₦airaland Forum

www.ooduapathfinder.com


Although the Inaugural speech of an incoming elected administration is not expected to be a Policy-making speech, it offers clues as to the mindset as well as the expectations of the speech maker. These expectations are necessarily placed within the context of its immediate reality with its many dimensions captured in the speech thus setting the stage for the actions and inactions of the in-coming government, even way beyond its term in office. Thus, during Muhammadu Buhari’s Inaugural speech, he captured most of Nigeria’s history, both on his own personal level as well as that of Nigeria, all within the context of APC’s “Change” momentum, which was a reflection of the seriousness he, and by implication, his party, attaches to these issues. Overall, the speech reflected a cause and effect; the cause being ensconced in the past and the effect in the present.
As was the case during Africa’s “wind of change”, when such wind virtually challenged the then settled course of world politics through the independence of the colonies, the present “Change” being advocated by the APC, and which is the party’s core value, is also happening in a world pregnant with Change.
The Middle East is witnessing a radical transformation of the after-effects of the earlier wind of change where the settled issue of the State is being vigorously, violently and in some instances, evilly challenged, such that the gift of change bequeathed by colonial thought process and its attendant economic and political structures can no longer resolve any crisis and cannot also mediate its own continuity or give birth to a new experience. All of these are not about “regime change” or economic methodologies but simply about National Expressions, even if manifested within religious or political prisms, as these have become their realities of today, the effect of its own wind of change. Thus, participants in the Middle East change process are not only defiant of the colonially-driven State borders but are not even restricted to only the Middle East as they have found and are vigorously seeking, collaborators from outside the Middle East, again within the context of their reality subsumed within religious and political experiences.
Europe itself is not left out; even if it can be said that the European experience had been continuous all along, with similar expectations as those of the Middle East, but with less violence and virulence, all because the European ruling regimes, in most cases, not only recognize these expectations, but actively promote the aspirations; hence, Czechoslovakia could break up without incident, the USSR also found its own solutions, largely without violence but Yugoslavia ended up with violence largely because of the insensitivity of its own ruling regime.

Yet, one of the major players in the wind of change, the United Kingdom, is also now confronted with Change, at this time, where Scotland has not only just undergone a Referendum on its Independence from the UK but is following up on the rejection of Independence via demands for more powers for itself; just as other nations within the UK are also pursuing their own ways. It is also instructive that the UK now officially refers to itself as a “family of Nations”, even as Spain, with its fascist-induced State is trying to balk from its own responsibilities vis-à-vis its own ‘family of nations”.
All of these simply go to show how the history of the State is not only being shaped by an abstract Europe, but largely by her own Peoples, the family of Nations of Europe, without descending into the chaos of the Middle East even as they had, at one time or the other, passed through such a stage, for itself and not as a consequence of another.
When, therefore, Muhammadu Buhari, in his Inaugural Speech, stated the following:
“Insecurity, pervasive corruption, the hitherto unending and seemingly impossible fuel and power shortages are the immediate concerns. We are going to tackle them head on. Nigerians will not regret that they have entrusted national responsibility to us. We must not succumb to hopelessness and defeatism. We can fix our problems.
In recent times Nigerian leaders appear to have misread our mission. Our founding fathers, Mr Herbert Macauley, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Malam Aminu Kano, Chief J.S. Tarka, Mr Eyo Ita, Chief Denis Osadeby, Chief Ladoke Akintola and their colleagues worked to establish certain standards of governance. They might have differed in their methods or tactics or details, but they were united in establishing a viable and progressive country. Some of their successors behaved like spoilt children breaking everything and bringing disorder to the house.
Furthermore, we as Nigerians must remind ourselves that we are heirs to great civilizations: Shehu Othman Dan fodio’s caliphate, the Kanem Borno Empire, the Oyo Empire, the Benin Empire and King Jaja’s formidable domain. The blood of those great ancestors flow in our veins. What is now required is to build on these legacies, to modernize and uplift Nigeria.
Daunting as the task may be it is by no means insurmountable. There is now a national consensus that our chosen route to national development is democracy. To achieve our objectives we must consciously work the democratic system”, it can only follow that he has recognized the current atmosphere in the world and cannot but situate his own, and therefore, his party’s solutions within that context. For what he referred to as being of immediate concerns are anchored on the nature and function of the State as the mediator between and within the “family of Nations” that was also recognized along with how the founding fathers attempted to tackle the issue.
To “build on the legacies” is to involve the Nations as the builders which will also flow with the acceptance, by national consensus, of democracy as the chosen route to national development. This is more so when the peoples of Africa have been largely taken out of making their own histories, which has rendered the “legacies” either redundant or in perpetual conflict with itself and with others. Africa has thus been made a participant in the formation of a State in which it has no input and the contradictions and the “immediate concerns” have become permanent concerns because they are end-products of such a State.
As earlier noted, the rest of the world has recognized this and are pursuing its resolution along with ensuring the re-organization of the parameters of the relationships within the family and the re-ordering the apparatus of its own mediation-the State.
At Independence, Nigeria’s founding fathers ensured this recognition thus fought very hard to make the nations active participants in their own history, hence the adoption of a Federal system, even if with the recognition of only the largest Nations in the country with the intention of getting other Nations into the orbit. Unfortunately, this was aborted by the attempt at negating this process through what Muhammadu Buhari described as behaving “like spoilt children breaking everything and bringing disorder to the house”, manifested in the neutralization of the Independence(and Republican Constitutions) as well as the rejection of “Decree 8” of 1967.
Yet, it is common knowledge that efforts at addressing what is now referred to as being of “immediate concerns” were confronted head-on in those times by the founding fathers with each of the Nations being satisfied both on the pace of the solution as well as the potentials for the future, before the interference of the “spoilt children”.
The effects of this interference is still with us today, being the cause of the “immediate concerns”, hence the beginning of the solution ought to be the removal of the impediments created by these “spoilt children” which is based on the nature and structure of the Nigerian State as the mediator of the relationships.
When “ooduapathfinder” now proposes a “Return”, it is an advocacy for a Return to the pre- spoilt-children period, where Nigeria had a Federal Constitution which is essentially the recognition of Nigeria as a “family of Nations”. The recognition of the “heirs to the great civilizations” without their own input as to the structure and nature of their State will make nonsense of the greatness of those civilizations, which “ooduapathfinder” will not attribute to Muhammadu Buhari and the APC.
Where then do we go from here? “ooduapathfinder” says the APC government at the Center must provide the environment for the involvement of the Nations, without necessarily setting up a “conference” by whatever name called; hence, for the Yoruba Nation, we support the proposals presented by the Egbe Omo Oduduwa at the March Ibadan Yoruba Summit, to wit: the necessity for a Yoruba Constitutional Convention to fashion out its own Nation’s Grundorm with the 1960/1963 Federal Constitutions as a framework and ratified by a Yoruba National Referendum; while other Nations in Nigeria can organize their own Constitutional Conventions with similar ratification Referendums. A Federal Constitutional Convention will be held to ratify whatever will be agreed upon as to the nature of the Nigerian State, which becomes the realization of ourselves as the “heirs to the great civilizations”.
“ooduapathfinder” believes the Center need not fund these activities as this will be a beckoning to the Nations to become active participants in the making of their own history, through this input, to the remaking of history currently going on in the world of today.