Africa the Ontology of Failed State

7/31/2019 Africa the Ontology of Failed State

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Africa: The Ontology of Failed States

By

Franklyne Ogbunwezeh

Never in the history of human reality, was an ode ever commissioned to celebrate failure. This

flows from a conventional metaphysic. In the halls of reason, only perversity strives to roll out

the drums, in honour of failure. Eulogising failure is not an employment proper to the orchestra

of optimism. Failure gets a burial; never a funeral. Burial is for realities doomed to the isle of the

forgotten. What we want to forget, we bury. But funeral celebrates a life, to immortalize a

memory. Man naturally hastens to forget failure and its bitter pills. But he glories in success. It is

normal. He is primed that way by default. Only a perverse appreciation of existence, celebrates

failure amidst pomp and pageantry. That is what we see, at least on superficial level. But

underneath our pretences lies an insurmountable paradox; namely: that success is predicated

always on deeper appreciation of failed attempts, and its festival of lessons.

An appraisal of failure reveals its peculiar ability of spawning a chain reaction, which forcefully

compels its cognizance. It shocks the mind back to a rethink of its shallow assumptions, in a way

that success cannot. The failure of one construct can have such concentric effect for all other

endeavors in its environment, as to forcefully warrant its imprisonment of our attention. In this

situation, failure then rises to be appraised; in order to serve as a critique of the present, and a

launching pad for future success. Here, then, failure becomes a catalyst to success. It is only inthis light that we look backwards on the battlefields of African history, littered with the fractured

and fragmented pieces of African dreams. We are occupied in this piece, with the appreciation of

this history of our failures, to explore the lessons that are imperative if we are ever to escape this

present predicament, and bequeath a future to our posterity.

The African continent is littered with failed states. Most of these states are economic backwaters,

social apologies and political ruins. This landscape runs from the Casablanca to the Cape Town

and from The Horn of Africa in the East to the Island of No Return in the West Atlantic. Most of

these states true to type were the creatures of imperial convenience. To that end, they were meantto serve a purpose after which their ontological legitimacy or raison d' etre would then expire. At

this expiration; the states, naturally not designed for self-propulsion; were condemned to tether

on the brink, and finally implode upon the inglorious weight of their inherent contradictions.

Colonialism designed and inspired the problems. But the decadence was then driven along by a

horde of native pirates; trained in the fine art of piracy. These set of political actors were rogues

personalities, weaned on selfishness. They were brilliant students of kleptocracy and political


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perversity. In about four decades they completely outclassed colonial perfidy and bested them in

thievery. They did an inglorious job of mismanaging Africa, so much so that she is today the

laughing stock of the world.

1. In the beginning there were tribes

Before the advent of colonialism, Africa was a large mass of land, populated by quasi-isolated

tribal pockets, and ethnic nationalities. These constructs interacted with each other through trade,

intermarriage, and even wars. There were no states so to say. There were villages, kingdoms,

empires and republican democracies. The Ashanti, the Kanem Bornu, The Ethiopian/Abyssinian,

The Egyptian, The Benin, The Yoruba, etc were empires in their own rights. Ndigbo of Southern

Nigeria had already fashioned a functional republican and egalitarian democracy in antiquity,

while ancient Greece slumbered in primitivity.

These social embraces were characterized by singular political and culture centres within their

sphere of influence. This gave rise to common identity, both lingual and cultural. They ran theirsocieties on their own terms, save naturally, when conquered in wars. In spite of this, the cellular

political unit of African life was the tribe. It was so basic, and yet so primordial. It transcends the

clans, composed of families, to embrace a wider collection of clans. This presupposed common

ancestral or cultural ties, dating to time immemorial. Most of these tribes pay allegiance to one

heritage. It was a basis of social bonding. It was the influential factor in the political matrix of

the African tribal community. This could be seen today, in the fact that politics in Africa, despite

its affinities to Eurocentric-Judeochristian vision of modernity, and to modern conceptions of

democracy, still conjugates the tribal verb.

Politicians play the tribal card to advance their interests because they know that it is soprimordial, and remains the major perceptual goggle, through which an African views reality.

Democracy is real, when it patronizes his tribe, and the military junta becomes oppressive, when

his tribe is short-changed. This runs through all African countries, without exception. This is

what many fail to appreciate about the African situation. The tribe is the Summum puncti of his

political consideration. And every idea or ideal is canvassed from the tribal pedestal. To this end,

when the colonialists oscillated from blunder to arrant carelessness, in attempting to coax states

out of these bunches of tribes, they naively failed to address the issue from the tribal angle. Their

metaphysic was exploitation, and not nation building. Whatever achieves that in the short run is

patronized. And whatever runs contrary to it is eschewed.

The colonial mission was never a charity concert designed to benefit Africa. No. It was an

enterprise designed primarily to benefit the colonial power. Africa's benefit was never the

propelling consideration. It comes last on the list. This was why the tribes were yanked together

and conscripted without consultation, into unions they never bargained for; to bear each other

like crosses, after the Whiteman must have had his fill of plundering their land. Little accounts


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for the social restiveness and mutual platonic hatred ravaging many African states today, more

than the resultant hangovers of colonial political play-offs.

Prior to the invasion from the Sea, Islam came on the heels of the external dynamics embodied

by conquests from across the Sahara. Islam had an impact, but cannot challenge comparison,

with the second wave of assault, which came from across the seas. Hence, it merits no attentionin this piece.

2. Then Came the White Man

At the advent of the White man was tsunamic for Africa. Chinua Achebe captured this well:

Things fell apart! Africa and her centre could no longer hold. She became embroiled in a

dynamic, which would change her structure, her culture and her future forever.

The former league of tribes coagulated into pseudo-states, at the instance of colonialism. Strange

bedfellows became fellow citizens over night. Consanguinal relatives find themselves facingeach other as citizens of different countries. The African psyche was ripped apart. The changes

were too radical, as his culture was demonized and labelled as inferior. He had to forfeit his

language in so many cases. He was equated to dogs, when he seeks admittance into drinking

parlours because dogs are not admitted. There arose a miseducation on the socio-cultural level,

which as was well articulated by Chinweizu, deformed the collective African psyche from which

it is yet to recover.

To carve up Africa, drawing boards were built in 1885 Berlin. Africa was scrambled up among

the occupying powers. The aim was to ensure each power an unimpeded and unmonitored

freedom to loot as much as they could in their area of influence

The Belgian-Congo became an abattoir, where King Leopold's polymorphous perversity, sought

and obtained unrestrained ventilation. For the sake of rubber, Leopold's men sacked villages,

decimated cultures, and harvested a pyramid of chopped hands, in an orgy of brutality,

unmatched even by Hitler's men. Congo bled, and haemorrhaged her resources into Belgian

coffers. The Germans tried the annihilation tactics on the Herero of Namibia. British piratical

treachery blossomed in Nigeria and her other territories. All in Europe, Africa bled, so that

Europe could have a river of wealth flowing through her.

To effectively continue this when their various suns must have set, they created states; which

were simply neo-colonial dependencies. And to run these states, the mass-produced a semi-

literate, middle-class of yes-men, to complement the paucity of men they have on the ground.

This crop of creatures became the collaborative vehicle of colonial exploitation. Hatred for them,

which was a rampant phenomenon, sometimes took deadly proportions, as was mirrored in

Achebe's Things Fall Apart, where Okonkwo had to kill a court messenger, to vent his anger on

an invading establishment that has despoiled the land of his fathers, and insulted his culture.


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Almost all the Modern states in Africa today were built on political ontologies, oozing from this

engineered political metaphysic. The people never dialogued their differences as a basis for

federating. They never talked to each other about a political union. They woke up one morning,

and saw themselves conscripted into geopolitical constructs they neither chose nor bargained for.

For the natives, it was a bazaar of unfunny jokes, and for the colonial officers; a duty for country

and queen.

African states were created to facilitate and ease the efficiency of rapid colonial exploitation.

That was their raison d'etre. They were never designed to be independent, or cease being a source

of cheap raw materials, and slave labour for colonial industries. They were equally meant to be a

cheap market to cushion the inflationary effects of mechanised mass production. The colony was

a laboratory of caprice. Every socio-economic, geopolitical or cultural hypothesis was subjected

to clinical trials on the hapless colonies. This accounts for the fact, that every discredited socio-

political, economic or eugenic theory was once tried out in Africa.

3. The Metaphysic of a Failed State

Every failed social edifice translates into a jungle. The core operative principle across its

embrace perfectly mimics that native to the forest of unreason. For us to appreciate the dangers

posed by a failed social construct, we must apprise ourselves of the transactions obtainable in the

markets of a jungle.

A jungle is an amorphous piece of territory governed by anarchy. In this arena, survival is of the

fittest, while the operative principle anchors on the currency of "Might" is "Right". In every

jungle, law and order are alien concepts. The Orwellian principle of "some animals, being moreequal than others" abundantly holds sway in this dark world of inchoate randomness. In a jungle,

nothing is predictable. The only constant in this huge stew pot of irreconcilable variables is

lawlessness. Any participant in this concourse of crudity who is able to carve out a territory for

his whims by the agency of raw and naked might, positions himself to intimidate the lesser

mortals within his vicinity, with threats and abundance of fear. Peace here is only a calm pond

with a subterranean current of turbulence and dissensions boiling like volcanic lava underneath.

It is no peace, as the least excuse is utilized to ventilate the suppressed angst of the oppressed

powerless. Stability is absent as anybody who has the power is allowed to prey on those who are

unfortunate to be powerless around him. He is obliged to feed on them without qualms. Violent

death is a norm as fear rules. The only semblance of order is that predicated on a balance ofterror. Every one here by necessity sleeps with one eye open, if not for anything to be conscious

enough as to take flight before the predator floors him or to be a conscious witness to the

onslaught on him; or to be in a position to negotiate an escape from the grip of those who have

the power to do him in. This was the Hobessian state of nature where the fear of violent death

paralysed development, rendered life nasty, brutish and short.


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In the jungle there exists no common weal, public good, or social service. Every animal in this

arrangement strives to survive. Survival is the word. The weak are crushed and eaten out of

existence by the stronger predators. Every one consults the instincts of survival in all

transactional situations. Joy here is of the instinctual order, while Love is fundamentally absent.

Self survival commands procreation, and the offspring commences his own independent struggle

for survival the moment it arrives. In a society that has degenerated into a jungle, all these

features are activated, enabled and are abundantly obtainable. In Nigeria for example, law and

order exists only in the statute books; reminiscent of the jungle. The only law is survival. The

stronger individuals swallow up the weaker ones. The rich get richer by gobbling up what

belongs to all, while the poor are further impoverished into powerlessness. In this kind of social

situation, individuals make their own laws, interpret and implement them according to the

dictates of their caprice. This is a situation where a man for example could get up, equip a private

army drawn from the National Police, and kidnap a democratically elected Governor, in a brazen

contravention of the grundnorms of the country; and yet he is feted by the powers that be. This is

a situation where anyone who dares criticize the President, is framed-up, disgraced and sackedfrom office, without due process; and beaten up by armed robbers in his house. This is a

situation, where an auditor-general would sacked for auditing government accounts and

revealing that unrestrained corruption thrives in the presidency. And this same presidency that

has lost every moral authority to talk about justice empowers a bulldog of an agency to track

down his opponents, both real and imaginary and blacklist them so good, as to sabotage and

compromise their political careers. Some instances later will bring these from the pinnacle of

arid theorizing to the tables of normal discourse.

Man engineered an escape from this primeval broth of unreason, when he hewed society and

developed law and order out of this assured destructive tendencies. Reason and experience taughtman that there needs to be a guarantee for the sustenance of this order. It bid him invent

government as a safe bastion for the sustenance of these ideals. Government to that end arose as

the last line of defence of the society from its primeval tendency to destroy itself. It equally rose

to guarantee rights and responsibilities of all participants. It rose equally to foreclose forever, the

possibility or the ease with which violent death lurks around every social nook and cranny. It

became the bulwark against retrogressive and anti-social forces that seek to overthrow the social

order by the forces of might. That was the raison d'etre of government; the common good of its

subjects.

In a situation, where a government fails to live up to its ontological raison d'etre, thatgovernment has really failed. That government cannot lay claims on its being overwhelmed by

social forces as an excuse for its failure. This is consequent upon the fact, that it remains the

Leviathan, to whom we leased some of our powers and rights; to whom we gave up most of our

privileges, to enable him agglomerate and wield an influence unparalleled or unequalled by any

constituent of the social order. To this end, no excuse is admissible for any failure to act in

defense of the social embrace left in its charge.


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In Nigeria today, the government has lost the reason for its existence. Fear and violent death

lurks on every nook and fissure of our social firmament. Development has gone with the winds.

Hunger, ignorance, poverty and disease are presently ravaging the land, while the government

bulks feebly before it, incapable of arresting its rampaging onslaught on its subjects. Might has

reverted to right; reminiscent of the state of nature and mirroring the first 24 hours of human

social evolution. The society is now a jungle in the middle of a city. The animal tendency in all

of us is now given free reign. The mighty now wreck havoc on the emasculated. The clever now

take flight at the least noise. These were the currencies of survival in an environment of a jungle.

Civilization has finally closed its eyes in exasperation in our milieu. Nothing seems to be

working. We are now abandoned like a rudderless ship in the tempestuous waters of self

destruction. From whence shall our help now come? From heaven? No way, not only will heaven

not come to the aid of those who will never act, but manna can never fall into anybody's mouth.

It may fall on our ground, but the job of gathering it for our food, remains exclusively ours. Will

our help come from OBJ, No. Not minding the fact that he is trying his best against the Aegean

stable that has harboured every kind and species of the Nigerian beast for the last 44 years, theevents of recent times has proved that he underestimated the depth of the accretion of rot that the

system has accumulated in the course of its inglorious history. I used to be a very harsh critic of

the OBJ since after its wholesale butchery of the electoral process in 2003, but I nurse more

sympathy for him than hatred. This guy is though a political misfit is equally surrounded by a

host of unvarnished sycophants who perpetrate a regime of geometric retrogression on the

Nigerian people. I have watched the drama of Nigeria descent into crude barbarity for some time

and my educated conclusion is that OBJ is presiding over a country headed for the rocks. The

gang of Pathologically Depraved Perverts (PDP) that prides itself with being the ruling party is

one of the most unfortunate pieces of feaces ever to be allowed space in the Nigeria political

equation. NPN pales into insignificance as misguided antics of spoilt kids in comparison withthis horde of buccaneers ruling Nigeria today. Ekwueme saw this early enough when he

characterized 2003 presidential primaries a charade. Nigerians never believed him. They

dismissed his observation as the normal refugee of losers. The events of today have proved him

right beyond imagination. PDP has nothing to offer Nigeria except bad leadership at all levels.

None of the PDP governors is performing creditably. One friend of mine told me that No PDP

governor or local government chairman could rise up in their constituencies and swear that he

has not stolen a kobo off the people's treasury without being stoned to death. I doubted him

initially until I conducted a random correspondence poll across Nigeria. I realised to my chagrin

that all these self acclaimed leaders of the people lost the confidence of the people long before

2003. Today, they make no pretences anymore about that.

Without meaning to sound sadistic, I am really happy about the recent upsurge in the attack on

men of privilege in Nigeria. My happiness does not stem from my hatred or disdain for

privileged people. It does not stem from a negative feeling for some of the victims, who may

have been beautiful individuals. My joy stems from the fact that at least it has recast the light and

refocused government's attention on what has been the lot and plight of the underprivileged for


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so long in the Nigeria society of today. These attacks have essayed to remove the veil from the

eye of the government on what has been the progressive degeneration of the security situation in

Nigeria today. The ordinary Nigerians have for long been cheap fodder for armed bandits all

over Nigeria. Thousands of ordinary Nigerians have been felled by armed robbers' bullets on the

highways and in their bedrooms, without the government considering it a security situation

worthy of its attention. The major highways in Nigeria have been translated into paradise for

armed robbers, with many families losing their bread winners unsung, courtesy of these

instruments of the evil. The Nigerian government never reacted to it. Today, they have come for

the privileged, and the privileged afraid of losing the greatest privilege of all, are now woken to a

realisation that Nigeria has been a security backwater all these while.

At a time, the citizens resorted to caging themselves in their homes with iron bars and burglary

proofs, without the government seeing that as a sign of its failure. In this time too, the police

always asked citizens who called their emergency numbers for help, to either write down the

names of the armed robbers holding them hostage, or to send vehicles to pick up the police, to

come and rescue them from robbers that have ordered them to lie faced down in their bedrooms.

The government posed a nelson's eye to all these, gradually emboldening and consolidating the

audacity of armed bandits. I will resist the temptation to say that PDP armed these robbers that

are today preying on Nigerians. Other conclusions to the obverse fall flatly on their faces when

one contemplates the amount of arms and ammunition that were wielded by PDP thugs in

intimidating opponents during the last elections. In some states controlled by PDP, the

incumbents with the aid of the police, or under their watchful nostrils armed rival university cults

to butcher the opposition who dared threaten their second term bids. OBJ's success in some of

these states was consequent on the power flowing from the barrel of these guns, wielded by

cultists. These guns distributed during the elections were never recalled. Being in power now,there was no need anymore for these thugs; thus rendering them unemployed and into the job

markets looking for jobs that the government has failed to create. They are now on the loose as

guns for hire. They double both as hired assassins and armed robbers, harassing innocent

Nigerians, plundering their property, raping, pillaging and decimating the lives of innocent

Nigerians.

The seeds of the robberies and assassinations we are witnessing today were sown by the

politicians, who embezzled the funds that should have been invested in education and job

creation, and used them in buying arms and equipping private army of thugs to do their bidding

and shore up their unpopular power base. It was sown the day the politicians short-changed thepolice force, under-funding the force and perpetuating mediocrity in its leadership. It was sown

the day the fabric of our social morality was ripped asunder and debauched by successive

Nigerian governments.

The present government of Olusegun Obasanjo, in the traditions of other Machiavellians before

him, commissioned a Human Rights Violations Investigations Commission, (HRVIC) headed by


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one of the most eminent Nigerian jurists, Justice Chukwudifu Oputa. This commission invited all

those accused of violating the rights of Nigerians since 1966, till 1999. Most of the big fishes

like Ibrahim Babangida, Mohammadu Buhari, who are accused of serious capital crimes, never

entered an appearance nor caused same to be entered on their behalf. Nothing happened to them.

No bench warrant was issued for their arrest due to the fact, that some politics was considered.

Only the small fries appeared to entertain Nigerians who sit by their television sets, every

evening to watch the soap opera that was the commission's proceedings. At the end of the day,

the government that promised to implement the recommendations of the commission abandoned

that pledge to the disappointment of Nigerians. The government could not release the

commission's report nor issue a white paper on it. This is a government that cannot keep its

word. The report is presently gathering dust in some outback office in Abuja some years after its

submission.

The government's reaction was a Machiavellian somersault to keep the people busy and lead

them away from the strangulating socio-economic failures of its visionless policies. That was notall. The same government established an Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFFC),

headed by a lawyer-turned police-man, Mr Nuhu Ribadu, to help tackle the issue of corruption,

which has eaten away the Nigerian socio-economic and political fabric. In spite of few stellar

performances, the commission is doing an excellent job of hounding the small fries and other

political opponents of President Obasanjo; reminiscent of the Napoleon dogs of the Orwellian

Animal Farm. This commission has brought the alleged Advanced fee Fraudsters of the

Alajemba conglomerate to book, as they are presently facing the law. But Nigerians are yet to

see Ibrahim Babangida and the Abacha Matriarch and dynasty, who are the greatest public

thieves ever to rule Nigeria, behind bars. These execrable pieces of social calamity are still

cuddling their ill-gotten wealth in peace and quiet. The commission looks so toothless in thisregard, as daily occurrences has continued to show. Nigerians are still waiting for the

commission to drag Chris Ubah, Emeka Offor, and a host of other well know rogues to court to

go explain the sources of their unbelievable wealth to Nigerians. Nigerians are still waiting for

the Commission to drag not only Fabian Osuji and Wabara to court for their alleged role in the

50 million naira lobbying of the senate saga, but also, all other ministers like El Rufai, who was

accused of inflating the position as well as the salary scale of a Youth Corps intern in his office

to the tune of 10 million naira. We are still waiting for the commission to investigate the

handling and the sale of Public enterprises under the BPE headed by the Vice President, and El

Rufai respectively. We are still waiting for a governor who claimed to have 76 jeeps, to come tell

Nigerians how he got the money for such a scandalous display of idiocy. Nigerians are still

waiting for Tafa Balogun, one of the most corrupt Police bosses we ever had in Nigeria, who was

disgraced out of office for corruptly enriching himself, to make his appearance in court. All these

examples are to show the kind of selective justice consulted by the Obasanjo administration.

One, a minister who was accused of lobbying senators, to increase the allocation of his ministry

with 50 million naira, was arrested and detained, while a police inspector general who was


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accused of stealing over 4 billion naira, only got retired, and is eating pounded yam in his house.

4. A Perfect Example of a Failed State

Nigeria is principally a coalition of the unwilling. She is simply a coercion of the unwilling; aconscription of federated grievances; a boiling cauldron of mutually-assured platonic hatred,

mutual suspicion, and collective bottled loathing. To this end, nothing positive could ever be

achieved on this platform of potentially explosive unease. No tribe believes in the goodwill of

the other. Every tribe is of the worst opinion of the other. There is no good Igbo man as far as a

Yoruba man is concerned and vice versa, even when that stereotypical generalization falls short

of the laws of logic and thought, which should hold eminence and primacy in any rational

postulation.

On this volatile base was erected a nation, which is most unfortunately expected to succeed.

National success cannot be predicated upon a base of ontological instability. Hence the Nigerian

dream was from conception, compromised and sabotaged to fail. All the attempts at salvaging an

iota of sense from this boiling cauldron of dissensions, have failed woefully to avert the certain

catastrophic disintegration, and disastrous implosion of this hegemonic geopolitical ogre, upon

her inglorious weight.

The colonialists yoked these ideologically parallel nationalities together, to achieve their imperial

designs, predicated only on an avariciously exploitative blueprint. They never intended this

vassal ship to come to an end. When the wind of change rendered the political heat unbearable

for their unwelcome presence, they sought the naturally un-progressive elements, versed in the

fine art of imbecilic serfdom; that would hold cosmetic fort for their vested interests, while they

suck the honey pot clean in a vampyrean plunder of rapacious proportions. In Nigeria, the

Hausa/Fulani North fitted the bill. They schemed out the progressive nationalities that could not

bow subserviently at the altars of oppression, from the matrix of power. The progressives were

arm twisted and decimated into the emasculated role of figure heads. From this enfeebled

position, they were congenitally excluded from the epicentres of reckoning, and hence rendered

politically impotent in offering any atom of resistance to British re-engineered plunder of

Nigeria.

They could not actually challenge the improprieties of a tele-guided nincompoop. Thesuppressed exasperation of an enfeebled opposition went in, to devastate their oppressed

psyches. The West of Nigeria exploded in a furious wave of self-digestive violence. Awolowo

and Akintola battled for supremacy. Lives and dreams had to go up in flames for Akintola or

Awolowo to impress their insular and parochial concepts of authority and supremacy on the

Western region. Nigeria tethered on the brink. Pregnant expectations of federal action oscillated

between puerile consideration and partisan implementation. The West continued to conflagrate.


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glorify the politicians that rendered the Nigerian dream of those days, a fractured fairy tale.

Many passively consult a historical amnesia that betrays buffoonery, while others actively seek

to doctor or revise history, in order to rehabilitate the self-battered images of the tribal gods of

their political pantheon. For instance, there was a movement a few years ago seeking to canonize

Festus Okotie-Eboh, as an innocent victim of blood thirsty Igbo Commissioned officers. But the

facts of history painfully recorded Okotie-Eboh as a finance minister, who was a by-word for

corruption and veniality. Today equally, those seeking to resurrect Obafemi Awolowo as the best

thing not to happen to Nigeria, seem to forget his role in the Western Nigeria Wettie saga, and

the fact that history punctually recorded him as the man who led the introduction of tribalism and

mediocrity into Nigerian politics. Need we talk of Ahmadu Bello, who never wanted Nigerias

independence in the first place, and who saw the whole of Nigeria as a conquered territory, that

must bow to his jihadic farts; or Nnamdi Azikiwe who preferred convenient compromises to hard

choices born of principles, which have been the furniture of immortal and revolutionary changes.

These unfortunately, were the principal players, upon whose shoulders was laid the birth and

emergence of a nation, from an amorphously, conscripted conglomeration of tribes.Ontologically compromised by circumstances surrounding her birth, it could only take men of

great genius, charisma and invincible character, to forge a nation out of a motley band of strange

bedfellows. But these men were great and original. The parts of them that were great were not

original, and the parts of them that were original were not great. The flaws in their individual

characters, was meant to sabotage whatever dreams they claimed to have because the colour of

your dreams must issue from the colour of your eyes.

Few years after independence disillusion arrived. The political class killed our dream. The lacked

any vision for the people. Their politics became a radical politicization of pettiness. Awolowo

stole the Western Nigerian premiership from Zik, as a result of his pettiness. Instead oftranscending that, Zik himself became floored by his pettiness. He scampered back to the East to

kick out Eyo Ita, from a seat he was ably managing. The spiral continued. The politicians having

lost every direction sought to remain relevant. To achieve this, ethnicity was shameless

consulted. Mediocrity and grotesque incompetence was crowned. Corruption exploded.

Patronization and politics by settlement conferred a sorry legitimacy on nepotism. Nigeria

hovered between the Hamletian Question. The chain reaction led to coup and to a counter coup,

and to a civil war. Over One million Igbos were massacred; majority starved to death by a war

policy that violated every canon of warfare. Biafran children were starved into extinction.

Civilians, women and children were bombed and strafed with psychopathic relish and for fun.

And the Igbo man had this etched in his collective memory for eternal remembrance. The warsaw Igbo brilliance enjoy some meteoric rise and dissipation. The RAP, which should have

served as a platform for a scientific revival in Nigeria, was through the consolations of ethnic

envy allowed to desiccate and shrivel out of existence.

Gowon sat upon wealth. He swam atop Nigeria's oil revenue like a drunken sailor would;

frittering them away in an orgy of a national moronic consumption. The future was never


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considered. Nigeria embarked on a spending spree characterized by the purchase of the most un-

needed rejects of foreign industrial powers. We bought the inconsequential and every shade of

non-essentials; even toothpicks and toilet papers from abroad. That was the era of oil money. It

flowed in abundance. Money submerged the boiling dissensions of marginalized Nigerians. But

Gowon achieved nothing save boasting to the whole world that Nigeria's problems were not

making money, but how to spend it. As oil money flowed, the bovine stupidity of Gowon's

governance glowed.

This is simply a summary of infamy. Subsequent governments wrecked Nigeria beyond measure.

Ethnicity was enthroned. Bad leadership mutated and peaked. Military brigands and civilian

thieves held Nigeria to a ransom; creating a cabal of elitist leeches, masquerading as patriots.

Nigeria became a playground of coup plotters.

Gowon was sacked for his dalliance with puerility. That was in 1975. Murtala Mohammed

toppled him and sat on the wheels. The coup cycle continued once more. He perished a year

later; falling to the speaking ends of Dimka's guns. Obasanjo was accidentally thrown up toreplace him. He embarked on progammes that were grandiose in their conception and in their

uselessness. Operation Feed the Nation (O.F.N) succeeded only on television screens and radio

jingles. The funds mapped thereto, was squandered. Some claimed Obasanjo stole it, as the

programme may have been a front for redirecting the funds to another O.F.N=Obasanjo Farms

Nigeria. Then came the Telecommunications saga handled by ITT; an American company that

fits every profile of what John Perkins referred to, as the corporatocracy, which hires hitmen to

destroy Third World economies, and ensnare them into inescapable debt. Fela, Anikulapo Kuti, a

popular Afro-beat musician angered into exasperation, by the rip off of Nigerians in the ITT

contract scam accused General Obasanjo and Moshood Abiola, as International Thieves-

(International Thief Thief), mirroring the acronym of the American company. Festac 77 came.

Nigeria under Obasanjo continued Gowon's idiocy. Nigeria took that singular opportunity to

advertise her wealth to the whole world, though her people lacked the basics of a sound, secure

future bereft of want. After oscillating like a scalar quantity with a lot of magnitude but no

direction, Obasanjo finally handed over to the civilian headed by a Mallam from Sokoto, Alhaji

Shehu Shagari.

Under Shagari, the politicians returned as national leeches that they were. Politics became an

essential arena for disservice to the country. Funds were embezzled. State policy was predicated

not on sound reasoning, but on ethnic considerations or the mood of party stalwarts. Politics

became a festival of impunity where men elect to exist on borrowed intelligence. Nigeria was

slowly but steadily going to hell. Umaru Dikko became the power broker holding Shagari to a

ransom; heading the Presidential Task force on rice, after both the Green Revolution and

Operation Feed the Nation have failed respectively. He presided over the importation and

distribution of rice to the Nigeria people. Instead, NPN, his party was buying and selling

influence with bags of rice and import licenses. Sonny Okonsus lamented the decay in his 1983

music "Which way Nigeria". Prior to that had Achebe articulated his masterpiece "The Trouble


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with Nigeria"-, where he gave a radical vivisection of how leadership constitutes the trouble with

Nigeria; and how the political class are very busy embezzling Nigeria's posterity. They were

treated as alarmists. Their warnings fell on deaf ears. It was a repeat of pre-1966 happenings.

Nigeria waited for implosion. None came until the military struck again on the 31st of

December, 1983.

We must not fail to reiterate that Shagari's government achieved nothing of radical significance

or value to the Nigerian project. That government was visionless in everything save puerility.

She slept while Nigeria was marooned, aground in the sandbanks of omni dimensional

decadence.

Buhari-Idiagbon came claiming a messianic vision, to lead the waters through the Nigerian

socio-economic and political Aegean stable. This government tired no doubt. But paucity of

days, cannot conduce to a historical assessment of the impact of this government. Even though

this era witnessed the reappearance of draconian decrees, and brutality of exuberant soldiers;

some Nigerians today, still relish and remember those meteoric days with nostalgia, rendered

imperative by the congenital indiscipline, rascality, and thievery of succeeding scoundrels.

Ibrahim Babangida was the first scoundrel to succeed them. He sacked Buhari-Idiagbon in coup,

which many have come to see as the triumph of greed and superlative kleptomania. He stole

Nigeria blind, debauched her social structures and wrecked her moral climes. Babangida

presided over the liberalization of official corruption in Nigeria. He ran Nigeria like only a

robber baron would. He bribed those who opposed his Machiavellian manipulative vision, with

offices, money or threats. Opposition to his inordinate craze for power was ruthlessly and

decisively eviscerated. IBB and two of his intelligence chiefs were fingered in the letter-bombmurder of the Nigerian investigative journalist, Mr. Dele Giwa, who was on the trail of a drug-

smuggling story that revolved around Babangida's wife. Babangida manufactured programs and

crises to extend his stay in power. His populist policies were briberies designed to buy off

opposing voices, or bones cast the way of the people so that they keep their eyes off the excesses

of his caprice. When this guy finished dealing with Nigeria, the country was destroyed for good

measure. He annulled an election, in which majority of Nigerians, chose to express their

exasperation with the military. That election, which was purportedly won by Moshood Abiola,

was more of a vote against the military more than it was a vote for Abiola. He wasted over

40Billion naira in an orchestrated transition to civil rule program, which was designed to self

destruct. As Nigeria was again tethered on the precipe, he chose to step aside with his loot, butmoved to secure his ass, by leaving a co-thief, Sanni Abacha around the corridors of power.

One step shy of the target, Abacha was a dog that no amount of training could ever rewrite his

genetic blueprint. He could not keep his eyes off the bone, which was the presidency. Before the

hurriedly established Interim National Government headed by Ernest Shonenkan could settle


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down to business, Abacha, who was in control of the Army, kicked the government out, and

installed himself as the new president of Nigeria.

Abacha was a thief on a mission. His kleptomania was hidden behind dark goggles that belied

his calculated meanness. He outclassed Mobutu both in the ambitious nature of his stealing

project and in the ruthlessness employed thereto. Nigerians sought for hope. None was in sight.He knew that for him to keep the loot he ripped off the Nigerian people, he must be in power

forever. To this end, he embarked on a life-presidency scheme, borrowing a lot from the perverse

dissimulations of Babangida his friend and predecessor. This guy was a kleptocrat, unparalleled

in meanness and scurrility. He only achieved the bastardization of every sane social structure in

Nigeria. The state continued to derail. Agents and agencies of state were used as hammers of

tyrannical wickedness. Abacha's henchmen murdered Kudirat Abiola for daring challenge her

husband's incarceration. Pa Rewane was shot dead in his house for daring oppose Abacha's lewd

excesses.

In Abacha, corrupt power connived with eviscerated and disembowelled public opposition, to

create a tyrant, who terrorized the citizenry, and destroyed their stakes to posterity, through his

dipsomania and crapulent kleptomania. Nigerians scampered in silence. Abacha grew in

impunity. Many Nigerians under these circumstances fed from garbage dumps. Abacha basked in

opulence. Nigerians slept with hunger. Abacha slept with prostitutes. The knell sounded, as he

perspired in debauchery atop imported harlots. And he expired. The professional coup plotter

was floored in a coup from Heaven.

Nigeria accumulated a lot of other socio-political, and economic dirt due to these persistent

bludgeoning. Abacha's dirt kicked Abdulsalami Abubakar up to a position he never bargained for

in his entire life. He was no less a thief. The speed, with which his administration skimmed off

billions of naira off the Nigerian coffers, cannot even challenge comparison with that of Abacha.

His only achievement was the handing over of power amidst international pressure to a civilian

elected government headed by Olusegun Obasanjo, on May 29th, 1999.

Obasanjo came on a second missionary journey. We thought that passing through the shadow of

death would sharpen his vision and goodwill. Well, we are yet to see any of the two. His vision

becomes more parochial as the days go by. His goodwill became non-existence, while honour

was never a watchword of his. He promised Nigerians that there was never to be sacred cows in

his fight against corruption. Today, sacred cows have been cloned everywhere. IBB,

Abdulsalami Abubakar, and those fingered by the Vincent Azie's audit report, became sacred

cows over night. Tony Anenih is yet to account for the roads he purported built with 300billion

naira, in the planet Mars. Under his rule, his party the PDP metamorphosed into what Wole

Soyinka the Nobel laureate described as a nest of killers. Under his tenure insecurity reigned

supreme. A governor of a federating state was kidnapped by the Police in consort with a private

citizen, and yet no-one was prosecuted. The number one law officer in his administration,

Mr.Bola Ige, was murdered in a mafia-like style, while his orderlies have allegedly gone to eat.


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No one was apprehended or arraigned for the murder of this guy. Under him, political

assassination became elevated to odious levels. Marshall Harry, Aminoasari Dikkibo, Engr.

Agom, Jerry Aiyegbeye, Victor Nwankwo all fell victim to assassin bullets. Nobody was ever

caught nor prosecuted for those crimes. The criminals all came from planet Venus. The Nigerian

police kept protecting public enemies like Chris Ubah and Emeka Offor, while the taxpayers are

left to fend for themselves, against the sophisticated fire-power of the armed robbers that prowl

unchallenged.

The economy kept up its anemia. SEEDS and NEEDS or NAPEP and UBE have all failed

woefully to better the lot of the citizenry. All the government does it to adopt the discredited

prescriptions and mantras of the IMF and World Bank that only essays to pay Nigeria's odious

debts, while the citizenry starve for want of necessaries.

That Nigeria is a failed state is evidenced in the fact that no economic or social policy has

essayed to impact positively on the lives of the people. The government keeps finding ways of

laundering its image, or blowing the trumpet of its achievements, while hunger and inexcusable

poverty harass the people daily. Nigeria the 6th largest exporter of crude lacks evidence based on

solid achievements to show for the billions of dollars it has earned from crude oil sales since its

discovery in Nigeria. Over 67% of Nigerians are still illiterate, without a sound educational

policy to attend to that. Unemployment rate is so high as to be immeasurable. Over 70% of

Nigerians are now living below the poverty line. World Bank recently reported that only 1% of

the population hold 80% of the oil wealth. The country has consistently vacillated between the

gold, silver or bronze medals, on the rankings of the most corrupt nation on earth. Her citizens

are leaving the country in droves; seeking greener pastures, which is simply a new form of

comfortable slavery abroad. Power generation has reach an all time low, as the country nowenjoys more electric power outages, than a city in medieval times, ever experienced. Many

Nigerians lack access to basic potable water, which is the signature and staff of life. Primary

health care delivery is so poor as to be epileptic. Hospitals have metamorphosed into mere

consulting clinics, where people go to die. Drugs are unavailable, as government spends more

money in debt services, and funding corrupt and questionable policies, than in funding education

or other social schemes.

5. The Features of a failed State

In "Development as Freedom", Amartya Sen, essayed to situate the absence of democracy as a

major feature of every potentially failed state. To this end, It is a painful observation to make that

democracy exists nowhere in Africa today, despite the hypocritical posturing in Nigeria, Uganda,

Democratic Republic of Congo, etc. It is still the recycling of the same unprogressive forces that

have scuttled Africa. A most recent example saw Eyadema Gnassingbe ruling his country for

decades, without leading them anywhere, save converting every apparatus of state into his

personal estate. He died, only for sycophantic forces to raise his son, to succeed him, as if

democracy is a monarchical relay, where a Prince Charles, despite his lewd canonization of


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adultery, is billed to succeed her mother in ruling over the British expired nostalgia. Faure

Gnassigbe took office to success his incompetent father. Save for international outcry, the

Togolese cabal of lecherous courtiers, would not have backed down.

A state fails, when the government is raped by military kleptocrat or hijacked by democratic

pretenders. Every state en route to failure possesses a castrated followership, congenitallyprogrammed to pose postural unconcern, to their plight. The followership is emasculated into

acquiescence, either through decades of military brutalization or through decades of civilian

treachery. All in all, whatever lulls a people to the sleep of unconcern in relation to their own

affairs, poses a danger for democratic survival in that clime. And any state where vigilance goes

to sleep, power creeps to corrupt is holders absolutely. And once that happens, dictatorship and

tyranny reigns, to gorge itself fat on the people, instead of catering for the people.

Another feature of a failed state in the most proximate potency is the presence of internal

conflict, based on the consultation of the primordial forces. These primordial forces include the

non-separation of religion and secular affairs and the elevation of nepotistic affinities over and

above merit. This destroys merit and excellence; positioning the state to be hijacked by

mediocrity and opportunism.

failed state basks in full, unutilized potential wealth, she wallows in actual poverty. Corruption

attends the lack, as the state feeds a growing army of unemployed elite, who seek political

crumbs instead of meaningful preoccupations.

In every failed state, the government is dysfunctional unto meaningless to the citizenry, as a

result of its inexcusable failure in its statutory functions. In this arena, the citizens provide

themselves with the social services, and public utilities, that are by law, the province of thegovernment. The citizens provide themselves with electric power, by buying and operating

power generators in their private homes, with all the attendant health and fire hazards. The

citizens drill private bore holes to provide themselves with potable water, which the government

has woefully failed to provide. They even erect private postal arrangements to carry their letters

because public utilities are at best epileptic and at worst dysfunctional. In fact, the government

simply governs on television.

In a failed state equally, the security services are always in league with the forces of social

retrogression. Robbers, swindlers and the police seem to be in an unholy alliance, designed to

prey on the society. The human rights of the citizens are treated with utmost disdain in thisenvironment, that life becomes cheaper than the price of peanuts.

All these are over abundant in the example we have situated above.


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6. Are Failed States Forever?

Ian Fleming scripted one of his lines from James Bond 007 series, which was titled "diamonds

are forever". But this at face value stands in contradistinction to the Heraclitan claims.

Heraclitus; the ancient philosopher of change, erected his philosophy on "Omnia flux", which

subscribes and vehemently proposes the idea, that change is the only permanence in nature andexistence. Everything is subject to change and no condition whatsoever is permanent. This is

really an absolutizing philosophy. But reason and experience favour his opinions. Going by

Heraclitan philosophy, nothing, not even diamonds are forever. Everything is under the thraldom

of change. This answers the question that this sub-heading essays to explore: Are failed states

forever?

Failed states were the culmination of a process, which manipulated social, cultural and political

variables. Under this scenario, the state is a festival of dysfunctions, which can never as it is,

connect towards navigating an exit out of the social questions, engendered by the failure. Since

this was a process, it could be untangled. First of all as in the case of Nigeria, we should

undertake a study into the circumstances that gave birth to this conscription of federations, called

Nigeria; which has degenerated into a a geopolity of federated grievances. This study must then

be laced with a political will to ventilate our anger and aspirations, as a people in a broadly

representative national dialogue. This will create an essential arena, for forging alliances and

agreements on whether we want to paddle along this national canoe, as a unit, or not. This

agreement is the fundamental key towards unravelling our failed State in other to rescue it from

its aimless spin towards social implosion. Every other issue, like the repressed anger and bottled

dissensions of the ethnic nationalities, would be redirected into propelling energies of social

renewal. Agreement has been the fundamental bond that creates coalitions of willing agents thatcan shoulder their collective destiny together, through thick and thin. Once an agreement or

semblance of it is absent, the whole social structure is patronized with a lackadaiscal dereliction

from all participants in its concourse.

Today, the Nigerian government convoked a political reforms conference. It was a clever and

last minute re-engineering of the agitations of the people for a sovereign national conference.

The Obasanjo government which has been a past-master in volte face, has many times reneged

on its obligations to its citizens, that the conference is touted as a Machiavellian blueprint

designed to distract the people from the reality of their pain.

At the inauguration of the conference, Obasanjo selected what ranked as the problems with

Nigeria, and banned the conference from discussing or venturing into it. He gagged and bridled

the conference from deliberating on those issues that have been the albatross of Nigeria's

progress and development.

It is our educated opinion that the conference, which was not allowed the free ambient to discuss

the fundamental ingredient of every failed state, would not address the congenital inflexibilities


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Documents

Africa the Ontology of Failed State