A few people are as passionate about Nigeria as Chido Onumah who has not only been to every nook and cranny of the country but also expresses that undying passion in everything he does. The widely-travelled writer and journalist, who unveiled his latest book, We Are All Biafrans, speaks with Assistant Life Editor, TERH AGBEDEH, on his ideas for a better Nigeria.
It was at the launch of your book, We Are All Biafrans, that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar unrolled the roadmap, if you like, on how to restructure Nigeria. People have been saying he was only presenting his manifesto for a comeback to power. How do you react to that?
The decision to invite him to chair the book launch was based on his antecedents. There is an article in the book that I made reference to him. Interestingly, not a very flattering reference because I called him out on the fact that he made a statement to the effect that he regretted what he did to (Alex) Ekwueme as we were about to head into the next round of transition in 1998 or thereabout.
Was that at the PDP Convention in Jos, Plateau State?
Yes, in which he thought Ekwueme and others who were pushing for a geo-political restructuring of Nigeria were calling for the balkanisation of Nigeria. And looking back, he realised that his action then wasn’t really in the best interest of the country, so to speak. And he literally was making a public apology to Ekwueme. And I referenced that. So, when the time came for us to choose who we could bring onboard to give vent to the debate, which has always been there almost since Independence but more recently from 1990 after the (Gideon) Orkar coup that it was clear that this country – we should stop pretending – is not really what it is, we saw him handy.
But the idea was to look for somebody with a bit of clout nationally, you know, recognition and so on, who could give vent to this. So it was a chance we took and we decided that since this man made this statement, we should approach him and see if he actually believed in this.
You were not kind to former President Olusegun Obasanjo as well in the book, and what Atiku said has done well for the book. But do you think Obasanjo could have done better at the launch?
I think Obasanjo would have been a terrible candidate for the book launch for so many reasons. Obasanjo believes only about himself and perhaps his circle of friends. If Obasanjo really believed in this country, he had two golden opportunities to change Nigeria for the better and he missed those opportunities. First in 1976 as a military officer, he gave us a flawed election, which really set the tone or foundation for what happened subsequently in 1983, which led again to military intervention at the end of 1983. Fast-forward to 1999 with all that the country had gone through, he came and spent eight wasteful years that were almost the years of the locust. Corruption, indiscipline, highhandedness and everything antithetical to democracy was what we witnessed under the reign of Obasanjo. So, sincerely, when I talk about the progress of Nigeria, I hate to speak of Obasanjo in the same sentence.
Considering Brexit, do you think Nigeria will disintegrate and what will follow?
First of all, let me say I don’t believe in the disintegration of Nigeria. What do I mean by that? Simply, I don’t believe in this country breaking up into tiny bits and pieces partly because it is almost not doable. Rather, what we may have is a very bloody civil war on our hands because Nigeria is not in a way the United Kingdom (UK). It is different from Nigeria.
In as much as we have distinct ethnic groups, there is no equivalency here. It is like comparing oranges to apples. In the case of the UK you have three countries that, for one reason or another, have agreed to be one country; so they may decide to split and go their separate ways because Wales is a distinct nation itself with the Welsh, you have the Irish and English as distinct nations. And if you look at (Obafemi) Awolowo’s theory many years ago about the fact that Nigeria is not a nation in the sense that we don’t have a Nigerian like you have a Welsh, that just gives you an idea of where we stand.
So I don’t think Nigeria is going to break up as easily as these other countries. But, I mean, I am just an ordinary writer whose thoughts may not matter at the end of the day. On the other hand, it is possible, and that is not to preclude the fact that Nigeria can disintegrate. That I wish that Nigeria does not disintegrate does not mean that Nigeria can’t disintegrate. My argument is that we can’t disintegrate peacefully like these other entities where they could do a referendum because Nigeria is a different kettle of fish completely.
Boko Haram is up there causing havoc, there is the Niger Delta Avengers; perhaps the only people not agitating are the people from the Middle Belt of the country…
They are.
Maybe not violently…
Yeah, not violently so far; but at least, notionally they have that concept that they want to. But agitation does not necessarily at the end of the day translate into a republic or the desire for a separate nation on its own. People are agitating in the most part because of the sense of alienation they feel, the sense of inequality, the sense of oppression they feel within a nation. And whether we like it or not, their approach is to say, demand for greater participation, greater involvement. And this is why I think Nigeria is a better place than some of these countries, if our rulers can rise up to the occasion and say let’s do something about this.
By that you must be talking about a sovereign national conference, which you also talked about in the book. Do you think that will ever happen considering our antecedence?
Let’s not joke about it, let’s not take it lightly. There is nowhere it was written that every country will live forever. We have seen empires come and go. Nations stand and fall. So, once we have that hindsight, that benefit of history, we will know that there is nothing sacrosanct about Nigeria. Nigeria was created. We know when and why Nigeria was created. My argument is that we need to overcome the reason Nigeria was created. Nigeria was created in the image of the British and for their own interest. Now that you have created Nigeria, Nigerians as a people should re-create Nigeria in the image of Nigeria and for the interest of Nigeria.
Once we have it at the back of our minds that the unity of this country is negotiable, that Nigeria is negotiable, which is the title of my second book, it is left for Nigerians to negotiate our collective existence. That is the only way to douse these agitations. As long as we continue to pretend or hide our heads in the sand, it will explode before our very eyes one day and what we would have, rather than the British or Scottish example, will be more of Somalia where you have terrorist groups taking every part of the country they feel they have control over.
That is scary. There was a time it was thought that Nigerians would never blow themselves up, but that time has come and gone.
There is one strand that runs through much of what I write and that is the issue about our Nigerianess, ever since I was a young person growing up in Lagos. I am from Imo State, but I grew up among Muslim kids from Kwara State. I spoke Yoruba as my first language. I schooled in Calabar (Cross River State) and served in Maiduguri (Borno State), learning Hausa. So, my interest has always been on how to build a Nigeria.
From that early age, I saw that much of the problem we were facing as a people was due to crisis of identity, crisis of nationhood; that if we are able to solve this, we can solve so many problems.
I have been out of the country for two decades now. I have lived in Ghana, the United States, Canada, Spain. I have taken time to study how people in these different countries relate to one another. I worked in Ghana for three years and I could sense the level of patriotism among Ghanaians. No matter where they come from, there is that feeling of being a Ghanaian. Their leader who emerged at their Independence, Kwame Nkrumah, was able to lay the foundation of putting Ghana first beyond every other thing. You look at the situation in Canada, the same thing. Canada was formed from three or four different confederates. One of the very first things that the Canadian Prime Minister in the government that formed that confederation did was to do a rail line. And the Chinese are complaining because they were the ones that were used to build it. Canada is as big as West Africa from Cameroon to Mauritania, but there is a rail line connecting every part of Canada. So if our rulers had done this (and I prefer to call them rulers rather than leaders), you will find out that at the level of integration now, it would be easy for any man or woman from Sokoto to take the train and come to Aba and stay.
When I was in Borno State for my NYSC [National Youth Service Corps], it was still peaceful. It was so much fun and I was hoping and praying because until when I did my NYSC in the old 19-state structure Nigeria, the old Sokoto (before Zamfara and Kebbi were created) and Borno (before Yobe was created), were the only two states I had not been to because I was very active in the students’ union movement. And I was hoping and praying; in fact, I jubilated when I got Borno as my state of service. When I finished my NYSC, I took a bus from Maiduguri to Sokoto with my luggage, spent two or three days in Sokoto before I travelled to Lagos, just to beat my chest and say I have been to every nook and cranny of this country.
So I have taken a lot of interest in Nigeria. I am passionate about this country and have come to the realisation that unless we build a nation out of this contraption that the colonialists handed over to us, whether we are talking about corruption or indiscipline, agitation, violence, those things will continue to be.
You are, no doubt, passionate about this country, as you are even married to someone outside your part of the country.
Yes, my wife is from Ogun State.
If the sovereign national conference (SNG) does not happen any time soon, do you think the alternative is for us to inter-marry, so that very soon we shall all be related and there will be no need to kill one another?
I will come to the sovereign national conference, but let me address your question directly. I mentioned a bit of this, if not in the book, maybe in an article I did shortly before the book launch. I think it coincided with my 50th birthday. I was talking about the fact that we have missed an opportunity to build a nation, but it is not too late.
First and foremost, we don’t carry a Biafran, Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba passport; we carry a Nigerian passport. So why is it that it is so difficult for us when it comes to operationalising that concept of Nigeria? Everybody slides into their ethnic cocoon, meanwhile, it is Nigeria that brings us together. So I raised some argument because people would want to accuse you and say it is so easy to talk about this, what do you want us to achieve? What stops us, for example, from saying that the government needs to be creative about it and say, let’s give incentive. Some people do it outside the country. In Canada, for example, with a population of 33 million people and a huge landmass, government gives incentives; maybe if you have two to four kids, they can give you special consideration just to encourage people. So, if we want to build national unity, we can do something about it. Okay, for young people out of university, out of secondary school who want to marry, if you marry from a different geo-political zone, you get certain things. The government can encourage you with (some cash). Why don’t you do something like a name project that if you are Igbo, you can give your son or daughter a middle name from some other part of the country? As we do this, a generation or two would have grown Nigerians who really don’t know where they belong other than Nigeria. You see somebody who is Chukwuma and has Aminu as name.
As a journalist, I am sure you have experienced this; you write an article and people are attacking you just because of your name; not because of what you wrote. It is so funny that somebody would ask you, where do you come from? I would say I came from my mother and I never went back there. First of all, they won’t understand what I mean. I am a Nigerian and it doesn’t matter where I come from. I am a human being first and foremost. Is that not enough for you? Why are you asking me? If I go outside this country, they ask me where I come from. I say I am a Canadian and they say, originally, where do you come from? So, because you are black, they want you to say (where you come from), and then I come to Nigeria and somebody asks me the same question, because you want to pigeonhole or define me. Look at the situation in the U.S., where the former president, the older Bush, ran as a congress man, I think from the state of Connecticut. One of the sons became governor in Florida. Another in Texas. There are Nigerians who are born in this country whether in Lagos, Imo or Sokoto, they grew up there and speak the local language as their first language. But when it comes to running for elections or position, people will tell them to go back to their state of origin.
Perhaps it is only in Lagos that things are different.
Yes, it is a bit liberal in Lagos, but there is also a problem because a lot of people who are born in Lagos, who ought to claim Lagos as a right, are not given the opportunity because their parents are from elsewhere. So that is the challenge. We need to build a nation. It is part of this, what I like to call existential confidence or lack of it, that creates a situation where our governors, ministers and now our army chief buy houses abroad, because nobody believes in Nigeria, particularly the rulers. They don’t believe in this country.
There are those who say that Nigeria hasn’t been blessed with leaders (you call them rulers) who have the will…
Put all of these together, (you have) a big challenge. Unfortunately, we have this problem of lack of unity and it is now compounded by lack of visionary leaders.
We need to have leaders who are creative, who are bold. Somebody like (Ibrahim) Babangida, I think, would have been able to do that. Don’t get me wrong, as far as Africa is concerned, and as far as Nigeria is concerned, I think we needed some level of military rule to help, not because of my liking for military dictatorship, but because of what the colonialists did to this country. This country was held together by iron fist, mangled and everything. So you needed that kind of iron fist to settle it. To that extent, Africa needed military dictatorships at a time. Unfortunately, the military rulers we have had over the years across Africa are the types without political education that Thomas Sankara referenced. A soldier without political education is a political criminal. So you had bandits trained and provided with guns at the expense of the state and they started robbing the state.
So it is not as if this country can’t work. Nigeria can work, but we really need the kind of rulers who are bold and ingenious to help put it on the pedestal.