When Nigerians hit a peak of frustration with their nation and its many problems, they often express a desire for a revolution. Many public figures have gone on record to call for a popular revolution citing it as the only solution to Nigeria's troubles. This revolution is largely imagined as no more than an apocalyptic blood and thunder eruption of popular anger. Advocates of a Nigerian revolution, for the most part, have in mind an anarchic meltdown of society; an overthrow of existing structures by collective brigandage.






This is precisely why national transformation has seemed impossible thus far. Our concept and expectation of revolution is intrinsically flawed. We certainly need a revolution but reducing it to unmitigated violence is simplistic.

Social critics err gravely in idealizing popular anger as the sole requisite for a revolution. Anger no matter how widespread isn't sufficient to bring about a true change. Where such anger erupts in some form of civil disturbance, it will be dealt with precisely as such; a breach of public peace and put down decisively. Most times when the state has opted to meet force with force, popular anger has proven no match for the might of the state. A case in point is Tianenmen Square in 1989 where the Chinese government brutally crushed a student uprising.

Victor Hugo once said, " No army can withstand an idea whose time has come." He was right. Ideology and not anger is the spirit of revolution. Every revolution or mass movement is animated by some idea or guiding principle. Anger is important but only as the emotional energy component of a revolution. When people become tired of an oppressive system, they get angry and throw its yoke off their shoulders. But without an ideological alternative to that yoke of oppression, they are sure to end up substituting one form of oppression for another; discarding the lash of whips for the lash of scorpions, as it were.



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Three of the most significant revolutions in history were fuelled by ideology. The spirit of liberty drove the American Revolution. The colonies of the new world revolted against the taxation of the British monarchy. But this occurred within a larger conflict of values that pitted Protestantism, liberty and free enterprise against human absolutism. The former won in the end and thus was born the United States of America. The French revolution pitted the concept of secularism against the absolute imperialism of the French monarchy. The French people egged on by their philosophers and writers revolted against Louis XIV's declaration, "L' etat c'est moi" (I am the state). This paved way for the emergence of the strongly secularist modern France. The communists overthrew the Czars of imperial Russia during the Russian revolution leading to the birth of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

In all of these historic examples, we must note the primacy of ideas. These ideas were trumpeted in the mass media of the day, propounded relentlessly by philosophers and prophets in the circles of the arts, education, literature and even entertainment. The writings of Jefferson, Voltaire and Marx were among the literary influences on the three revolutions cited above. The steady stream of enlightenment created an awakening of the public, which continued until it reached a critical mass. When the idea's time came, it could not be resisted by the power structures of the time and so became manifest reality.

The question now is where is the idea that will breath life into the Nigerian revolution? Where is the ferment of ideological conflict that will lead to the rebirth of the Nigerian nation? The same poverty of thought that afflicts our political space has also emasculated people power. A revolution isn't a magic wand or a panacea. It is the deliberate and conscious effort of a people to change the course of their history. Gandhi gave us an insight into revolution when he said, " We must become the change we want to see." A popular revolution does not begin with the overthrow of the existing power structure; it ends with it. It actually begins with the individual, then the family, and then the community. The state is the final sphere to be affected by the social chain reaction that we call revolution. Plato recognized the centrality of the individual in the society when he said, "States are as men are; they grow out of human character." The Nigerian society and the state are products of the Nigerian character. To change the state, we must alter the Nigerian character. Michael Jackson crooned the same idea in his late eighties hit: "I am talking to the man in the mirror; I am asking him to change his ways." Christ said, "Remove the log in your eyes so that you can see more clearly to remove the speck in your neighbour's eye." We have to deal with our own individual flaws first and in so doing improve our perception of society's problems and our ability to solve them. It all must begin with the individual. History's greatest and most influential figures are those who became the change they wanted to see. Those who embodied their convictions have sparked off world changing revolutions.

The need for a moral rearmament or an ethical revolution has been widely recognized. Achieving a values reorientation is one of the pillars of the NEEDS (National Economic Empowerment Development Strategy) document. In my opinion, the fundamental idea behind a Nigerian revolution should be the adoption of a new paradigm that will place the people and not the government at the epicenter of social change. Nation building is largely a grass roots process and not a top-bottom engineering of the society. The Nigerian revolution will take place when public spiritedness and community values overthrow the self-centred individualism that denominates our sociopolitical life.

The infrastructural decay in our society can be remedied in many areas if citizens band together. Imagine for example, residents in any Lagos suburb, pooling their resources to tar their own roads or clear their own drains. Such an awakening of public spiritedness would altogether redefine state-society relations and emphasize the notion of democracy as government by, of and for the people. Another way of putting it is that where government isn't by and of the people, it cannot be for the people. If this sounds too simple, it is because the problem with Nigeria is not solely or even mainly the state. Nigerians need to be cured from an irresponsible and paralyzing over dependence on government and take responsibility for their own land. The refuse problem in Lagos has as much to do with the state government's inept waste disposal mechanism as it does the irresponsible sanitary habits of many Lagosians. The government certainly has to improve its waste management capacity but the people have a corresponding responsibility not to dump garbage on the roads or in the waterways.

There is also a moral dimension to the Nigerian revolution that we mustn't lose sight of. Historically religious institutions have played a role in revolutions sometimes finding themselves on either sides of the social divide. The puritan preaching of Jonathan Edwards, for instance, provided a spiritual and moral compass for the American Revolution while conversely for its complicity in imperial corruption, the church suffered secularism's backlash during the French revolution. Religious institutions provide the moral cement for nation building. Today, we need the reinjection of moral values into our society at all levels, the individual, the family, the community and then the state. What a faith- centered grass roots based values reorientation does is that it creates a moral climate that cannot sustain a corrupt power structure. Eventually that structure will either bend or break against the wind of an idea whose time has come.

The revolution we need isn't one of mindless violence but one that will replace tribalism, commercialization of conscience and selfish individualism with the ethos of individual and moral responsibility and community consciousness. Of course, anger has its uses. We should certainly be angry with ourselves for what we have allowed to happen to us and to our country. But we should also allow that anger fuel a determination to sculpt a better future with the clay of new ideas.