--NIGERIA: AN ANSWER TO A NOT-YET ASKED QUESTION
By Nimi Wariboko
A scholar once stated that myths in ancient Greek were answers for which the questions had been lost. And Greek tragedies asked questions that had no solutions. Nigeria is an answer to a question Nigerians have never asked; a solution that asks questions. The country is neither a myth nor a tragedy; it is a dialogue. Nigeria is an ongoing conversation; nay, more precisely, a clearing of throat before the real question is asked. And there is so long this can go on before the audience begins to walk away.
We have been clearing our collective throat for nearly sixty years, if not for 105 years. At some point we spilled phlegm on one another and this landed us in a brutal civil war. The Khaki men ruled us, swearing they knew how to remove the irritant in our throat that was causing the ceaseless throat-clearing. They were incompetent surgeons and nearly killed us. Then the babaringa group came along and they were concerned with neither question nor answer. They specialize in loudly clearing their throat to cover up the noise of their breaking-and-entry into our national storehouse.
They have ruled for twenty years and Nigeria is still neither a question nor an answer. It was an answer to a British question; a means of consolidating an imperialist's looting of a sizeable block of sub-Saharan Africa. The British colonialists asked themselves one question: "How best do we steal and profitably manage our conquered territory?" For our ancestors this was a nightmare scenario. We as their descendants cannot hope to make progress if we continue on the path of answering the question of the rogues that broke into our parents' homes. It is now left for us to formulate the question to which we think Nigeria in its current or redeemed form should be the answer.
The question is: What territorial grouping as a single concentrated force has the best chance to help the black race recapture its dignity and lead the world in all areas of human endeavors? What singular sovereignty can maximally help Nigerians to become the arrowhead of humanity and at the same time provide for ever-increasing opportunities for human flourishing? Simply put, what set of geographical and affective belongings in a contiguous space is the best hope for Africans? This one question in three iterations is about who we are and what we want to become.
I think the space we currently call Nigeria can easily satisfy the demands to this primal question. Notice that I said "space" and not nation or nationhood. Nigeria as a nation, a specific type of nationhood, will be the answer to the question. That Nigeria is the Nigeria to-come. What makes us a nation is not our geographical expression. It is the spirit, the ethos we craft and endow upon this space. And the relevant spirit is the proper response, if not the answer, to the primal question. Such an ethos would the foundation of the Nigeria to-come.
Permit me to suggest an answer to the question. The Nigerian is a bold, positively aggressive person of adventure, competition, compassion, and freedom. The Nigerian spirit is ever ready to standup for Africans wherever they may be. It does not entertain oppression and enslavement. The Nigerian spirit is not an exploiting spirit. It is oriented toward live and let live. It is oriented toward God and love of all God's children. It strides to live peacefully with its neighbors. The spirit is communal at its core.
It is a missional force for good in the world. Its telos is to lift the whole of the oppressed black race out of poverty, and assure its future prosperity. It thrives in a competitive and democratic settings. It strives toward creating an environment where all Africans and the rest of the world can realize their potentials.
Indeed, it is an entrepreneurial spirit with a special outlook on strategy. The usual Nigerian businesspersons are apparently not under the sway of strategic model that argues for maintaining strategic fit, downsizing ambitions and goals to match resources, finding a fit between resources and opportunities pursued. Their concern is that of leveraging and stretching existing resources to attain seemingly unreachable goals.
The above description of the Nigerian spirit is both observational and visionary—and for Nigeria and Nigeria to-come. The spirit is still emerging; confronted, contested, and delayed by the present culture of corruption, lawlessness, impunity, and ethnicity. These obstacles are the death throes of an old ethic that has held the country down for too long; but it would eventually fade away. These obstacles have conspired to keep the country away from its destiny of leading the black race to economic liberation, technological empowerment, and self-defending military prowess. The hope is that the true Nigerian spirit that is emerging is katechonic; that is, to say it would restrain lawlessness. This it would accomplish by pulling and pushing the current energies spent on breaking laws toward breaking technological and developmental barriers to dignify black folks.
The Nigerian spirit celebrates human dignity, sincere respect for all human beings irrespective of their socioeconomic status. What do you think is responsible for the ubiquitous, "Do you know who I am?" or "Don't you know me?" It is a cry for basic respect in an environment where people constantly suffer humiliation. The trauma of bad governance and national failure have robbed almost every citizen of his or her basic dignity, and the ubiquitous boast is a heart-felt cry for the restoration of lost dignity. It is a desire for human dignity that is currently misdirected. The emerging spirit would put this desire into good use.
Nigerians are very critical of their country. No person in the world is more willing to point out the faults of Nigeria than Nigerian themselves. Their harsh criticism of their country is not self-hatred, but the display of tough love for a space and its people that they admire dearly. Their severe criticism of themselves is an indication of their creative dissatisfaction with themselves. The culture of creative dissatisfaction, abundant desire for education, curiosity for knowledge, and inclination toward inventiveness is at the core of this spirit.
In sum, the Nigerian spirit is one of excellence. Here excellence means the striving for the creative realization of human potentialities as an endless movement toward human flourishing. This movement never ends; hence Nigeria will always be an ongoing dialogue for good reasons.
Wariboko is the Walter G. Muelder Professor of Social Ethics at Boston University, USA
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