By Pat Utomi
Permit me to begin with words of appreciation to the organizers. Thank you for working on keeping Tony alive in this way. I know he will be smiling from up there. It sure is providential that I would become the first person to pursue this undertaking. I appreciate the privilege.
In this country through which clearly God purposed to redeem the dignity of the black man but somehow lies prostrate a more honest title for this lecture would be: An Elite that Lost Its Humanity And shot itself in the foot.
In Nigeria we love talkfests. Nothing wrong with that. Jurgen Habermas, the philosopher of the public sphere, would love that and celebrate it as the meeting point of Democracy and Modernity, if only they were about rational public conversation to boost a marketplace of ideas for the advance of the common good. That does not seem to be the outcome of our gatherings to talk. I have certainly contributed more than my fair share at those lectures, symposia, and workshops, as a so called public intellectual.
The problem is that most people see participating in these as part of the theatre that public life has become. Few. Exceptionally few, see them as places for chieseling out consensus by which we erect a future that we live everyday to bring about that tomorrow which is desirable.
My thesis is that our present crisis, this chaos euphemistically dubbed insecurity, that terrifies the majority not temporarily shielded by the apparatus of state power , for being in office, was long foretold. I can simply go back 40 years and draw from my own speeches and show where I precisely predicted this day, declare myself a prophet, and take my seat.
But what is the point of that. Prophecy is far from my purpose. But truth has been so mocked in today’s Nigeria you sometimes wonder the point of its pursuit except as academic exercise for the benefit of curious people elsewhere.
So I point to the predicted path to what Robert Kaplan called the Coming Anarchy to illustrate leadership failure, elite collapse and our individual responsibility in this our seeming inability to live the mission of this generation to Africa and the Blackman, as Franz Fanon would say.
Fanon reminded it was the duty of every generation to come out of that relative obscurity and find its mission. Our mission as a generation was clearly cut out for us. US President John F Kennedy told Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa so. And as undergraduates we took it as self evident. But when we gather to do upmarket yabis, which we call lectures, we think the problems belong to those people we have come point to as the problem.
The problem is not in them., I can assure you. The problem can be found in the mirror. The problem is us.
With noxious narcissm, failure to educate ourselves well on what constitutes a path to desired future, an elite evidently unworthy of the treasure it was gifted, unwittingly became a wrecking crew using ethnicity, religion and contention for scarce resources to leave the people in bondage and on the road to serfdom.
Leo Tolstoy famously wrote that ‘If you feel pain. You are alive. But if you feel the pain of others you are human’ For me the trouble with Nigeria is of an elite that lost the sensors to feel the pain of others. This is an elite that lost its humanity. How else would deaths of people, Moslems, Christians, Tradional religion adherents or Buddhist, not make you lose sleep. But the Nigerian story may suggest you cannot go far in politics if you are not numb to being sensitive to the dignity of the human person. To be with it in the that arena is to worship money and have little regard for truth or life.
In normal places the purpose of public life is advance of the dignity of the human person.
With this as preamble let me now provide structure to this talk.
I will begin with a short tribute to Tony Uranta and the impact of his stewardship. Then I will speak to human differences, or shared nature that triggers human solidarity, and identity politics pointing to phenomenological linkages in group behavior, before focusing on some particular initiatives Tony Uranta and I worked on together.
Through the years I was away for graduate studies Tony toughened himmself for what would be a demanding mission in search for social justice in Nigeria. More meaningful for me is that most of those years he had severe health challenges. You ca imagine how sacrificial those days of advocacy and protests had to have been. I am persuaded that the pain of the conditions may have multipled the graces to Tony and had a redemptive value for the causes we pursued.
They include the Niger Delta struggles for justice and conferences on the National Question. I will speak to those and close with a little note to Heaven, a conversation with Tony.
So let me begin.
MEETING TONY
I met Tony in 1977. I met his Jacket before I met him. That year the NYSC sent me to The Newbreed Organization for my primary assignment. I was naturally assigned to the Editorial Department and shown to a desk I was to work from for the year. Adjoining to it was a desk matched with a chair adorned with a Jacket. During first week the cartoonist who was trying to get something interpreted would saunter into the room look at the Jacket and say oh, looks like he just stepped out, and go off. It took a week for me to meet the man represented by the jacket. At first meeting it was clear we had plenty in common. The main difference was that I was under the influence, not of alcohol, but of a set of ideas and a certain man.
Both Tony and I were Surulere boys. He went off to UI and I wanted to avoid the University with the plan to go to flying school and become commercial pilot.
I somehow reached a deal with my father to spend a year or two in the University to mature a little and then go off to flying school. The deal unraveled after I made it into UNN.
This was just after the civil war and UNN was receiving charity of books and journals, from around the world but we sat on blocks in the class rooms and the Libraries full of books were shut because the departments could not afford to hire Librarians. My Head of Department suggested students volunteer and organize themselves to keep the Library open for their own use. But the students were too selfish to volunteer.
Something from my days as a Nine year old Altar Boy at Our Lady of Fatima in Gusau when John F Kennedy was President of the United States kicked in. The American Catholic Priests of the Dominican Order who ran that parish bred us on a doctrine of service and the JFK mystique of Camelot. After accusing colleagues of not even being able to give service in their own interest I went to the HOD and volunteered to keep the Library open at my convenience.
I was promptly handed the key of the Library. That others may use the Library I spent a lot of time there. With nothing else to do while there I began to read the books and journals there. That moved me from a desire to go to Flying School to a determination to go to Graduate school. Reading voraciously on the offerings I discovered Stephen R Covey and leadership and writings on a New International Economic Order These would be the windows to my later academic interests and the values idealism Tony first found curious.
When I met Tony we knew we both wanted to change the world but he kind of thought those books I was reading made me take matters too seriously. All my talk about values and principle centered choice made him worry about me.
The day Youth Corps ended I left for graduate school and would not see Tony for another decade
Forces of Division and Shrinking Prospects of Human Progress
We can go back to the Berlin conference for the partition of Africa and blame Europe for the Irredentist movements that define post colonial Africa and blame Colonial Powers for bringing together diverse people into sovereign new countries but how do explain that two generations after Independence these countries are far more dysfunctional regarding ethnic and religious discontent than at independence. In Nigeria the current state of insecurity is just one manifestation. Policy making has been impacted in ways that on the development lane we are way behind our one time peers in Asia.
In secondary schoool I had a fried who was son of the legendary politician Chief HO Davies. HO and Zik were friends who belonged to two different Political Parties, Action Group and NCNC.
During the day they would go campaigning for their different parties in hot contention and in the evening one would drive up and pick the other for Tennis and drinks.
Is that likely today?
The late Alhaji Maitama Sule, on more than one occasion, told me of how as a young minister he entered parliament and took his seat. He was called up by Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa who rebuked him for not offering greetings to the opposition leader Chief Obafemi Awolowo. He said he had to go and prostrate to Chief Awolowo before resuming his position. Compare that to young men insulting their father’s seniors and superiors on X for no reason except the other name sounds like it is of another ethnic group. How did we get from there to here?
When the elections of June 12 1993 were annulled I took a front row in organizing the resistance as did Atedo Peterside whose desk was on the other side of Tony Uranta at the time I first met Tony’s jacket. By the way Atedo who then just finished Youth Corps and was coming in part time at Newbreed was paired with me to work on the Business magazine of the Newbreed group , The President. This is how my interview with Otunba’s Subomi Balogun was on the cover of the maiden edition of the President which Atedo was largely responsible for which appeared after I had left the country.
It did not cross my mind in 1993 that Chief MKO Abiola was Yoruba and I Igbo. In fact I voted for Abiola even though the person who was VP candidate to Bashir Tofa, was someone dear to me. I actually was at his 94 birthday a few months ago in the Washington DC area. Seldom do I journey into the US capital without seeing Dr Sylvester Ugoh.My choices were simple matters of principles.
Sadly you will find much of today’s divisions come from politicians weaponizing differences and deepening cleavages so they can pull the wool of emotions over reason to get votes they should not.
What makes it so difficult for these politicians to see that these demonizations of others inevitably make consensus difficult. This consensus being the heartbeat of democracy it should be obvious their conduct erodes the prospects of democracy. Is this a case of pennywise pound foolish or apres moi le deluge – after me disaster.
Whatever it is, the poltical class and the complicit middle I described in the book : Why Not, that have to take the blame.
Our present nightmare were long foretold but our poltics instead of bridging divides seem to have continued to spread hate among people who ordinarily live in peace with one another.
In 2000 I began to draw attention to Robert Kaplan’s book; the Coming Anarchy. I even initiated a club of friends we called Nigerians United to Resist Anarchy(NUTRA). Our goal was to spread knowledge on these matters. We sent copies of these books to the DG DSS and NSA.
General Aliyu Gusau assured me he even sent a copy to former President Ibrahim Babangida.
The book points to emerging cleavages from religion, ethnicity and spatial contestations made easy by infrastructure deficit, like poor power supply, cause a reign of darkness that make policing problematic such that that West Africa could descend into anarchy.
Given his cogent analysis in the earlier book, Balkan Ghosts, and the Balkans almost ‘prophetically’ descending into war with the demise of Josef Broz Tito, as he predicted, it would be expected of thinking politicians, to act to avert looming disaster. Still leadership issues have allowed us to drift in the wilderness. Very certainly leadership failure prevented overcoming these problems and it festered till we got here. If you want a control model to compare and contrast with Malaysia from when Mahathir Mohammed was expelled from UMNO till vision 2020. Recall particularly the pissing out analogy.( The mantra deployed by Mahathir when he returned to the party, the United Malay National Organization, and became PM that it is better for everyone to be inside the house pissing out than for some to be outside the house pissing in. This LBJ mantra was adopted to build the inclusion that propelled Malaysia forward)
Leadership and disaster foretold
To be foe-warned is to be forearmed. Long before the 16th century Spanish playwright who wrote Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes, made this saying popular, thinking people knew the path to victory was half traveled if you had forewarning. So what happened to Nigeria on this matter in spite of all the work done by people like Tony Uranta and myself to sound the alarm. Let me draw from three streams of effort to understand human behavior to set the stage.
The ancient Greeks saw three categories of people in society. At the base are people who think only of themselves. Those they called idiots. Above them were those who think of others but only those others connected by a parochial base like blood or tongue or faith. These were tribesmen. Joshua Greene who directs work at the Centre for Moral Cognition set up at Harvard to bring together work in several disciplines like Neuroscience, Psychology and Philosophy to explain human behaviour in his book Moral Tribes suggest that tribesmen typically see all outside the tribe as enemies to be vanquished. Does this sound like a country we know?
At the top of the hierarchy were citizens. These people see the universal dignity of the human person and will feel diminished by the death of another human.
So would you consider the average Nigerian politician a citizen. If the country is not run by citizens how will they treat advance information on threat to fellow compatriots in a way it averts the danger foretold?
Who are these decision makers that saw the red sign at seavand was signaling to the source to move out of the way because a ship of the Navy of the giant of Africa was steaming up. With more swag the captain kept scolding the ‘approaching’ danger signal until collision was inevitable and signal source bellowed ‘this is the Light House. Change course or crash’. That ship was the Nigerian elite split by the spoils of Oil and became too drunk to see the Light house like the US Navy Captain’s similar analogy in Covey.
The coming of Oil resulted in a Rentier state. Many feel entitled for doing little and the worst of them seem to have chosen politics as path to further rent. Thinking, unfortunately, is not their greatest attribute.It should have been signal that Socrates worst fears for Democracy were ahead of us and that we could end up in a Kakistocracy with no regard for the character of those who seek power.
Elders could have acted to put safeguards in place but a hear no evil speak no truth laissez faire had come upon us with the culture of money talks.
We ignored that the stupid can dominate the earth unchecked. Italian Economic Historian at UC Berkeley in the 1970s, Carlo Cipolla, found that history has been dominated by kinds of people not given to thinking. His book, the basic laws of Human Stupidity became a bestseller. He shows how stupid people, those who make irrational decisions that go against common sense and even harm themselves in the long run, tend to be more dominant than we realize.
Cipolla offers a typology of man in society, in four qadrants. The helpless, the intelligent, the bandits and the stupid. The stupid are those who do not rigorously question things even if they hold PhDs and can cheer on harm to others even if they derive no benefit from the harm to those being harmed and may even later suffer loss from that action.
When such stupid people have power and influence society is in danger.
Germany experienced it with the Nazis and th Holocaust. With their great minds they came to hate the Jews for no sensible reason until a World war came to be fought and 6 million Jews were incinerated in Concentration Camps.
When they are stupid and tribesmen on the Greek hierarchy the danger balloons. God forbid they should have big egos.
Nice book by Ryan Holiday is titled Ego is the enemy. Many problems that breed animosity that result in insecurity could long have been resolved but for the egos of a few. Again, thanks to the time as volunteer student Librarian at UNN I learnt the importance of managing the ego . As I worked on personal effectiveness habits from UNN using Covey as guide I found purpose and clarity with purpose as important in managing the ego.
I particularly mention this because of Wale Okuniyi who seems never to understand how I yield to some other after we have put our lives on the line and they are convinced I am the best of the offering. Veteran Che, as Wale is nicknamed, is a good man who loves Nigeria and cares about justice and thinks his leader is the man people trust to do it. The main issue for me is what is best for the common good bearing in mind that politics is the art of the possible.
If we can achieve that or equivalent without my getting some title then we have done well I tell Wale. It puzzles him but it was something Tony understood and part of the reason he wanted me to lead most charges for social justice he put together.
Let me speak to the Niger Delta and constitutional reform struggles. To be quite frank I approached the issues of underdevelopment of the Niger Delta from a broad academic perspective until Tony initiated particular programmes and dragged the meetings to my house or office, announcing me as leader on many occasions before letting me know. I liked his heart and his head, and matters of social justice were dear to my soul. Once we had this summit in Warri to advance the amnesty cause. A big bomb blast went off. Then the second one.
People began to run helter skelter. I said to Tony.‘Ibi like our people wan kill us’ . No no Tony replied ‘them no say we dey hia’ Then another went off more close by and I said to Uduaghan, the state Governor ‘wey Adams’ referring to the Edo Governor. I don run. I go don nearly reach Bini by now. We laughed and the conference resumed. At the peak of the Delta struggle the core group met at my home every Sunday. But we missed the chance to make amnesty transformational for the region as I had mapped out because as soon as the Amnesty programme was agree it became a rent pipeline. We were thought of as foolish for not trying to make our own money from what we risked our lives to make happen.
As soon as the Niger Delta Amnesty programme was in place and things calmed down Tony’s energies shifted to Federalism, restructuring and constitution review. One morning I saw in the media that I would be chairman of a conference of nationality leaders. As it turned out it meant managing the egos of Prof Ben Nwabueze and Chief EK Clark at the Sheraton Hotel. That torturous work led to the Jonathan constitutional conference. We were so close but politics prevented enacting a done deal. And the people continue to pay the price. More uncertainty and insecurity and the Quo Vadis question continues.
Does hate rule us
When I see what people say in social media I still wonder if it is the same country in which I was born in Kaduna, baptized in Jos, started school in Kano after infant days in Maiduguri, then had the bulk of primary education in Gusau before Onitsha and Ibadan for secondary schooling and Nsukka for University.
It is clear that many politicians have manipulated stupidity to spread hate in pursuit of worthless things like corrupt gain and power that devalue the common patrimony of which current insecurity is a part.
Not knowing the fears of our diverse social constituents well also makes for understandable misgivings. When I talk to young people on these matters is return hate with love and more love. Young people cannot seem to understand that. I suspect Indians first felt that way about non-violent resistance when Ghandi started out.
I have lately suggested pooling the non-stupid from all sides of divides into Oases of sanity and the shrinking of the public sector in favor of a private sector dominated social structure as a better way forward.
But there have been other social shock absorber models.
The Kaduna Mafia was a big myth given form in consciousness probably by the writing of Nduka Onum in the Punch back in the 1970s. In reality they were a group of friends in Kaduna who had influential friends in Lagos. When national issues traveled south they would talk about it and talk with their friends in Lagos. I talked with many of the Lagos group when I was researching my PhD thesis in 1981.
That informal pressure valve has been lost to today’s hate mongering. A few weeks before he died,Alhaji Ahmed Joda who could be considered part of that mafia called me. By coincidence he was on the way to a Fulani elders meeting when we spoke.
He said many southerners do not understand why talk of breakup frightens northerners . He said it is easy to see a Yoruba nation, an Igbo nation and even an Ijaw nation but no more than five northern states have anything resembling a contiguous population group. I said to him northern elite have not shown leadership in the way they have managed that. He agreed.
Now we do not have enough of such thinking people and the stupid lead the charge. We have a duty to find new Ahmed Jodas, more Ayo Adebanjo’s, Ziks and more Okogbule Wonodis and Paul Unongos.
Why are we not more integrated despite more ethnic intermarriages. Stupid politicians.They reopen all kinds of old wounds as they seek to corner power, not to serve but for state capture.
This present Oba of Lagos once asked me to bring my whole family to visit the palace. After a tour of the palace he told the children to consider themselves Lagosians and marry Lagosians. He told the family the story of the Lagos monarchy and as my children were animated by it all and treasured the gifts they each received. I found it quite uplifting and wondered how such could be institutionalized. One election later such thought seems buried.
I am often amused by effort at determining authenticity in identity politics. Take the Obosi man who says to the Igbuso man : you are from Delta and not bona fide Igbo. But Igbuso,( Igbo bi na Uzo ) people have come so recently from Isu Njaba and merged with others from Nrii they met at current location near Asaba. But some in Obisi just came down the Niger from Igala. So who is more authentic?
Better question is : should any of that matter? The ambitious Obosi man that wants to eliminate that favoured Igbuzo man will push the narrative till it becomes hate speech so that he can prevent Ibusa people from leaving in peace with Obosi people. Ask the New Yorker where his neighbor comes from? He is likely to think something is wrong with you.
A new perspective on all these came to me while visiting Thailand last year or the year before as I tend frequently to go to South East Asia to keep up with my economic development work. The local news was reporting on the Prime Ministers of Singapore and Malaysia opening their annual retreat. ANNUAL RETREAT. I had missed when that started.
My mind flashed back to 1965 video of Lee Kwan Yew bringing out his handkerchief to wipe tears as Malaysia divorced Singapore because Malay politicians were worried about the brilliant Chinese leader from Singapore called Lee.He wept because loved being a Malaysian compared to Singapore with no resources and little prospects. Three decades later Singapore had built for its people one of the highest standards of living in human history. Malaysia had to try to follow along with neighbors like Thailand. The flying Geese phenomenon that pulled the region out of poverty was under way. All more successful and less poor together they are partners coordinating policy. Who knows if that is what Nigeria needs. If we break into six and discover ourselves we may begin to desire a union again.
If people hate each other that much might this be a model for Nigeria.
I know I will cry even more than Lee did. But if that will bring peace and progress…
I am persuaded that outing the demons who play the consciousness of the stupid will help us restore sanity. Nazi Getmany saw six million Jews exterminated while highly educated Germans who could easily have seen the consequence rationalized evil. They were simply stupid. You do not argue with the stupid because they suspend thinking with emotion as fuel. Back then a Lutheran thelogian who spoke and was executed by Hitler pointed to the moral dimension in the tragedy. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that you can argue with evil but not with the stupid.
We will have to find ways of freeing the stupid and engaging the evil ones.
Back to Tony
Bro., work dey and my retirement dey around the corner. When I imagine the places we have been, the experiences of 50 years of pursuing Justice, and struggling to open the path to peace and progress for all I shake my head. Bro, we try. But to talk true, we fail. That country of promise that drove the swag get as Ibi. We lost. The ego blinded stupid tribesmen won. We can not even make the area safe enough to the poor man to go into the backyard and farm as we loot their commonwealth for our excesses. Is it that I am more stupid than them that I cannot see what they see or is it that they are so badly brought up they cannot see the coming damage to public order of what they do.
Our friend Femi Ojudu is writing more. His pieces show deep insiights. One recent one showcased the buying and selling of court judgments. In 1977 you and I used to be sure the judges will checkmate the soldiers. Now there is a second market for judgment. Okrika. Chai. Justice in the dustbin.
The one that beats me is how the sense of shame has evaporated in the land. You will be sad to hear some of our old friends talk.
You recall how we used to say back in 1970s that some things could not possibly happen here because we were not a Banana republic. Trust me worse now happens here. I wonder how some Orikis will sound in the ears of our ancestors.
God dey sha.
Aluta
Ol boy just beg that Bossman Baba Gode wey dey your side. In him justice and mercy embrace but beg am make i remember merci.
By the way, just in case you run into Chris Okolie up there let him know we kept the faith.
I hail The Patito
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen I thank you .
Professor Utomi made this presentation at the first Tony Uranta Memorial Lecture
