Kadzai was at the verge of completing a doctorate in Military Science at the University of Chicago in the early seventies when he was deported from the United States. It was alleged that he was one of the brains behind the Black Panthers in their bid to bring about a violent socialist revolution in America. He came to ABU Zaria to teach and was also inducted as an Honorary Colonel in the Nigerian Army. Ayuba Kadzai was a rather troubled genius – a man way ahead of his times.
For us to become a purpose-driven nation, several building blocks are required.
First, and most crucially, national power elites must evolve a consensus on the Nigerian national project, for the simple reason that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Our diversity should become a source of strength, not a burden of weakness. We have to agree that we need a national rebirth and that we can join hands together to build a strong, united, virile and prosperous democracy.
Linked to this is the need for an overarching public ethic which all of us can identify with. The late American strategist John R. Boyd argued the case for the articulation of such a national ideology to bring a nation's elites together. He called for a 'grand ideal' that represents a "coherent paradigm within which individuals as well as societies can shape and adapt to unfolding circumstances—yet offers a way to expose flaws of competing or adversary systems". According to him, such a unifying vision should also be as compelling as to serve as a beacon "around which to evolve those qualities that permit a collective entity or organic whole to improve its stature in the scheme of things".
Second, political reform and constitutional reengineering is imperative. I believe that the best constitutions are those that reflect our national conditions, temperament and historical experience -- that ensure the sovereign equality of all sections of society, creating a political community that is harmonious and just. It should also be one that enables the institutionalisation of a system of rulership that is accountable and responsible. Government should be cost-effective and the process of selecting our rulers should be fair and transparent. The current 1999 constitution is highly defective in this sense. Nobody knows who crafted. It was certainly not a product of "we, the people". We need a revised constitution that represents the genuine collective will of all the Nigerian people; a constitution that safeguards our liberties whilst advancing our prosperity within the context of freedom, justice, equality and solidarity.
Third, we need to reboot the foundations of economic prosperity and growth. If we are to become a player on the world stage we must willy-nilly have to reengineer our economic and production system to serve those requisite national goals and purposes. Economic capacity must begin with adequate energy and electricity, a solid infrastructures base, development of the iron and steel sector, creation of a reliable network of railways, a vibrant heavy machinery and machine tools industry, development of high technology, an elaborate research and innovation system, ensuring food security, and a project for massive industrialisation that generates jobs and produces high value goods for domestic and world markets. Ultimately, we must strive to become a knowledge-based society.
Ultimately, what is needed is not the tokenism of reform as prescribed by the terrible Bretton Woods twins. What is needed is an inner-directed, endogenous structural transformation. I have always said that with her size, resources and potentials, Nigeria cannot afford to play the routine game of developmentalism as if she were Togo or Costa Rica. Ours is a world-historic destiny. I do not subscribe to blind nationalism, but I am persuaded that the trans-Atlantic Babylonian servitude to which black people everywhere have been subjected to for the better part of a millennium will never come to an end if Nigeria does not rise up to fulfil her vocation and destiny.
A policy anchored on transformation must revisit the fundamentals of the political economy, including the reshaping of institutions and mindsets, the restructuring of public institutions and revamping 'the commanding heights' of the economy, macroeconomic policy and management and the juridical foundations of economic regulation, the enforcement of contracts and the sanctity of property rights. Attitudes and beliefs must change for Nigeria to make a quantum leap out of its vicious cycle of poverty and innate mediocrity. What all this calls for is the need to forge a new direction in economic strategy, and ultimately, a fundamental geopolitical repositioning of our national system.
While I believe that, in an ideal Liebnitzian world, market-based solutions work best, I am also persuaded that we need to reinvent government as a driver of transformation and accelerated government.
Fourth, and one flowing from the preceding, we must evolve an effective national system of innovation and technological-scientific capability. The most prosperous nations in the world today are not those that happen to be sitting on a lake of oil. From Francis Bacon to Karl Popper, it is an established fact that progress in human civilisation is determined largely by science, technology and innovation – by what Sir Winston Churchill termed "the Empire of the Mind". Much of the wealth that we accumulated from petrol was largely illusory. The real source of wealth in the twenty-first century will derive from the Empire of the Mind.
Fifth, we must retool the armed forces not only for their constitutional mandate of national defence but also as a vehicle for national development. From Thucydides to Giap and Mao, it is a universal dictum of military science that those who cherish peace must always resolutely prepare for war. We live in an extremely dangerous world. There are more black youths in prison in America than there are in college. In Africa, in the Americas, in Arabia and in the islands of the seas, black people have become an endangered species. Jean-Marie Le Pen the extreme Right leader in France proclaimed that "Ebola would be the best solution to the migration crisis from West Africa". Less than 3 months after his proclamation, Ebola broke out in West Africa. Did Le Pen know a thing or two that we didn't?
As the whole world knows, the HIV/AIDS pandemic has been carefully and systematically Africanised by the agents of Lucifer and the Illuminati who control the world system as we know it today. Who says that Nazism and Hitlerism are dead? The entirely non-scientific story of Africans sleeping with or eating, green monkeys has been sold to a gullible and fickle-minded public. Now they are coming up with Zika. A few people know those who 'own' these artificially manufactured viruses. The God of our ancestors will continue to protect the African people. But we must always bear in mind that a prophet unarmed is doomed. I now can understand why the Chinese reserve a healthy suspicion for all foreigners.
To echo Franklin Roosevelt, we must understand that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. In the billiards-ball model of international politics, nations inhabit a universe of indeterminacy. The ultimate guarantees lie not in morality or the goodwill of others but in self-help and the deployment of national power. "Talk softly but carry a big stick", counselled our venerable ancestors in all their wisdom. Keeping a well-trained armed forces that is fully subordinated to civilian constitutional supremacy, equipping them and being able to mobilise them at short notice is the only sure way of securing a country's survival and independence.
Today, the Nigerian military lacks many of the critical essentials to engage in a major campaign to defend the national territory. The navy is gravely ill-equipped to defend our 1,000 km territorial waters. We do not have a functional warship, not to talk of a submarine or carrier. Gone are the days when our fighter pilots were among the best in the world. Our air force is in a pitiable state. We need to integrate the work of our scientists with that of the armed forces to create a veritable military-industrial complex that could tackle headlong some of our most critical technological-industrial challenges. We should make our military a growth pole of excellence, learning from the examples of the United States, Israel and Egypt.
Sixth, we need to invest massively in human capital. A country that aspires to a world-strategic role has to invest massively in its own people – in basic education, literacy, skills and training. We need a mass literacy campaign to wipe out illiteracy which still afflicts more than 50 percent of our population. We also need to invest in talent while building world-class universities. Ours must become a society that puts a premium on knowledge and merit and gives pride of place to talent and merit.
What sets America apart from the world is not only its democratic institutions but also the greatness of its universities and research institutions. According to the World Ranking of Universities, of the first 20 best universities in the world, 17 are American. Only Cambridge, Oxford and Todai (University of Tokyo) make it among the first league. Even within Africa, Nigerian universities fair badly indeed. We are way behind such South African institutions as Cape Town, Pretoria, Witwatersrand, Rhodes, Kwa Zulu Natal and Stellenbosch. Even poor African countries such as Senegal, Tanzania, Kenya and Mozambique have national universities that outperform our best in the world league tables. Nigeria has no institution that remotely comes near the Indian Institute of Technology or the much-revered Technicon of Israel. We desperately need to build world-class universities that can compete with the best in the world.
And seventh, we need to forge partnerships that contribute to our growth and development. I lived in the Arab world and I know what they are and in what contempt the hold the African people. We have nothing to learn from those backward societies. We need to build alliances with China, India, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Britain, Europe and the United States. We need friends that will help us develop our infrastructures, enhance our technological capabilities and foster our trade linkages. I'm afraid, there is little or nothing to be learned from the Arabs.
The New Nigeria that we dream of must be a democratic, egalitarian and fair society; a society based on solidarity and justice – a society based on the rule of law and not on the rule of strongmen. It must also be a knowledge-based society in which a pre-eminent role is reserved for science, technology and the men and women of intellect and merit. The history of world development makes it abundantly clear that it is only those countries that invest heavily in science and innovation that can hope to make it into the front ranks of prosperous technological-industrial democracies.
Lest you and I forget: The African people created the first glorious civilisation in the Nile Valley. Imhotep was the greatest polymathic genius of the ancient world, the teacher to Anaximander, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Despite the mountain of lies that have been waged against our people, the truth can never be hidden forever. We did it before, and we will do it again.
The glory of the Lord will soon be revealed. The work of our hands will be blessed and our Africa will assume her place of honour in the great festival of the nations.
The transformation I speak about will not be easy. Indeed, no prophet or seer blessed ever promised us that the road to the New Jerusalem will be paved in gold. The wisdom of nineteenth century French aristocrat and political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville, written in a different era and in a different context, captures the challenges of the present hour. "nothing is more fertile in marvels than the art of being free, but nothing is harder than freedom's apprenticeship...liberty is generally born in stormy weather, growing with difficulty and civil discords, and only when it is already old does one see the blessings it has brought".
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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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